Sold FM3 and bought Stage

  • So I sold my FM3 and made a good profit and bought the Stage. My main issues with the FM3 was lack of CPU-you couldn't really transfer a lot of AxeFx 3 presets over because of the CPU issue. Also, the FM3 seems kinda buggy and the editor can be slow. Also, while the Fractal stuff sounds good, there is something about the modeling that I cannot put my finger on. A lot of the amps sound the same and they just don't punch very well. I got the 5150 in Amplitube from the Satriani collection and to me it sounded more like the 5150 than the FM3 did-just an example. Also, the plexi tones in the Fractal just don't do it for me-they are missing that very brash tone that cranked plexis had.


    I know this forum may be a little biased, but did I make the right move going from the FM3 to the Kemper? And what makes the Kemper amps sound better than the Fractal? The effects in the Kemper seem to be good, and a lot of the professionally made profiles sound amazing. I think the only thing I will miss about the Fractal is the amount and quality of the effects.

  • Only you can answer these questions ;)


    I tried Fractal, Amplifire and while I managed to dial in sound I liked, the "feel" of these modelers was for right for me. Kemper not only sounds good to my ears but also feels right, which probably even harder to explain - this is my personal experience, and I know there are many people that feel exactly the opposite, and it is OK ;)


    The good thing is: in a few days you'll know if Kemper is for you or not.

  • I know this forum may be a little biased, but did I make the right move going from the FM3 to the Kemper? And what makes the Kemper amps sound better than the Fractal?

    To my ears the Kemper sounds the most-organic of the digital options out there. It's as if there's real valve magic going on in the harmonic content - much more interesting to the ears and less-fatiguing.


    The pick attack / attack portion of the amps sound more like the real thing to me too. There's an initial burst of harmonic content associated with a string strike that I feel the Kemper replicates admirably, whereas the others, not so much.


    Then, as piotrmaj suggested, there's the feel of actually playing, which I can only describe as an organic sense of immediacy and sensitivity to details of one's interactions with the strings.


    Congrats and welcome to the forum, mate. HTH ;)

  • Welcome to the forum, have fun here and with your Kemper. Thanks for sharing your story.


    Biased? Yes. For reason 8o ...but certainly all these machines are great tools. Not worth any argument that you can achieve great results with the top line machines from different vendors. As others said here it depends on what aside of great sound you need. More tweaking, less tweaking, this and that effect etc.


    Personally I love the approach of the Kemper and as Monkey_Man said its organic sound with the right profiles (from which are way enough out there). Effects are very fine for me, tweaking is straight forward and gives me enough options. I would not like a more complicated approach to achieve just a very little better sound... just my 2 cents though.