Hi,
after months of lurking around here I've finally took the plunge and bought a black Kemper today. I've been playing for 6 hours straight now and just can't stop, it's THAT good
I live in Wiesbaden (though I'm actually from Siegen) and I've been playing guitar for 30 years. Since I came from a former mining-area in Germany I just love the Kemper logo with the mine head tower, it brings back some memories from my childhood days.
Amp-wise I've come a long way as probably all of you. My first amp was a '68 Plexi Marshall that belonged to my school. I didn't know anything about vintage-amps back then (hey, I was 14 then) but I loved the sound (though the amp was half-broken...). I eventually had to give the amp back when I left school and I went through a lot of amps. When I stopped giging I started recording and writing and built a home studio. I downsized my amp-collection and went with low-powered combos. Later I went through many modellers and though some of them sounded decent to my ears and some even pretty good, they always lacked the feel and most of the time I needed an amp they DIDN'T modell for whatever reason or a cab that just wasn't available...
When the recent crop of 5-Watt-amps came out I got into those and thought it would be great to have one of each flavour and got me a Marshall Class 5 (that I modified heavily accordig to the Lyle-Caldwell-chematics) and a Laney Lionheart. Just when I was contemplating which amp to buy for the Fender flavour I heard about the Kemper. And when the User CSGBand profiled his brownface '62 Deluxe (an amp I loved and foolishly sold years ago) I knew I just had to get a Kemper.
And what can I say, this thing is nothing less than sensational! The last time I was so excited about a piece of gear was when I received a sample of the UAD-1 card for a review for a german magazine or when I beta-tested Cubase VST in 1996. I really think the Kemper KPA is on that level, it is really a game changer.
But I have to confess I'm probably the only guy who doesn't like Tills cabs that much. But I have found the Siggi Mehl profiles from the rig pack 1 feature a beautiful greenback cab that sounds like it's loaded with G12M25s and the Kerosin profiles have a cab with blackbacks that sound like 12H30s to me. So those two cabs are tone nirvana for a vintage-freak like me. I threw those on any Plexi-Marshall profile I find in the KPA or the Rig Exchange and it sounds like a fucking vintage Marshall stack to me Andy44 has some great vintage-sounding Marshall cabs too. There is so much to choose from it's unbelievable.
I also really like the modFX, there are some real gems there, love the 12-stage phaser or the X-over chorus (looks like somebody at Kemper has a Boss SE 70 ). I don't care much about the distortion stomps since I use the pedals I already have and love. And since the Kemper takes pedals like a real amp I think I'll stick to those for now.
Now back to playing and thanks again CSGBand for profiling the brownface Deluxe and thus urging me to buy a Kemper!
Cheers,
Rainer