Feedback request regarding design of a potential second Morphing

  • This! For me it was one of those lightbulb moment to discover how morphing via a switch can be also really useful to achieve much more even and precise transitions than operating a morph pedal with a foot. For example short pitch dives a la "Lonely Boy" or a note sustain bloom fx (=precise gain+delay+eq buildup and decay) just by pressing a momentary switch. :love:

    To be honest, for me I wouldn't use morph for this. Having gigged Lonely Boy as your example myself, I find normal pedal pitch more appropriate...Same as Killing in the name or any dive bomb, I prefer to control the "Slurs" in, however appreciate other may prefer a switch....

  • I'm not able to control the dive bomb as evenly via pedal as the ramp does.

    That's was my point...I prefer them a little variable and me controlling it rather than a pre-determined drop but..perhaps I should give it a go as I've just been mimicing the Whammy so maybe I'll get the same lightbulb moment :)


    I'd definitely use a pedal for Like a stone as he varies the slur in an out and some slight wobble...

  • Do you need a pedal or a ramp for Morph 2? Or could it be an instant switching of parameter n to level m?


    What if you override while Morph 1 pedal is in a middle position or the ramp is still travelling? Should parameter n stick at level m or keep travelling from level m?

    Ideally, if I think further the scenario I outlined above my Morph 2 would be more of a corrective one regarding Morph 1.

    Therefore it would be logical to use a pedal and not only an instant switch to a fixed level.

    I would not expect to use Morph 1 while a ramp is still traveling.

    The override behaviour regarding a Morph 1 pedal in middle position should be:

    Catch up the Morph 1 value while moving the Morph 2 pedal and get it to a second (independent) Morph 2 level.

  • You don't have to assign a global switch to Rotary Speed if you rarely need that function. The first choice are the Effect Buttons I-IIII anyhow, which are Rig-specific.

    yes, I know but as kevinduren pointed out you still need two switches in the rig - one to turn the effect on/off and one to change speed. So that only leaves to switches for anything else. Whereas just hitting the Rig select switch a second time to toggle speed via morph would be much more user friendly.

  • yes, I know but as kevinduren pointed out you still need two switches in the rig - one to turn the effect on/off and one to change speed. So that only leaves to switches for anything else. Whereas just hitting the Rig select switch a second time to toggle speed via morph would be much more user friendly.

    I had suggested to better use one of the four Rig-specific Effect Buttons instead of blocking a reassigned TAP or LOOPER button globally with a function that you rarely use. That's what your original message implied.


    I personally never switch Rotary Speaker on/off, because it's embedded in specific Rigs, I just use Action&Freeze for the speed.


    But if the objective is about finding cases, where the buttons and pedal sockets that Remote and Stage offer are not sufficient to switch every possible module and parameter individually within one single Rig, we cannot succeed and shouldn't even add more complexity burden on every user's shoulders. We have eight effect modules plus currently three Action&Freeze plus one Morphing. If that is what your work-flow dictates, this exercise here stalls and you need to use a MIDI board with more buttons and more pedal sockets.


    By the way a second Morphing, which can also be triggered via button and ramps, might also occupy one of the existing buttons.

  • I had suggested to better use one of the four Rig-specific Effect Buttons instead of blocking a reassigned TAP or LOOPER button globally with a function that you rarely use. That's what your original message implied.

    I was trying to refer to both potential scenarios as both can be used. but neither is optimum.


    By the way a second Morphing, which can also be triggered via button and ramps, might also occupy one of the existing buttons.

    This could be true although in my case it would almost certainly be an expression pedal.

  • I've followed this thread since 1 week and now I think I'm ready to throw in my 2 cents, even if they're not popular.


    Featuritis and cognitive overload!


    Apart from the great sound we can achieve with the profiling technology, the biggest advantage and charm was the Profiler's easy to grasp and fast user interface. Over time more and more features got added, even though some of them clearly didn't fit to the UI design of the Profiler. So far so good. But now it IS getting too much, this device is so full of pitfalls and quirks and complexity already.


    My honest opinion:

    Stop it! Let go! Focus on the core strengths of the Profiler, what made it so successful! Don't try to make it an even more complex machine.

