High cut and volume balance

  • Hello everyone,


    yesterday I hooked up my kpa to a Roland Cube 60 Keyboard, which is a solid state amp that should be full range (keyboard amps usually are, it even has a tweeter).

    The sound was fine but the high end was definetly cut. That is probably due to the fact that the amp was at bedroom volume, and a big(ish) speaker at low volume tends to swallow high frequencies if not pushed at least a little bit, feel free to correct me here if I'm wrong.


    Anyway, that got me thinking in a more general way. You see, it may be a taste thing, but I noticed that a vast portion of even the best of profiles do sound a bit shrilly to me. To give a reference, think of the factory Performance "Marshall Amps". They all sounded better to me through the 'muffled' Cube 60 than they did through the mixer and headphones (maybe a bit too mushy, but better). So, I'm always prone to cut the high end in most gainy profiles. Not the clean or edge of breakup ones, think the marshally and modern gain ones. I'm curious to know if it only me or if it is common practice between you also. Could be that I'm used to look for what an amp sounds to me in a live setting, with the speakers close to me, as opposed to a recording situation with which I admit I don't have that much experience.


    Also I'd like to know your way of balancing volume between rigs.. I know I'm supposed to use Clean Sense instead of rig volume, but that just doesn't cut it. Sometimes the level is just too much off.


    Thanks for reading this :)

  • I'm curious to know if it only me or if it is common practice between you also.

    Well, I do have an EQ with high and low cut in slot X for all my rigs. Only very few (very clean ones) without (because I need the slot for Tremolo then). Cutting frequencies are selected individually, usually somewhere around 100-120hz for low cut and 7-9khz for high cut. Really depends on the fizz in the highs and naturally for what setting the rig is. Live stuff is cut harder than recording stuff as the latter can be treated in the mix anyway.

    Also I'd like to know your way of balancing volume between rigs..

    I admit I do use the rig volume all the time. Never touched the clean sense. Works very fine for me to adjust significantly different volumes in comparison to a bunch of reference rigs. Great thing about the Kemper: Many ways lead to the desired outcome :thumbup:8)

  • Thank you both for your answers, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who feels the need to cut those highs.

    I usually let some back in a mix though, where they are less obvious and help the sound cut through.

  • I find the best way to modify my tones is while practicing with a band or playing along with the song I'm targeting, so it works in the mix. I often find my tone too dark and fat if I've created a tone without.

  • Absolutely. Dialing in the sound by itself never works for me, and that's normal, you have to hear it in context. What I do is this. I dial in a sound by itself and see that it is basically what I want, then go on playing it on a somewhat fitting backing track and adjust, then I take some time during rehearsals to adjust again, and finally adjust for the actual room/pa system I'm playing in. To this end, I find it very useful that you can, in the output section, tweak globally to some extent. This way you don't have to tweak every profile every time.


    I now it seems like a hassle but it's not like you have to spend so much time on it, once you have a solid foundation the tweaking is not so time consuming after all.