Different guitars

  • I have a Tele and a strat - no surprise, one is brighter than the other. I want to make use of all of my rigs regardless of which guitar I am playing, without having to endlessly tweak the eq's. I dont want to get into categorizing my rigs per each guitar either. I wonder how you guys handle this? I'd love if there was some global switch that allowed me to apply an eq tweak as necessary, kind of as a global approach?

    I suppose I could throw an EQ stomp in with the preset I need to tame things a bit, then just hit the pedal to engage as necessary - just wondering if there isn't slicker way to go? I know you guys... there must be a slicker way!

    Thanks!

  • I don't know of a slicker way, mate.


    I think you'll find that most peeps in this situation tweak and save Rigs guitar-specifically. Easy to prepend or append "Strat" or "Tele" to the name.


    If one uses 3 or more guitars your idea starts to fall apart. You'd need to employ progressively-more slots for the pre-set EQ's.


    One idea might be to use saved guitar-specific EQ Presets in one slot only. Fine for jamming at home, but gigging, I don't know how you'd organise that.

  • I mostly play through a profile of a 74 Marshall. It sounds,feels and plays like the "real thing" and whatever guitar I use plays through that amp just like it should. a Tele through a Marshall, a Strat through a Marshall, a Charvel through a Marshall. I don't try to make them into something they aren't. Get a good profile and it will react just like the amp you want to play a guitar through. A Kemper can be any amp, you just have to choose the one that works for you. That is my "global approach". I don't drastically alter the EQ. Just for an example, Eric Johnson has a great sounding plexi, He can plug in a Strat, or a 335 and they both sound great and have their own personality. He doesn't go an tweek and switch digital EQ when switching guitars. It's a plexi and sounds like one. Once the amp is chosen and dialed in, the different guitars become different but not better or worse sound. I don't look at a Kemper like I did digital modelers or virtual instruments, I look at it like I have the real amp there by me. When I choose a rig I transform my Kemper into that rig. I might favor a Matchless or AC20 with a Strat/tele/Les paul Junior P90 for some things just like I woulds in real life. It might help if you think of things like you are switching amps instead of molding something into something it's not.

  • Isn’t this the whole idea of having a Tele, Strat, Les Paul etc. They should sound different. It’s why for decades people have favourited some over others. When I go from Les Paul to Strat to Tele to whatever, I always hear from the Kemper what I expect to hear.

    Same with my three supposedly identical Les Paul’s from the 70s. Each one has a little difference although the hardware on them is identical.


    If you were plugging each of the above into the actual amp before it was profiled, you would have the same result.


    I love that in the studio that with a certain amp selected that I can suddenly think maybe the tele would work better for this part and have that difference from each guitar available as an option.


    This is not a Kemper thing. It’s universal. Why would you want all your different types of guitars to sound the same?

  • Thanks for all the good feedback - yes I realize my approach is a little 'unique'... I would imagine some of you have broken a string at a gig and needed to switch guitars mid-song, only to find the guitar you grab you need to tweak your tone knobs a bit [p90s, hb's, single pups, etc] -

    Typically I have 2-3 amps on stage and there are amp/gtr combos I wouldn't use together. I am thinking to use the power of the Kemper to ease that a bit.

    Much appreciation to everyone input and responses!:thumbup:

  • Thanks for all the good feedback - yes I realize my approach is a little 'unique'... I would imagine some of you have broken a string at a gig and needed to switch guitars mid-song, only to find the guitar you grab you need to tweak your tone knobs a bit [p90s, hb's, single pups, etc] -

    Typically I have 2-3 amps on stage and there are amp/gtr combos I wouldn't use together. I am thinking to use the power of the Kemper to ease that a bit.

    Much appreciation to everyone input and responses!:thumbup:

    Do you pretty much use the same rig?

    Edited once, last by Clselby ().

