Things You Learned About The Profiler That You Wished You Knew Day One

  • It is typical with gear this powerful that there is a learning curve. One day you stumble across something and think. "Man, I could have saved myself a lot of time and hassle if I knew about this from day one." As a newbie still waiting for delivery of my toaster, I would love to hear about your "eureka" moments with the Kemper.


    Thanks,

    Ray

  • I use headphones and play low-mid gain profiles and these are my "top 5":

    • Pure Cabinet - I keep mine at 3.5 globally. With it set to a value of 0 the profiles get a hint of harshness I don't like. For a long time I had it set to 0 and learned how to use the Kemper adjustments accordingly. One day I reset my KPA to factory defaults and since Pure Cabinet is set to 4.0 (i think) from the reset I was amazed how much I need this setting. I had to re-think most of what I'd learned on how to make the KPA sound good to me.
    • High-Shift and Low-Shift in the Cabinet section - Small tweaks can really shape how the profile sounds. When surfing profiles I usually make some adjustments here first to see if the profile is something worth saving.
    • Understanding the relationship between Amplifier EQ knobs for B/M/T/P and the the remaining knobs in that section. This is a big subjective subject but a good starting point for me were the tonejunkie youtube videos + posts on this forum.
    • Don't go crazy with making a ton of tweaks. Either you like a profile initially or not and don't spend too much time trying to like a profile.
    • Focus on playing the guitar and having fun. For me the KPA can be rabbit-hole of options that takes away from just playing guitar and having a good time.
  • Listen and judge profiles not only at bedroom level. It took me a while to understand the beauty of some (commercial) profiles as I found them rather dull and flat on first glance. I almost discarded them for me but found out by incident during a rehearsal how good they developed in gig/rehearsal level and how beneficial their character is for live and recording purposes. Vice versa some profiles sound good at low volume but tend to be harsh and shrill once you turn them up...

  • *Rig Manager is #1- waited years and years for editing capabilities on PC. Lots of hard to find adjustments on the unit are easy on PC now.

    *Dist sense is #2- Profile doesn't sound right? Go to input settings in rig mgr and adjust.

    *Changing Cabs is #3- Lock the amp you like in Rig Mgr, then load different profiles to try with different cabs.

  • 1 - play with the eq in the output section. That was a eureka moment for me.


    2 - add graphic eq's to shape your sound more.


    3 - the definition and power sag are my friends, love it and is normally my first stop with new profiles


    4 - invest in good profiiles. Currently my fave is top jimi casswell afd. Its fantastic


    5 - if you plan to use a real cab, get a good power amp.


    Thats a start for ya. ?

  • Note that there are separate, global EQs for the main out and the monitor out. These can be lifesavers if you use different PAs, types of monitors, etc on a regular basis.


    If you use the remote and any expression pedals, get the pedals set up in the rig section and then lock the rig section. That way, your pedal set up will behave as you want it to, and won't be different for different profiles / profile makers.


    After you have fun playing with all the preset effects, go through and delete, from the profiler, any that you know will not use regularly. This will really speed up your workflow. You can always audition/copy/tweak the presets you deleted from the profiler in rig manager.


    Spend some time learning about the output section. If the presets work for you, great. If you need to tweak the output section, save your changes as "Ray's Default" or "Ray's Studio" or "Ray Live", etc. That way you can easily change output setups for different situations.


    Keyword search the manual(s). Ask questions here in the forums. Folks here are helpful, and nice, and oftentimes have a use perspective that you might not.


    Using the Kemper is like playing the guitar in the sense that you can make it as simple are as complex as you want to.

    Be Thankful.