Kemper for two weeks now

  • Hey all,


    New to forum. I purchased a Kemper rack amp a couple weeks ago. I have been a long time Axe Fx user. For years I was trying to get a as close as possible to the amp of choice sound, Mesa, Marshall, Bogner, ect. Well, I have found this seems to be working leaps and bounds over my previous endeavors with the axe. Silly me for not trying earlier.


    I love the axe don't get me wrong but man is it a fight to get a good sound through a traditional cab or even a basic PA. I had the impression that the Kemper was a one shot picture and not very flexible. I was wrong. Still a learning curve but man what a great piece of gear.


    Not trying to bash but even after the Ares update it just does not compare in the way I need it to. I love tube amps and this gets me to an all in one tool. Love it. The editing is a little tough at first but hopefully it will all come together. I am using the remote with it. Great stuff. I wish there better comparisons so I could have made the leap earlier. Some examples of through cabs or in a room comparisons to the axe. It's really beneficial to have these comparisons although people can take offense. We all have are use cases though.


    So far been hitting up profiles from, Britt, TAF, Marco Fanton, Wag and some others. Looking for some great Marshall mid gain profiles. Any suggestions? Thanks

  • Welcome, have fun here in the forum and with your Kemper :thumbup:8)


    Personally I like Britt's 69 Marshall pack a lot. You can search for Katzbach as well, large library of different Marshalls.


    P.S.: Potentially the mods can move this discussion into the Commercial Profilers forum.

  • The III is undoubtedly above the XL sonically.

    I watched this video and found it hard to hear the difference. We are talking about a guitar signal that is a relatively limited frequency response anyway.


    The real differnce is the IR response with modellers in my experience:


    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7

  • I've had my Stage for almost two weeks as well. I played my first show with it Thursday with one band. What was coming out of the monitor was insane. Just...insane. And all I was doing was mostly using the stock Orange Rockerverb/TS808 and a Dual Rec profile.


    I've been using it in rehearsals for my other band; that setup is way more complicated and the entire reason I went to the profiler anyway. We have a show March 6th, and the thing already sounds way better and allows me to switch a bunch of stuff at once, which was my main problem without it.


    Oh yeah, and I just hook it up to the PA right out of the case and play. That way I can focus on setting up the IEM and my vocal stuff.

  • I watched this video and found it hard to hear the difference. We are talking about a guitar signal that is a relatively limited frequency response anyway.


    The real differnce is the IR response with modellers in my experience:


    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.


    The video in question was recorded a month after the Axe-Fx III was released, and the sonic differences were somewhat negligible at the time. However, that was almost 2 years ago and there have been numerous updates and significant sonic improvements to the amp modeling since then. In fact, many of the effects have been completely overhauled.

  • The video in question was recorded a month after the Axe-Fx III was released, and the sonic differences were somewhat negligible at the time. However, that was almost 2 years ago and there have been numerous updates and significant sonic improvements to the amp modeling since then. In fact, many of the effects have been completely overhauled.

    Maybe my point was badly put, but it was not intended as a criticism; they both sounded good. I guess the amp and cab don't really need a hardware update to sound better. Maybe you are talking about effects.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7

  • Maybe my point was badly put, but it was not intended as a criticism; they both sounded good. I guess the amp and cab don't really need a hardware update to sound better. Maybe you are talking about effects.

    I didn't interpret it as a criticism. I was referring to the amp modeling algorithms. When the III was released, the audible differences between the II and III were somewhat negligible, in my opinion. Since then, the algorithms in the III have been updated several times and the audible discrepancy between the two at this point is significant to my ears. Of course, it's not just the modeling algorithms. The speaker impedance curves have also been updated.

  • It s interesting that Axe FX manage to improve their product continuously... and yet never really get better than Kemper lol

    That means clearly that Kemper has always been better than Axe FX :)

    Sorry had to... i just look at Axe FX as a draft product that tries to immitate tube amps and keeps getting closer... whilst Kemper is already as good as a tube amp.

  • It s interesting that Axe FX manage to improve their product continuously... and yet never really get better than Kemper lol

    That means clearly that Kemper has always been better than Axe FX :)

    Sorry had to... i just look at Axe FX as a draft product that tries to immitate tube amps and keeps getting closer... whilst Kemper is already as good as a tube amp.

    Christoph has said profiling is close but that there's no room for improvement, and as good as it is, numerous users (myself included) can often hear a difference between a profile and the actual amp. Sometimes the differences aren't trivial, either. So, I'm not going to knock Fractal Audio for actually continuing to improve the modeling and strive for 100% accuracy.

  • Installed yesterday the new editor and checked out the new profiles in the RE which I checked last time in january last year..


    I did not liked any AF3 profile.Sound horrible to my ears.Sorry to say this but like there is "no blood in the organism".I liked a few helix profiles but to my surprise I liked amplitube and 2-3 neural nolly profiles..much more than I liked the AF3 & Helix profiles..strange this..I checked it out for a while but I stay with this claim.


    Saying all this..nothing comes close to good Kemper rigs.Not even close.And something else..


    The "new profiles" now in the RE are very good.Many,many of them.A lots of guys who already did some profiles in the past added some new stuff.Many rigs of these sound really good to my ears.In the past (untill late 2018 or so..) I liked some 10-15% of all the rigs in the RE.The 2019 profiles I checked out are good to my ears to 25-30% now..


    Today I see no real reason to spend hundreds of bucks for buying profiles anymore.You will find whatever you need in the RE these days.

  • The "new profiles" now in the RE are very good.Many,many of them.A lots of guys who already did some profiles in the past added some new stuff.Many rigs of these sound really good to my ears.In the past (untill late 2018 or so..) I liked some 10-15% of all the rigs in the RE.The 2019 profiles I checked out are good to my ears to 25-30% now..

    Agreed; roughly the same percentage estimate here, Nikos.

  • Saying all this..nothing comes close to good Kemper rigs. Not even close.

    The Axe-Fx not only comes close, I've been able to perfectly reproduce a number of my favorite Guido Bungenstock profiles using the Axe-Fx II. The III, on the other hand, is on a completely different level than the II.

  • The reason I went with Kemper initially was the price in Europe, but then I love the fact I can easily edit on the road without software. I love the way it is developed and we don't have to keep buying hardware.


    I still think the IR in modellers is 90% of the tone with higher gain though. Just check out this tone I thought you couldn't get from a Stomp:


    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7