Simple version of a Kemper

  • many amateur players love Kemper but just can’t afford $2k. or don’t need so many features.

    Is it possible to build a stomp box with one profile. ? Maybe 3 or 4 knobs and a foot switch,

    Maybe a larger box with 3 or 4 different amps. and a few more knobs and switches ?

    If this is possible for $200. to $500. I think there’s a huge untapped market.

  • today, I had just closed a session in my daw, using also a couple of modellers as plug in,

    then I opened Rig Manager to organize a couple of things and all of a sudden, ..

    What if one day Kemper will sell a Plug-in to use .KIPR files and to tweak them as.. they were.. IR.

    the Idea scared me a Lot honestly.

  • many amateur players love Kemper but just can’t afford $2k. or don’t need so many features.

    Is it possible to build a stomp box with one profile. ? Maybe 3 or 4 knobs and a foot switch,

    Maybe a larger box with 3 or 4 different amps. and a few more knobs and switches ?

    If this is possible for $200. to $500. I think there’s a huge untapped market.

    If they can't afford a kemper there are other alternatives e.g. Mooer who make cheap and good stuff. There are even good enough free ampsims.

    Think for yourself, or others will think for you wihout thinking of you

    Henry David Thoreau

  • many amateur players love Kemper but just can’t afford $2k. or don’t need so many features.

    Is it possible to build a stomp box with one profile. ? Maybe 3 or 4 knobs and a foot switch,

    Maybe a larger box with 3 or 4 different amps. and a few more knobs and switches ?

    If this is possible for $200. to $500. I think there’s a huge untapped market.

    $200 might be a bit optimistic, being as the HX Stomp is $500.


    Producing the same unit in a smaller box would be the cheapest way for them to do it. Imagine having to re-write all the firmware and source less powerful processors that would make it a whole new project.


    You also have to wonder what the demand might be. Personally I wouldn't bother if the connectivity was reduced and it had less power or options. I simply want portability, but others might be looking for something different.

    Karl


    Kemper Rack OS 9.0.5 - Mac OS X 12.6.7

  • many amateur players love Kemper but just can’t afford $2k. or don’t need so many features.

    Is it possible to build a stomp box with one profile. ? Maybe 3 or 4 knobs and a foot switch,

    Maybe a larger box with 3 or 4 different amps. and a few more knobs and switches ?

    If this is possible for $200. to $500. I think there’s a huge untapped market.

    Actually, I'm pretty sure that market is very saturated - mooer, atomic, line 6. If you want something cheaper and portable- those are all viable, decent options.


    KPA Unpowered Rack, Kemper Remote, Headrush FRFR108s, BC Rich Mockingbird(s), and a nasty attitude.

  • I'm sure its been mentioned before, but how about a profiler in a pedal format, about the size of HX stomp. The only thing it does is amp profiles. This would be a great addition to those that want to stick with the pedalboard format and use their own pedals. I'd definitely sign up for that. There's people out there that have accumulated many pedals over the years and spent loads of money to build there ultimate pedalboard and I'm sure they don't want to get rid of them. Adding another pedal that does just amps, like a Iridium would be great btw if anybody knows where something like this was mentioned, can you point me to that thread. I'll keep looking, thanks.

  • Kemper is a small company. When developing a new product you need to calulate if it's profitable or not. A hx stomp kind of pedal would not be profitable. I don't need a crystal ball to predict it.

    Think for yourself, or others will think for you wihout thinking of you

    Henry David Thoreau

  • Personally I also think it would devalue the product if sold cheaply.


    £2k is a lot of money.....but not when you consider:

    1. I have access to sounds from £00k's worth of amps....and I'm being conservative. I just bought some new profiles over the weekend ( not done it in ages - needed the retail therapy!) and they cost me £12.....and the sounds are fantastic. There are no amps you can buy for £12, let alone high quality giggable amps. So once you have the hardware, the flex is unreal and cheap. Its cured me of my amp GAS and hence is the cheapest gear I've ever bought
    2. Cost of a boutique amp is over £2k e.g Boogie Rectifier...and that's 1 amp,. with a couple of channels and no effects.
    3. This is pro level gear - Mark K uses one for flips sake! Yes some people can't afford it but many people can't afford a Les Paul Custom either.

    To me its not about price but about value.


    To make a stomp version with less functionality would require them to redesign the software to account for this in updates etc . What would you remove, ability to profile ? That is the whole point of the KPA.