  • . I would imagine some of you have broken a string at a gig and needed to switch guitars mid-song, only to find the guitar you grab you need to tweak your tone knobs a bit [p90s, hb's, single pups, etc] -

    Yeah although that's a "emergency" situation so I'd expect some compromise.


    You only have a few options as already expressed:


    1) performances focused around a particular guitar. I run a Les Paul and Gretsch White Falcon. Very different sounds, so I have a performance based around that and the songs I use with that guitar. You could just copy a performance 3 times and tweak in case you switch guitar ??


    2) Use EQ (either pedal or manual twiddle)


    3) Have morph changes preset ( gain, tone etc.) but this would require some real advanced set up. Not sure this is much advantage over a pedal except you could change gain and other parameters as well.

  • Hi, alangeer,


    My approach to the broken-string-problem is to have a versatile broken-string-guitar. That guitar could stand-in for the others with little compromise.


  • Broken string fix - know your scales.


    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • Another option is the EQ section in the output, Edit and lock the output section then you can tweak the EQ per guitar and save the output section as a preset and save one for the Strat and save another one for the Tele. You can quickly change from one output preset to another. It might not be as easy as switching an EQ stomp on and off but if you are not switching back and forth allot on stage it would be fairly easy.

    “I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.”

    Dave Lee Roth of Van Halen - 1979

  • Before elves snuck a PRS into my room while I slept one night, I've been a Strat guy dating back to the 70s. Embarrassingly, only in the last few years did I add a Tele to the lineup, and I did so for exactly this reason. A Tele plugged into the same amp sounds different than the Strat, which is how it justifies its existence. Were it otherwise, I'd sell it.


    That said, If you use the Tele into amp A and the Strat into amp B, each dialed in to enhance the specific guitar, when you break a string that's a different kind of cat to skin.


    If it were me I'd go with your EQ stomp idea of using two EQs set up as stomp options. One would be "make the Tele more Strat-like (probably some high freq cuts)" and the other "make the Strat more Tele-like (probably some high freq boosts)." Including these two stomps on all your rigs is a bit of grunt work but it would be worth it, and you only have to solve the EQ problem once for each of the two scenarios. Your underlying rig tones could remain optimized for the guitar they were intended for, and if a string goes pop then you just hit the appropriate EQ stomp after you do the guitar switch to bring the hot swap guitar into the proper tonal range.

    Broken string fix - know your scales.

    And have a roadie to swap guitars for you. Still, given that a Strat's tuning can go straight to hell when a string is broken, he's probably also compensating a bit in his playing because, you know, all the ancient gods had those magical abilities.


    Every time I watch this guy I want to sell every guitar I own.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

    Edited once, last by Chris Duncan ().

  • All kinds of good stuff here, and some funny sheot too! To summarize, I think I should have clarified a little better in the beginning; I dont want my guitars to sound the same - of course that goes against the grain on every level. It really boils down to a vintage tele that has a fairly shrill 6k bump that makes swapping back and forth not ideal.

    I think I'm gonna try @sstauffer recommendation "......EQ section in the output, Edit and lock the output section then you can tweak the EQ per guitar ..."


    I really do appreciate all the responses, angles, recommendations ~


    Be well!

  • Appreciate that, the tone knob is not centered at the 'problem' freq, and the q/bandwidth of the pot is so wide it drags everything down with it. It certainly has it's place in my playing, but not the solution unfortunately. I thought about swapping the pot for about 5 seconds, but it is older than I am and that would be sacrilegious [!]

  • This might not be your thing, but I think a Dimarzio twang king is an amazing tele pickup. Never shrill but lots of clear piano like twang-not over wound and dull. It made my Tele sound amazing and does what it's supposed to do as a tele without eq changes from running a les paul.

  • If the pot is older than he is, I suspect we're dealing with a vintage Tele here. If that's the case I can certainly understand not wanting to change anything on it.

    I guess I come from a different school of thought. I can care less if it's an antique. I either make it sound right for me or get rid of it.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.