  • I feel that Kemper have been very good at keeping is relatively simple...I explained to a friend of mine who is interested in one....its complex if you want it to be or simple if you treat it that way - I think they have the balance, so i agree with you that they need to maintain that balance with anything they add.


    So as long as by any additions being discussed here they:

    1) Don;t take away the functions I use

    2) Don;t mix the morph complexity in with my simple use case


    ...then I'm good. So even though I've struggled to get my head around some of the requests here, this premise needs to remain WHILST making it more flexible and feature rich - I think we would all support that.

  • It's not like you to throw in unpopular/controversial ideas Martin :D


    I hope you know I am just kidding! I have a huge amount of respect for you and your contributions to this forum.


    I think we actually agree about the requirement. We just have a slightly different perspective on how to achieve it.


    Like you (and probably many users), I was attracted to the KPA by its amazing physical interface and plug'n'go ease of use. I still think ease of use and simplicity are key selling points of the KPA. I got rid of dedicated midi foot controllers because the two way integration with the remote is so easy to use and effective.


    Where my opinion differs is that I believe the current system for expression pedals is unnecessarily complicated and confusing. A Wah pedal is a Wah pedal. Except when it's not! A Wah could be a Pitch or a Volume. Oh but not a Morph. And of course a Morph pedal can be a Wah pedal or a Pitch pedal but not volume. I gave up using this quite early on as it requires a level of logic that just isn't intuitive (at least to me).


    I can't see how anyone could describe the current pedal situation as simpler than having access to 2 morph groups.


    Proposal:


    Change current pedal type to Morph A.


    Add a new pedal type Morph B.


    Everything else remains unchanged and people who can understand the current setup can use it as they currently do if they want. No one requires to use Morph B unless they want to.


    In action:


    Set Pedal 1 (or any other pedal input number) to Morph A


    Set Pedal 2 to Morph B


    Move pedal 1 from heel position to trigger morphing. Turn any knob to set morph range. Turn any additional knobs required to set range.


    Move pedal 2 from heel position and link any parameter in the same way. Now both pedals control exactly what you want them to with not twisted logic. "Simples!" As the meerkats in an old TV ad here used to say.


    In my mind that represents simplification of the KPA with the added bonus of additional control options. Win/win.

  • Alan, your proposal looks simple and easy ... but I'm afraid it's not that simple.


    Even if we say that each morphable parameter can only be assigned to either Morph A or Morph B (without this it will get crazy) ... it can still quickly become hells kitchen when you think of Performances built of 5 rigs.

    Each of these 5 rigs in a performance can already have a completely different set of morphed parameters. Already difficult to memorize what's being morphed in which slot of your performance. Once there's a second one it quickly becomes twice as hard to setup (and memorize in a live situation on stage).

    And I didn't even mention the terrible quirks with performance editing with Rig Manager (in edit mode).

  • I take you point and know what you mean. However, I don't think that it is necessarily any worse than trying to remember what individual pedals are supposed to be doing in a shared pedal setup or what is morphed at the moment. I believe most people would settle on a few common morph setting (almost like expression presets) that they would tend to use across the majority of their performances so remembering shouldn't be too big an issue. Now, if we were to set a different set of morph parameters for every rig in every performance and try to memorize them that would qualify as a magic trick ^^


    The quirks with Rig Manager's behaviour is another matter though:D

  • This. And then the user decides how complicated they choose to make things.

  • A second Morphing is not completely shielded from users, who don't need it and don't want to deal with the complexity. I guess, there are a few more areas related to a second Morphing that have to be considered:


    1. If Morph 2 can also be triggered via button, to use it without pedal for instant parameter switching or automatic ramps, a second Morph page would be required in Rig Settings (Rise Time 2, Fall Time 2, Clear .... Momentary ....Morph 2 button and pedal simulation).


    2. There is a feature request for a global parameter allowing to set the default time of the ramps, which is now 2 seconds. We might need two new global parameters in that case,


    3. MIDI controllers for Morph 2 pedal and button.


    4. Which Remote/Stage button can be used for Morph 2? Just external plus TAP, TUNER, LOOPER?


    5. What about the pedal links: Do we need a "Morph 2 Pedal to Wah" and others? Or even a "Morph2 Pedal to Morph 1" in order to occasionally rationalize the two morph pedals to one?


