**SOLVED** Powered Kemper with "Regular" Guitar Cab Help

  • Hello everyone. I have posted on this before but wanted to follow up and get some advice. I bought a powered Kemper in the hopes of connecting it to an Orange 2x12 cab and get a close approximation to basically owning a bunch of amps I don't actually have. My hope was that I could get a Engl profile for example, either a direct version or one where I can disable the cab setting, and have my setup sound like I now own the real Engl. Now I knew it wouldnt be EXACTLY like having the real Engl amp, but everything I heard about the Kemper led me to believe that it would be pretty darn close, nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. So far that has not really been the case, and I'm wondering if my hopes were too high or maybe I'm just missing something. Here are my steps so far:


    1. Upon my first powerup of the Kemper and getting the latest OS patch and the latest Rig Manager patch, I was highly underwhelmed with the sound of the profiles it came with. Clean profiles generally sound pretty good, high gain profiles however sounded very bassy, muddy, etc. The best way to describe it is it sounds like someone through a blanket over my cabinet. (and yes, I have all cabinet emulation turned off, even locked, for all profiles)


    2. After much research and advice from the forums (thank you!) I started to make some progress. First I bought some high quality profiles from Michael Britt (Dual Recto), Andy James, Reamp Zone, etc. Now I have a nice selection of high gain amps from reputable sources. Next, I put a Graphic EQ in the "X" position of the chain and adding a low cut filter helped considerably with the out of control low end that every profile seems to have through my cabinet. From there I adjust the clarity and definition settings in the amp section, then finally adjust the EQs and Presence on the main amp screen. This improved the situation pretty dramatically and the difference of before and after is pretty night and day. However, the "blanket" over my cabinet sound has turned more into a "sheet". Progress, but not what I'm looking for.


    3. Over the last few days I have found more options that have helped a bit. Turning off "Pure Cabinet" also helped make the sound a little more "alive" as opposed to stuck behind that sheet. Nevertheless, it's still there and just annoying enough to make me want to stick to my real amps instead of the Kemper.


    With all that said here are my questions:


    Is there anything else I can try or may have missed?


    Is this all due to running this through an Orange Cab and not an FRFR? If so, what is the point of a powered Kemper if not to power "regular" guitar cabs?


    I prefer the Axe Fx for recording, though I may give the Kemper a shot at recording and see if it's worth keeping based on that alone. However my goal was to have the Axe for recording and the Kemper for playing live in the room. So far, it's falling a little short in that area, and I'm wondering if it's just not ideal for what I'm trying to use it for? Again, clean profiles sound quite good, none of that muffled behind a blanket sound, it's all in the high gain profiles, which is sadly my main interest.


    Thanks so much everyone for your help and feedback! It's much appreciated!

  • Something definitely doesn’t sound right. In my case a side by side A/B of the real amp and a profile of the real amp with the same settings reveals them to be almost indistinguishable although the profile almost always has a slightly nicer “tighter” low end.


    You mentioned that turning off Pure Cab makes a difference. I don’t think this should happen if you have the cab block bypassed (which is what you would want for using a regular guitar cab) are you sure you have monitor cab off?


    Also, have you tried the real amp side by side through your cab to make sure the cab isn’t the problem? The Kemper works great with both my Mesa Thiele EVM12L cabs and my 2x12 Rectifier Cab.


    Finally, have you checked that you don’t have the monitor output EQ set with the top rolled off or the bass boosted?

  • Hello!


    Just to be sure... did you compare a profile of an AMP with it's real counterpiece (same equalizing ect?)

    The best way to find out if there is an issue with the kemper would be to make a profile of an amp you own and compare these two.



    Now you are just playing the profiles of other people and every DI-profile sounds bassy/blanket-like, right? So perhaps you just like your distortion sound to be very bright/harsh in comparison to other people? But I guess this isn't really the problem here because you said the clean sounds are okay. Weird.


    Is the sound of your (tudio/merged)profiles alright when you record them?

  • Hey everyone thanks so much for the advice! Let me see if I can answer some of these questions:


    1. Pure Cab shouldnt make a difference if I have the cabinet block turned off, so am I sure I have the monitor cab off?

    So I just powered it on to be doubly sure. What I have done is "locked" the "Cabinet" button to the off position for every profile, in addition in the Output menu I have "Monitor Cab Off" checkmarked. I assume that's all I would need to do? Even with all this off, turning on "pure cab" and setting it between 10 and 0 I hear tonal differences and it sounds best at zero. Should this not be the case?


