Seven Days With Mr. K

  • Hello!


    Today is one week since I bought a used Kemper head. I'd like to share a few thoughts. ?


    Pros:


    - I simply cannot stop playing guitar. I actually get a bit mad when I have to leave the house to go to work or run errands. I am so inspired! This coming from a pretty serious player of over 30 years.


    - Never have I played any type of digital amp (I've played & owned quite a few over the last 20 years) that sounded just like the tones you hear on your favorite albums. The sounds are real, dynamic, harmonically dense & beyond inspiring.


    - The multiple outputs, each with volume & EQ control is what truly makes this the perfect rehearsing & gigging amp. And live? I can't wait to hear that through a PA.


    - Free, downloadable software updates, tones, effects, etc. You don't need to spend a dime more after you buy it!


    - It sounds perfect, no matter the speaker/monitor/in-ears. It made my 20 year old Peavey Bandit sound like a 5150iii, right before my ears!


    - It's like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up all of my old gear into uselessness, so I've been selling stuff like crazy online. My pedalboard went from fairly large to a Wah, EVH P90 & a Boss NS-2 gate.


    Cons:


    - The Rig Manager is a buggy, glitchy, awful program that continually freezes or causes the Kemper unit to freeze. It's possibly the most unreliable program I have ever used. Ever. Good thing the RM is not essential to the unit's use. When the program actually works, it's great! ?


    - Man, there are so many terrible Profiles out there. It's like the creators of them are listening to completely different recordings than I. Some of them aren't even close! There are some hidden gems if you love to tweak, which I do.


    I can safely say that this the best piece of gear I've ever bought.


    ????


  • There are almost no bad clean profiles at all, IMO. I mean, how do you mess up clean? ;)


    Play some dirty profiles in a mix -even with just a drum track going, and you be surprised how nice some of those terrible profiles sound good all of a sudden. I usually create 2 separate profiles of the same rig; one for guitar practice alone, and the other one for in a mix. The one for guitar practice is usually at a higher gain with more distortion... because I like it that way. 8)


    Rig Manager has a small learning curve but once you get used to it then it's way easier and faster then using knobs and dials on the profiler. You should still get experience tweaking on the profiler itself in case you go to a gig and have to change something.


    Cheers!

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • BayouTexan,


    Honestly, you make a great point. There are "home" tones and there are "studio" tones. I don't do any sort of home recording at the moment, so going for the "home" tone has been a lot of fun. Lotsa gain, loud as heck! :)


    Like I said, when the Rig Manager actually works, it's terrific! Much faster than doing all of the tweaking on the Kemper itself. But everytime that I use RM, within 10-15, the thing crashes my Kemper, giving it the Green Error Screen. It's happened like 10 times, so I try not to use RM a whole lot until the problem is fixed on Kemper's end.

  • - Man, there are so many terrible Profiles out there.

    This is exactly what I thought when I first got the Kemper a couple of years ago. I nearly gave up and sold it after one week. (Spoiler alert: a week later I sold every tube amp I owned).


    I'd been subconsciously thinking that a Marshall is a Marshall, so I was shocked at how very, very bad most of the Marshall profiles were. Eventually I realized that a profile is not an amp model, so a single profile isn't "here's everything you can do with a JCM 800." It's a snapshot of a tone that someone dialed in, a single moment in time and just one possible thing you can do with that amp.


    And here's the thing. You're a metal guy, and I'm a classic rock guy. The tones I love for my genre would get you thrown off the stage on a metal gig, and in a similar fashion a great metal tone is inappropriate for what I do. You can get killer tones for both out of a physical Marshall but for a profile, it's all about who dialed in the tone and what they were using it for. So all those profiles out there that I thought were awful are probably in fact awesome - just not for the kind of music I play.


    So, the trick is finding profiles with tones dialed in for the same sort of thing that you're doing. Rig Exchange isn't really optimized to search by genre, it's weighted more toward what amp / speaker cab, etc. And that's what threw me off in the beginning, because for profiles, genre is everything.


    Ultimately I decided to try some packs from M. Britt, who's highly regarded in terms of quality, and they were un-freakin-believable. I bought everything he had and never looked back. However, I wouldn't recommend him for you because he's a classic rock guy, not a metal guy. The best thing you can do is get feedback from other guys here who play the same style and find out what they like, both commercial and on Rig Exchange.


    If you have experience with amp modelers like Line 6, Fractal, etc. you have to reboot your thinking and get your head around the single-use / snapshot nature of a profile versus the "here's every knob on the amp" mentality of modelers. However, once you match profiles of the right genre to the kind of music you play, it's really hard to get a bad tone out of this thing. And the people here are incredible. This is far and away the most positive vibe of any forum I've ever been on.

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

  • Chris,


    What a terrific reply, thank you for that man! Here's a few quick things in response...


    I actually bought the Heavy Britt Pack on Tuesday night, simply because in all of the searching I did for tones, pretty much whenever I saw "M. Britt", the tones were wonderful! One of his 5150iii Profiles is now my main heavy rhythm tone, and an old Blues Deluxe is one of my clean tones (I found the Deluxe tone just hours after getting the Kemper).