    6. New keyboard shortcuts for Editor to set Morph 2 values.

  • That all sounds good, I would definitely appreciate the midi implementation. I picture morph 2 will override my (locked) wah pedal if there are any morph 2 parameters in use on that rig.


    Everything you're saying is sounding good! ?

  • Thought of another real-world use case/need for a second morph. The current volume pedal settings only allow for 0 to halfway up or halfway up to full volume. Currently, to have any more range than that (such as off and then swell to full volume), I have to use the Morph function. And that uses all of the power of the Morph just to do a volume swell and nothing else can be Morphed in that rig.

    Be Thankful.

  • I guess, you misunderstand the parameter Volume Pedal Range. At -5 you have the full range from 0 to 100%. 100% equals the stored volume. That is what a normal volume pedal does. If the level at 100% is too low fpr your purpose, then raise Rig Volume and store the Rig that way.


    Positive values transform the volume pedal into a booster pedal where you have 100% (the stored level) at heel and can boost even beyond that.


    If you need both, a normal volume pedal and a booster pedal, you could use the Wah Pedal with Wah Pedal Booster for that purpose. And you still have Morph Pedal for any other application.

  • Well after some weeks was just remembering this post. So is there still need for this?

    How I use it today?

    Currently I only use it whether to reduce gain and add some effects (delay, phaser) eg. for my solo sound or alter the eq to better match the sound to my guitar in humbucker mode.

    What are my troubles today?

    (1) I cannot decide what mode is applied to all my rigs (base mode is always set). Why not morph mode until I change it? (I use morph feature by using the tap button of the remote)

    (2) As some basic effects are assigned to morphing - in my setup - the mix value is zero in base mode and eg. 70% in morphed mode. This is due the situation that effects assigned to morphing have to be set „on“ to be able to morph them. So currently in this rigs I cannot use the assigned effects separately because you would not hear any effect as the mix is set to zero. So maybe different for other user that would rather have eg delay set to 30% in base mode and add another 30% to have the mix by 60%. So just my kind of using the morphing option.

    (3) In some scenarios in a performance I would need to decide before switching to a rig if I want the slot to be activated in base mode or morphed mode (rarely but sometimes it would avoid little step dance).


    How could I use it?

    In one case I would apply the second morphing only or mainly to the mix value of the effects I would like to separately use in such rigs (activated by the assigned effect button)


    In a second logic I would only apply it to the gain stage of a rig (so at least three gain stages per rig adding up to 15 gain stages that could be setup) with maybe a slight adaption to the eq or some mix levels of the effects used.


    A third option could be to use one morph setting for gain only and one for effects only.


    But that could typically raise another problem to Kemper that many users would like to have another morph for more gain options with the same effects. So in this case does it make sense to limit this possibility to „only“ 2 morph options? Honestly I do not know. At least for the gain question I only use four levels of gain.


    What could be practical?

    (1) Add the possibility to select globally or per performance in what „mode“ you are moving through rigs or slots. This means once activated morph mode this mode is selected for all rigs and slots until you change it to „base mode“ (if more morph levels are possible then it should remain in that mode until set back - should be possible to activate or deactivate that feature).


    (2) Why limit the morph feature on two levels? Why not separating it if needed? Gain morph, effect morph combined, single effect morph.


    (3) Include the remote in the Rig Manager so one could easily setup what buttons can control those features. Which means more flexibility. Eg I can only imagine the gain morph levels (eg 5 states) being controlled by the up and down buttons of the remote (which then needs another button to change the functions of the buttons - we win something and loose something else).

    Final statements

    To sum it up whether Kemper should decide to add more complexity (activated if wanted) to its product that makes it possible to create more tonal options and controlling possibilities as other companies are offering or Kemper should decide to keep things simple and avoid more morph states. Why that?

    I think just adding one more level of morphing is way to short thinking as it is not a giant leap in flexibility and could rather lead to a vicious circle („please give us one more morph state“).


    So in that case „small“ optimizations like (1) and (3) could be more helpful than more complexity.


    Looking forward to improvements of the Kemper Team.