Curious... what external pedals are a must with your Kemper?

  • This question came up in my head as I was looking at an email of new pedals that have come out recently. Particularly some new Pre-amp pedals from Benson and Hudson. I was thinking they were cool pedals, but if you have a Kemper, why would you need them. Then I thought, do you even need any pedals at all if you have a Kemper? If you have the amp in a profile and you have boost, reverb, delay and other effects on board what else do you really need?


    I recently received my Kemper Stage. I'm looking at putting it on a board. It is quite heavy and long all on its own. Once I add my Shure GLXD, two fuzzes and two expression pedals this is a behemoth. I also use a Play Acoustic vocal harmonizer which needs a clean guitar signal. On some songs I play an EHX B9, no other special pedals, at least for right now. It is always a game to see what is the least amount of gear I can get away with and so far I absolutely need my fuzzes.


    I'm curious what external pedals YOU absolutely must have with your Kemper?

  • A Wampler Tumnus Deluxe is almost always around. A Wampler Euphoria is a close second.


    Those are the ‘must’ pedals. If I want a Big Muff, the JHS Muffleta buries the Muffin stomp.


    With the new reverbs and delays, I see guys still using a Timeline and Big Sky. Seems unnecessarily redundant to me.

    “Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

  • When you consider the fact that the Kemper is at its heart a guitar amp, there's no reason you couldn't dial up a profile that made for a good pedal platform and do it all through a traditional pedal board. I would imagine there are folks who do exactly that.


    Personally, I've been enjoying the fact that I can get what I want without any additional pedals at all. Plug in a speaker and the remote and I'm done. But it's pretty cool that you can go from this extreme all the way to doing a full pedal board, and all points in between.


    That said, the one pedal I may eventually experiment with is the Freqout. The Kemper's resistance to feedback is pretty weird, but I've been largely in the studio. Once I get back out into the bars and play at that level, I may find I don't need it.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • In my case I don’t feel the need for any pedals and am loving the simplicity of not having a pedal board anymore. remote and expression pedals = job done for me.


    As for you point about the Vocal Harmoniser needing a clean guitar tone to work I would set the direct output to Git and send this to harmoniser . No need to split the signal going into the KPA so no need for A/B pedals or DI boxes etc on your board.

  • King of Tone i beautiful with some profiles. Much warmer than anything I can get with the built in overdrives. But that's it. All else the Kemper handles perfectly, in my view. That's part of its appeal.

  • In my case I don’t feel the need for any pedals and am loving the simplicity of not having a pedal board anymore. remote and expression pedals = job done for me.


    I don’t drag a pedal board anymore. One, maybe two dirt pedals in a distortion loop. Remote only at my feet.

    “Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

  • Sometimes I hook up my old gold Fulltone Deja´Vibe to get in "the mood" ......

    That´s about it 8) The internal "UniVibe" sounds a little off to me compared

    to the "real deal" . But that´s me :/

    The adjective for metal is metallic. But not so for iron ... which is ironic.

  • The Digitech Freqout stays on my board.

    Now *that* is a cool pedal. That's the one thing I struggle with when I use my Kemper and DXR10 monitors. Even at hefty volumes controlled feedback is difficult, at best. I am getting one of these. Thanks for the heads up. I have a Boss Feedbacker but it's pretty lousy. Do you just run your pedal straight into the main input?