The Kemper Foot Controller: Evolution

  • It is mid September and nobody has seen as much as a prototype KFC yet. I doubt we'll be able to hand over our cash to get one in the next 12 months. I appreciate a bit of conservatism in that products shouldn't be presented years before they ship, but I don't think a couple months from presentation to shipping is realistic. Even then it would have to be presented real soon in order to ship before year-end.


    Yeah, that's discouraging. I plan on getting a KPA for mostly live use. The lack of foot controller is a deal breaker for me. :(


  • Yeah, that's discouraging. I plan on getting a KPA for mostly live use. The lack of foot controller is a deal breaker for me. :(


    There ARE already no end of viable and useful foot controllers for the KPA....from simple 2-button foot-switches, to multi-button advanced midi controllers, and everything in between. Kemper's own solution will likely be clever; but we should know all about that by the beginning of next year.


    In the meantime, I have personally used both a Ground Control Pro and a Midi Raider with total success. I may, or may not buy the "official" controller when it comes out.


    So, bottom line, you'll have to find something else to break the deal. ;)

  • There ARE already no end of viable and useful foot controllers for the KPA....from simple 2-button foot-switches, to multi-button advanced midi controllers, and everything in between. Kemper's own solution will likely be clever; but we should know all about that by the beginning of next year.


    In the meantime, I have personally used both a Ground Control Pro and a Midi Raider with total success. I may, or may not buy the "official" controller when it comes out.


    So, bottom line, you'll have to find something else to break the deal. ;)


    Exactly this!

  • Most useful feature for me was a switch A/B, B/A. Now, too late. But this could be implemented in the KPA firmware, Not so difficult... The most simple case, playing any song, is to alternatively commute over two sounds... A single pedal switch alternating two slots would be the best compromise for those, like me, that have some difficult to pay attention to play while operating among a jungle of footswitches.

  • Most useful feature for me was a switch A/B, B/A. Now, too late. But this could be implemented in the KPA firmware, Not so difficult... The most simple case, playing any song, is to alternatively commute over two sounds... A single pedal switch alternating two slots would be the best compromise for those, like me, that have some difficult to pay attention to play while operating among a jungle of footswitches.

    I'm not sure if I well understand what you mean but if you need a one switch solution that will commute two or more sounds then you should buy a simple momentary switch and use it in performance mode. Or maybe two switches to go back and forth like the Boss FS-6:


    http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FS6


    It is cheap and it works very well for me! :)

  • Most useful feature for me was a switch A/B, B/A. Now, too late. But this could be implemented in the KPA firmware, Not so difficult... The most simple case, playing any song, is to alternatively commute over two sounds... A single pedal switch alternating two slots would be the best compromise for those, like me, that have some difficult to pay attention to play while operating among a jungle of footswitches.


    Are you saying you expected Kemper to release a single button footswitch to switch back and forward between 2 rigs....?!


    This has been possible since day one with £10 worth of already available footswitch.

  • NO :)


    I mean one (out of many) dedicated switch on the pedalboard that performs a swap over two defined slots or rigs.


    At the moment there is no solution, two (or more) switches are not a solution, they are the problem ;)


    A good software solution could be a sort of tag as parameter for a slot. Tag "Swap1" and "Swap2" assignable to any two slots, and an option "Swap Slot 1/2" for a KPA's external switch configuration.
    So you could designate two slots on every performance that reacts swapping themselves when you hit a pedal. At the moment on KPA you can perform something of similar swapping the state of stompboxes (ON goes OFF and OFF goes ON) but is not very useful.

  • To expand on that, a probably easy to implement way would be to allow a "primary" and "alternate" program to be assigned per switch on the pedal. The first time you hit it you load the primary program. If you then click the same switch, rather than just doing nothing (like what happens if you click the active switch again on the FCB1010), it could load the "alternate" program. If there is no alternate assigned it would just do nothing on the second click.


    With a limited number of switches, this would be a good way to get double duty out of them. The Control One pedal from Digitech was kind of like this, except it would just toggle you between the "primary" patch and whatever patch you were last on. So with any one switch you could easily toggle back and forth between the two. This was really useful when one patch might be on a low bank, and you'd like to quickly get to a patch several banks away. Performance mode on the Kemper is good, but not really the same thing.

  • Just so you know, the Gordius Little Giant does that (and waaaaaay more). Just saying ;)

  • Ok! I got it now. It would effectively be nice if when you hit the same switch a second time you go to the last rig so you could swap these rigs the number of times you want with the same one switch. It could be implement for each switch of the KFC in browser or performance mode.

  • So here's what I heard yesterday on the Frankfurt Roadshow event:


    5 buttons in first row, 4 buttons in second row.
    4 expression pedal connectors (2 on the left, 2 on the right side)
    Top row buttons can be programmed to switch 2 (or more?) stomp slots on/off with one button press.
    The looper is built inside the KFC.
    The KFC only needs the network cable. No extra power cable / audio cables required.
    Sadly no info on the displays and/or LEDs used.
    It will NOT have MIDI ports.
    ETA should be by the end of this year or early next year.


    There were a few more rumors / hints given, but these are OT here (not related to the KFC). I'll find another place to share them. :)

  • Ok! I got it now. It would effectively be nice if when you hit the same switch a second time you go to the last rig so you could swap these rigs the number of times you want with the same one switch. It could be implement for each switch of the KFC in browser or performance mode.


    I think with some midi controllers, you can have a default message sent on a channel when all pedals are not active. Doesn't work the same way as going forward and back when stomping on the same pedal twice though. I think this doesn't exist and the best you can hope for is to step on one pedal to go up and one pedal to go down.


    In performance mode, with a midi controller that highlights the effective pedal, I don't think this is of much use either. I would rather just step on the next pedal, because it involves as much manual effort. ^^


  • Slowly the Image of the controller becomes reality.