    How would you restrict the number of amps? The profiles themselves take up little space so I suspect that the amount of hardware saving they would get would be minimal i.e. it takes the same amount of processing to run 1 profile regardless of form factor so you might save some memory but where would the savings come from in manufacture? I suspect ( but don;t know) that its probably more viable for Kemper to drop the price of the KPA...but why should they as they need to continue to re-invest.


    Nice thought but I suspect its a non starter.

  • I would buy a "Kemper Mini" at any price point. Having a pedalboard-friendly profile player would be absolutely killer! The size of the HX Stomp is so perfect on my pedalboard, what's missing is the ability to have the Kemper amps available on my pedalboard, and in STEREO. I've seen guys drag around a rack with two Kempers inside for a stereo rig, and all they use it for is the amps/cabs. The name of the game these days is "weight reduction." I don't really care if they have to strip out reverb/delay due to processing limitations--I have pedals for that. And I don't need drive emulation blocks--many profiles have drives baked in, or I'll use my analog drives. And for goodness sake--I don't need another tuner. So it's not just about stripping down hardware--cutting software features can reduce development costs.


    IMO the must-have features are amps/cab/ir in stereo; amp controls (EQ, drive, clarity, etc.), 100 profiles or so of storage; and it needs MIDI. And there is a lot to be said for simplifying some things--just developing the complex UI (both on-board and the PC editor) is a huge undertaking, so hardware costs aside, it's often the software development efforts that are more burdensome for companies.


    Another use case for "Kemper Mini" is to use as a universal drive pedal. In other words, I bet one could profile analog drives--i.e. JUST the drive without profiling the amp. Or you could profile a stack of analog drives. Then instead of needing to have 3+ drive pedals on a pedalboard, you could just have the "Kemper Mini." And if the "Kemper Mini" supported stereo (basically ability to play 2 profiles in parallel), you could configure it to do AMP+AMP (stereo), or DRIVE+AMP (mono series), or DRIVE+DRIVE (mono series, or stereo). Or heck, why not get two "Kemper Minis" and use one for drives and the other for stereo amps? How cool would that be???

  • Well, wouldn't ya know....just 13 hours later, I run into this:


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    It's Andertons capturing a BOSS Metal Zone, TS808, etc. on the Neural DSP Quad Cortex. Kinda exactly what I was speaking about doing in my previous post.

  • I would buy a "Kemper Mini" at any price point. Having a pedalboard-friendly profile player would be absolutely killer! The size of the HX Stomp is so perfect on my pedalboard, what's missing is the ability to have the Kemper amps available on my pedalboard, and in STEREO. I've seen guys drag around a rack with two Kempers inside for a stereo rig, and all they use it for is the amps/cabs. The name of the game these days is "weight reduction." I don't really care if they have to strip out reverb/delay due to processing limitations--I have pedals for that. And I don't need drive emulation blocks--many profiles have drives baked in, or I'll use my analog drives. And for goodness sake--I don't need another tuner. So it's not just about stripping down hardware--cutting software features can reduce development costs.


    IMO the must-have features are amps/cab/ir in stereo; amp controls (EQ, drive, clarity, etc.), 100 profiles or so of storage; and it needs MIDI. And there is a lot to be said for simplifying some things--just developing the complex UI (both on-board and the PC editor) is a huge undertaking, so hardware costs aside, it's often the software development efforts that are more burdensome for companies.


    Another use case for "Kemper Mini" is to use as a universal drive pedal. In other words, I bet one could profile analog drives--i.e. JUST the drive without profiling the amp. Or you could profile a stack of analog drives. Then instead of needing to have 3+ drive pedals on a pedalboard, you could just have the "Kemper Mini." And if the "Kemper Mini" supported stereo (basically ability to play 2 profiles in parallel), you could configure it to do AMP+AMP (stereo), or DRIVE+AMP (mono series), or DRIVE+DRIVE (mono series, or stereo). Or heck, why not get two "Kemper Minis" and use one for drives and the other for stereo amps? How cool would that be???

    Couple of points:


    1) Most people don;t have multiple Kempers for Stereo. The effects are already stereo and you can drive stereo using a stereo power amp if needed. What you can't do is run more than one profile at a time. Most people tour with multiple Kempers for resilience and because they run bass and another guitarist and so need separate units.


    2) I don;t agree that you save on software/development costs, you do increase them - so its not a question of just creating a new piece of hardware. The KPA is already developed. You would have to adapt the code for reduced functionality and then maintain that. You are right, the hardware is the small part of the equation I suspect.


