Ground Control Pro versus the Kemper Remote

  • I have been using the Ground Control Pro with GCX for about 15 years. It did everything I need in my old rack of gear.

    It appears that trying to make the GCP do everything the Kemper remote can do is difficult. One of these things is morphing.

    Should I switch to the Kemper Remote or try to make the GCP work?

    By the way, I've been through both of the Voodoo labs and the Kemper forums.

    I am thinking of keeping the GCP to control the rest of my midi setup and use the Kemper Remote exclusively for my KPA.

    Make sense?

  • Remote is optimized KPA in mind, so yes, one can't reach all it's features with same level of usability with other devices.

    But toggling morphing alone should be rather easy for GCP as it only requires one midi CC ON/OFF command.

  • Pros and cons, but the cons are negligible imho.


    I use the gcp, I personally wouldn't swap it out. It can do almost anything if you're happy to program it accordingly.


    A couple of shortcomings, if you have it set up with the top 8 switches as stomps, you'll only be able to select 4 rigs per performance instead of 5, and using the looper could be difficult or impossible, someone posted midi instructions for controlling the looper but I've never tried.

    One other negative I've noticed is that there's a slight lag if plugging expression pedals in to the gcp, running them straight in to the Kemper works fine though, there's no noticeable lag otherwise that I've ever noticed.


    You can easily asign morph to any one of the stomps, that's not an issue. I believe you may need to reprogram that switch to momentary iirc.


    On the plus side, I believe it's better than the Kemper for controlling other midi gear, I don't believe the Kemper is capable of controlling the voodoo gcx 8 channel switcher which was the deal breaker for me, I've read (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) that there is a delay sending midi signals from the Kemper, I don't own the remote so can't confirm.


    I don't feel I'm missing out not having the remote unless you're dead keen on using the looper


    Here's the link I used to set it up:


    http://www.voodoolab.com/forum…20566&hilit=Kemper#p20566

  • You should be able to do everything the remote can do and more with a good dedicated midi controller. However, the downside is lack of convenience. The remote is just so quick and easy to configure and the two communication is excellent so it is a joy to use.


    If you use just the KPA (no other midi devices) I would use the Remote every day of the week. However, if you need to integrate other midi devices I would keep the Ground Control for sure.

  • Does the GCP allow you to program the buttons to send a CC command, or only PC commands? The online documentation seems to only cover PC commands, which would be a serious limit when working with the Kemper....?

  • I've only ever used cc commands to be honest. I've yet to find anything it can't do with the Kemper, aside from the looper which I haven't tried

    Really? So you can program a CC value and not just toggle between 0 and 127? If so, that would make it a really good controller to pair with KPA.

  • So do you mean hit a stomp to toggle between 0 and 50? I'd use a pedal for that but if you're super curious I could check for you

    Not to toggle, but to set a specific value.


    Kemper has some really cool features that use CC#s. For example, CC#47 lets you select a Performance page; the value you send is the page #. You can also set things like reverb time and mix, delay regen, amp gain, monitor volume, etc.