    2. I have tried the real amp side by side? Great question, so I do have a real Mesa Dual Recto and through the cab it sounds great, no booming muddy low end and no blanket over the cab type feel, sounds just like what you would expect. When I load a Dual Recto profile I get the muffled sound right away. To further test this I went ahead and profiled my actual amp, and this is where I got even more confused. By the time the profile was finished, the reference amp and the kemper amp sounded indistinguishable, so I went to save the finished profile. Once saved I loaded the profile, and boom, tons of low end and muffled as hell just like every other profile I load. So so weird.


    3. Have I checked monitor output EQ for any weird bass boosts, etc? Monitor output EQ is set at all zeros


    4. From Nordan's post you were just wondering if maybe I like my tones pretty bright and harsh compared to others. It's true that I like tight and focused low end and I've always liked a little more treble / presence than the average guitarist, however this is definitely beyond that. The profile tones I'm getting really sound like crap by anyone's standard, I've never heard anyone want to play with so much muddy low end and a really muffled kind of sound. Good question though.


    I'm almost at the point where I'm convinced there's something wrong with it and it needs to be sent back, however I'll wait to hear your responses before I do. Thanks so much! Also just for the record I have done a factory reset of the settings, and even reloaded the OS to try to rule that out as a possibility. When I run the Kemper direct to my computer and listen through monitors it sounds fine, it's only when I send it to my cab that it sounds like this. Considering my cab sounds perfectly normal with a "real" amp, and the Kemper seems to record ok, I'm either missing something in the settings when it comes to the powered out line, or it's a defective unit. Thanks for any feedback!!

  • It is reassuring that the profile of your own DR and the real amp sound practically indistinguishable as this seems to confirm the Kemper is able to sound the way you want it to. However, this seems to be getting screwed up when saving. I would open a support ticket. Support will probably as for a backup of your KPA to let them troubleshoot. If there is a fault of some sort they should be able to spot it and sort yo out.

  • When using a guitar cabinet instead of a FRFR monitor you HAVE TO EQ the guitar cabinet to compensate. The way to do this is to use the monitor out of the Kemper and makes sure the Cab emulation is turned off for the monitor/speaker out. That way you can still send the main to the FOH with cab emulation on into the PA.


    Setup up a good FRFR/PA speaker with a flat sound from the main out and then from the speaker out of the Kemper into your cab you'll EQ to match the FRFR/PA. If the profile uses a 4x12 with V30's and you're already using a 4x12 with V30's then you shouldn't need to EQ much. But if your using K12-100's then you're basically going to EQ the output of the Kemper so that it makes your 4x12 with K12-100's sound like it has V30's loaded... Every DI/Merged profile you play from that point forward should sound like it's being played through a cab with V30's.


    This quirk of the profiler and other modelers is why FRFR/PA speakers are the better choice over guitar cabs for monitoring. It can be done but it's not ideal for the sound that was profiled or being emulated. This is also another reason a lot of users are moving towards using their own Impulse Responses. Once you setup an IR that closely matches the sound of your guitar cab and begin using this in your profiles, you'll tweak the profiles to taste then when running the Kemper through your real cab, it will match. This is what I do for all of the profiles I use, that way no matter whether I use my cab for monitoring live or a FRFR/PA I still get the same reliable sound.


    Hope that helps.

  • ***SOLVED***

    Hey everyone, just wanted to share an update, got the problem solved. First off, thanks to everyone for your help and advice, it's very much appreciated!

    After a couple weeks of dealing with the Kemper and having so much trouble getting good tones that weren't extremely low end and boxy sounding I finally decided to send it back for a replacement. Since I've never played a Kemper before I had no point of comparison, but something just didnt seem right.

    Sure enough the replacement arrived and it sounds totally different, exactly what I thought it should be! Basically on the damaged unit I had to do massive low end cuts to the EQ for it to even sound somewhat normal, and even then it didnt seem that great. Plugged this one in and a night and day difference. Sure glad I decided to send it back for a replacement! Now everything sounds amazing and I finally understand why everyone loves this unit so much!
    I can only guess what was wrong with the other one, but clearly the powered speaker out had something wrong with it. Anyway, alls well that ends well, thanks everyone for your help along the way. It's funny to play this thing now that I have one that works correctly, holy crap does this sound good! I finally understand all the great things I've heard for all those years!