Clean sense - am I doing it right?

  • Hi guys,


    I'm having some difficulty wrapping my head around this. Basically, I tend to only use clean profiles and get my effects such as OD out of the KPA. This is basically what I did for years with tube amps, which were always high headroom clean machines, and I used pedals to get OD etc.


    I use two performances most of the time: one which contains my own profile of my Ceriatone Overtone without the Bright switch engaged, and the other performance which contains the profile of the same amp but with the Bright switch engaged. The former I tend to use with my Strat, the latter I use with my HB guitars.


    The output of my Strat is significantly lower than that of the HB guitars. It has low output pickups. On both performances I use the same effects and the slots, so switching between performances is basically the same as flipping the Bright switch on the real amp. So, in the first performance, I have set the Clean Sens to + 3 dB to account for this difference in level which enters the KPA because I only use my Strat for the performance. Is this correct?


    Thanks a lot!

  • Yes, you might doing it right. It depends on the profile you are using. Fiddling around with that tool means: use your ears to get it right. And then, remember how Kemper describes this feature: "Clean Sens balances clean and distorted (or compressed) sounds to equal levels."

  • i dont use OD pedals much (get all my drive from the amps themselves) so I haven’t tested it properly but I think clean sens will affect the level with OD pedals in a similar way to amps. It is easy to test though. When you engage an OD with a lot of drive does the sound get quieter? If so try lowering clean sens and test again.


    If you want to hear what a wrong setting sounds like for comparison, use a clean tig, set clean sens high, now increase the gain on the profile gradually. You should notice that the perceived volume actually drops. Now set clean sense really low and do the same thing. You should find that increasing gain makes the perceived level louder.