I have a very small guitar workstation/home studio that consists of an iMac, Sennheiser HD650 headphones and a rack full of gear. I recently swapped out the Line6 Helix for a Kemper rack after realizing I was only using the Axe-Fx. I like the Axe-Fx well enough but I could literally spend 8 hours tweaking a patch, just dialing in the tone. What I didn’t like about the Helix was the A/B of the modeled amps vs the AxeFx and the Kemper appears to have a bit more profiled options.
With the AxeFx I work exclusively with the AxeEdit software, similar to Rig Manager in a lot of ways. I would like to use Rig Manager as much as possible, for everything if I could...
A few questions I haven’t found easy answers for on the interwebs:
A. I have some stuff from Tone Junkie and I noticed they include effect presets that can be stored individually in an All Presets folder. I’m used to saving effects in my Axe-Edit and dropping them into different patches. So how do I save, for example, a dual delay effect that I’ve created and drop it into a Presets folder of my own? I would like to have my own folder of effects in my preferred settings and simply drag them into a rig. I would also like to tweak some of the settings on existing Tone Junkie effects and save them to my folder - rather than having to adjust them or change the original settings.
B. I have run the latest Rig Manager updates and update my Kemper to the newest software version. I have read about the new Kemper drives and reverbs, are they stored in the Kemper Factory folder in the All Presets section? When I pull up reverbs and drives from the drop down in the editor it doesn’t show anything different from what I think I saw when I first turned on the unit, before updating.
C. Importing IR’s. I have a ton of York Audio IR’s and they’re great, how do I save them in Rig Manager (I would guess All Presets) and how do I know which profiles allow me to use my own IR’s? I might purchase the GGD All the Gains pack just to have the option to use my favorite York IR’s if that’s possible. I do know that GGD is advertising the ability to swap out an IR so that’s a big selling point for me.
D. Saving rigs I’ve tweaked? I see an option to copy a rig, just not sure where it goes. Ideally I would copy a rig I want to save with adjustments and keep the original intact just in case I want to create an additional rig from the same base profile. Also, after I have made changes to a rig and saved them is there a way to restore the rig to it’s original settings without deleting it and restoring it from a file on my Mac?
E. Is there a way to type in values in Rig Manger rather than “turn the knob”? For example, if want to set a TS808 at 1.3 I would rather type that in than tune it in, just faster and maybe I have some OCD. Obviously there’s no discernible difference between 1.30 and 1.29.
The biggest difference I see between the Kemper and the Axe is the amount of customization available. I like the idea of NOT tweaking an amp and just making adjustments in EQ and choice of effects. I’m just having trouble adjusting from the editors and I really don’t want to touch any hardware buttons if I can help it. My rack is under the desk, not easily accessible.
I do like having everything under my desk in theory but some days I feel more like a computer programmer than a guitar player. I’ve literally played a 10 second clip into a looper on the Axe-Fx and spent a solid 2-3 hours tweaking IR’s, amp settings and doing EQ. It’s not as much fun as playing and you can end up in a rabbit hole where it doesn’t sound any better afterwards than it did when you started “turning” virtual knobs.
Thanks for reading, I just don’t see a lot of answers on the web. Looks like a lot of editing is done on the unit itself but I’d like to avoid that and use Rig Manager for everything. My Kemper stays in the rack, I’m not playing out...