Question about editing sound profiles that comes with gain

  • I have a somewhat strange question. Let's say I take a profile, for example "Matchless SC30 R 2-" which has some gain to it by default. The amp has been captured as is, with it's set of microphones, certain amount of gain etc etc, to become what it is... But if I dial down the gain, will it still be the same amp that I hear clean? Or should I rather capture it with clean profile seperate instead to acheive a clean "Matchless SC30"?

    So in other words, does the "Matchless SC30 R 2-" has it's own gain when run default, or is it a Kemper imposed gain? :)

  • Matchless SC30 amps are very similar to most EL84 type amps where it definitely has some crunch/drive when pushed. You can use the "gain" knob and adjust/tweak the gain down a bit and it should still sound really good, I just normally wouldn't recommend drastic adjustments because then it's the Kemper modifying the amp and it's not just the amp profile itself.


    That, or you could just find a cleaner SC30 profile and that will give you the best results.

  • It will sound almost exactly like the same slightly gained up amp with the guitar volume rolled off to clean up. It isn’t quite the same as turning down the gain on the amp itself. I tested this a while back by making a set of profiles of a non master volume amp (THD BiValve) with the volume at every hour on the clock face (7 o’clock through 4 o’clock). I then set up some performances with the highest volume profile and the gain on the KPA reduced to match the gain of a lower volume profile. When switching between them the sounds of the lower volume profile and reduced gain version of the full volume profile were noticeably different. However the sound of the higher volume profile with the guitar volume reduced were vary similar to profiles made with the amp at lower volumes. I think I uploaded the full set of profiles to Rig Exchange if you want to test it yourself.


    If you want a true cleaner amp sound I would recommend making two profiles.

  • I come from the 'If it sounds good, who cares how you came about arriving at that sound?' camp. So the real question is whether your priority is how it sounds aesthetically vs. accurately. If you only care about aesthetics, tweak away to your hearts content. If you care about accuracy, then you probably need a range of different profiles taken from the amp in question.

  • I come from the 'If it sounds good, who cares how you came about arriving at that sound?' camp. So the real question is whether your priority is how it sounds aesthetically vs. accurately. If you only care about aesthetics, tweak away to your hearts content. If you care about accuracy, then you probably need a range of different profiles taken from the amp in question.

    Ultimately I care about how it sound, yes :) But I still wanted to know if the KPA gain knob is a KPA modified one and if it colored the real amp tone. Thanks for your reply guys

  • It is rather the opposite; the Kemper gain knob only increases or decreases the gain, leaving the tone, compression, response and volume of the amp intact, whereas the gain knob on the real amp will impact tone, compression, response, volume and gain.

  • It is rather the opposite; the Kemper gain knob only increases or decreases the gain, leaving the tone, compression, response and volume of the amp intact, whereas the gain knob on the real amp will impact tone, compression, response, volume and gain.

    This is interesting!

  • ...so to answer your question, if you want an accurate version of the amp, you'll need a profile of it clean.


    This is why you'll see so many profiles of the same amp at different gain points..


    As said above though that is to be accurate, doesn't mean it wouldn't sound good, so try it first, then decide..

  • It is rather the opposite; the Kemper gain knob only increases or decreases the gain, leaving the tone, compression, response and volume of the amp intact

    yes, the PROFILERs gain will not affect the tone - so you can profile the amp in it's sweet spot and have the same great tone in every level of distortion - but to me at least a change on compression and response are unavoidable when changing the gain - distortion being a extreme form of compression/limiting by itself and the response of an amp has - again, for me, it is a bit of a subjective term - has a lot to do with the transients / the attack and these are definitely changing with the gain.