    3) The Quad is not new in being able to run multiple instruments, the Helix can also do this I believe. The KPA can also profile pedals. What it can;t do as mentioned is run multiple profiles meaning you can't run a profile of a pedal and amp at the same time. So any new unit would break ground int he area and need.....yep more software development. Kempers current response to this is you can profile amps including a drive pedal plus the new configurable Kemper drive.


    4) Stereo is not the be all and end all live. I run Mono on purpose not because of limitations but because I prefer it. In general it cuts better in the mix.


    5) Multiple Kemper "mini's" would need to be cheap to make that viable. Note the Quad is £1500 so to me its a closer competitor to the current Stage, not the HX stomp type....but it's pedal matching is cool.


    If love Kemepr to put out a "mini" ( great name!!) but as per my previous post I suspect its not viable or not as needed as you might expect.


    Personally I think a Kemper 2 is more likely to address the dual profiles, stereo power amp etc. but none of these are enough for me to get excited.

  • V8Guitar yeah, you make lots of great points there.


    I suspect what the OP was looking for was a compact unit, on par size-wise with the Iridium and the new Walrus Audio ACS1 amp & cab simulator. But instead of 3 fixed amp models, make it a profiler-player. No need to have the ability to profile, since you can just buy amp profiles; the ability to profile would require more hardware jacks, increasing the size/cost of the unit. I agree with the OP that there's a market for this class of product--just look at the popularity of the Strymon Iridium. And what is the Iridium's main shortcoming? Only 3 amps. If there were a comparably-sized Kemper Mini that was as easy to use that could play any profile, and the price was similar, who would rather have the Iridium instead?


    But is such a product viable? It's probably difficult for a smaller company that doesn't have the resources that, say, Line6 does, whose parent company is Yamaha. Night and day difference there in personnel resources and manufacturing ability. The talented folks at Kemper could design such a product, but getting the BOM cost (Bill of Materials) down so that it would be profitable is another story. And I doubt they could manufacture it in Germany and be competitive with companies manufacturing in China. Kemper GmbH already seem over-burdened with the ability to sustain existing products (the whole saga of how long the desktop editor Rig Manager took to come out after initial product launch).


    V8Guitar, I know what you mean about "the KPA is already developed." Reusing the KPA code in a new product, to the extent possible, would be a cheap route to crank out a new product. That's the story of the Kemper Stage, which they did a great job with IMO. There are some differences, but they're relatively small. But once your form factor (ID) changes too much, there will be lots of re-design to port things between the two platforms. It's easier to not have to port every feature from the big platform to the small platform. We see those challenges happening with Fractal--the FM3 firmware always lags behind its big brother AX3 in terms of time-to-market and feature set.


    The challenge in making a new, smaller product like a Kemper "Mini" would be managing the difference in feature set, which is dictated by the changes in the form factor. If Kemper makes a pedal-sized "Mini", then there's no way from a user interface (UI) perspective to just plop the existing KPA code base in. You have to completely rework the UI. The Industrial Design (ID) would be totally different--you'd have to decide how many buttons to take out, the type of screen to use, etc. If they use different DSP chips (sometimes required to reduce heat generated in small electronic products), that means "adapting" code (in the trade we call it "porting code") from the existing KPA--that's a massive undertaking. A new product is always more work, but the primary means of minimizing development efforts is to cut features.


    If they did something that had say 80% feature parity to the KPA (similar to how the HX Stomp has many features of its big brother Helix), that's a huge development cost, just in firmware. And it has to be compatible with the desktop editor. However, if, as the OP suggested, Kemper decides to make a minimalistic Kemper "Mini" that has 10% of the feature set of the KPA, that's a much easier product to produce. You "save" minimize development costs by making a minimalistic unit. Assuming identical hardware, the product with fewer software features is easier/cheaper to develop/maintain by comparison. It reaches market faster. There's a point of diminishing returns where there's enough features for 90% of people.


    I agree with ya V8Guitar that stereo setups are over-rated. But there is still a market...and people are even selling stereo patches for AXE FXIII, Helix, HX Stomp, etc. Practical or not, there seems to be market demand for stereo amps.


    Most of this discussion is wishful thinking on my part. I'm betting that most Kemper users want the next-generation "Kemper 2" before the "Mini," and in order to stay competitive with the likes of the Neural DSP, I hope the "Kemper 2" is exactly what they are working on.

  • While I got sticker shock in the beginning, I've quickly come to realize how much money Kemper has saved me on decorating my studio with walls of amps that I would buy and then use for table top storage.


    I think the price is a steal. But, I honestly wouldn't mind a full color LED screen streaming some cool youtube music videos during breaks.


    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.