    I know what I'm about to say may come off as snobby, but when it comes to heavy guitar tones, I have over 30 years of studio, stage, recording & writing experience, with multiple releases. I know those tones, man. :) I LIVE for those tones! But so many guys think cranking the gain, sucking out all of the mids & boosting the bass to Rave Music Festivals is the way to a great heavy sound.


    Like the English say, "Horses For Courses." If those types of tones that I hate inspires them to play, jam & record, then I say go for it! But using a headline like "Hetfield Tone" or "Pantera Tone", but delivering a Profile that sounds absolutely nothing like the album...it kind of bugs me. But hey, it's free to try most of 'em, so no harm, no foul, right?


    (And most of the gear I've accumulated for 30 years has either been sold, or is up for sale. The Kemper just cannot be beat. Heck, I even dialed in a pretty darn-near exact version of the EVH P90 pedal with the Kemper. Outstanding!!)

  • I have almost never had RM crash itself and have never had it crash my KPA. I do find it glitchy for saving and editing performances but certainly not prone to crashing. Most people seem to report very similar experiences. Something strange is going on with your personal setup I would try methodical troubleshooting and raise a ticket with support. If there is a bug in RM which is causing this they will want to know about it and sort it.

  • But so many guys think cranking the gain, sucking out all of the mids & boosting the bass to Rave Music Festivals is the way to a great heavy sound.

    This is so true! I think it is because that is what sounds good to them in their bedroom. This tone will get lost in a second in a mix.


    I was running sound for a friends band for a while and I had to have a talk with him about his solo tone. He had scooped all of the mids out of it to the point that when he stepped on his OD pedal for a solo I would completely lose him in the mix. I had to solo the channel to see if I was getting a signal because it seemed like he completely cut out. I had plenty of signal but you couldn't hear a thing he was playing.


    Once you know how to work the mid range you can get all of those beefy metal tones you are looking for. The surprise will be that you will have a heck of a lot more mids in your tone than you ever thought you needed if you are one who typically scoops them out and turns the gain up. Tons of bass just turns everything into mud.

  • Chris,


    What a terrific reply, thank you for that man! Here's a few quick things in response...


    I actually bought the Heavy Britt Pack on Tuesday night, simply because in all of the searching I did for tones, pretty much whenever I saw "M. Britt", the tones were wonderful! One of his 5150iii Profiles is now my main heavy rhythm tone, and an old Blues Deluxe is one of my clean tones (I found the Deluxe tone just hours after getting the Kemper).

    I'm obviously a fan of the M. Britt stuff, but since he points out that he's not a metal guy and has less expertise in that area I don't usually make that recommendation. Even so, I think his high gain stuff is awesome (for my style of music Crank n Go was outstanding), so there may be a lot of metal applications as well. Franjoe30 writes a lot of heavy but melodic songs and his tones are always great, so you might also ping him for the profilers he uses.


    I've been playing since the 70s but unlike you I've always sucked at dialing in tones, which is one of the reasons I love the profile approach. Give me an amp sim with all the knobs and I'll just make the same mess that I would with a tube amp. But a profile leverages someone else's expertise in that area so finally my guitar sounds consistently good. Well, you know, the tone, anyway.

    using a headline like "Hetfield Tone" or "Pantera Tone", but delivering a Profile that sounds absolutely nothing like the album...it kind of bugs me.

    Yeah, that makes sense. I just tend to have more of a live and let live attitude around here since people are overwhelmingly positive. These guys have done so much to help me (often with questions whose stupidity was of epic proportions) that I just overlook shortcomings and focus on the good that they do.


    While there's one in every crowd, the percentage of typical Internet forum people who just like to argue and insult each other would have to be measured with a microscope around here. It took me a while to realize that I didn't have to brace myself for a fight every time I made a comment. It really is a strange place as the Internet goes, but then, I happen to like strange.

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

  • This is so true! I think it is because that is what sounds good to them in their bedroom. This tone will get lost in a second in a mix.


    I was running sound for a friends band for a while and I had to have a talk with him about his solo tone. He had scooped all of the mids out of it to the point that when he stepped on his OD pedal for a solo I would completely lose him in the mix. I had to solo the channel to see if I was getting a signal because it seemed like he completely cut out. I had plenty of signal but you couldn't hear a thing he was playing.


    Once you know how to work the mid range you can get all of those beefy metal tones you are looking for. The surprise will be that you will have a heck of a lot more mids in your tone than you ever thought you needed if you are one who typically scoops them out and turns the gain up. Tons of bass just turns everything into mud.

    Yes. Mud. They don't only get lost in the mix; When the try to be heard they just go to the volume control, and with all that bass freqs...


    When I joined the "pro" band I'm in, they had a kind of "curse". They used to call it "the bass cloud on stage". I just told them it was the "V" in the bass amp's graphic eq and the enormous volume he used to try to be heard (over the monstrous volume of the other guitar. BTW, the guitar player I replaced was also very loud and bass heavy). Fortunately this bass player is one of those receptive persons and it was easily solved. Unfortunately the other guitar is not so receptive, and we had to use other methods.


    The sound tech loved me forever.


    Oh, and they used IEMs. Freaking crazy.^^