PRS high output guitar, input overload

    Hi

    I have a PRS Pauls Guitar with switchable split coil pickups. When used with my Kemper rack, unpowered, the input led is constantly lit orange and often red. If I wind the volume way down on the PRS I can get it to go green. Obviously I am not worried so much about the colour of the led as the sound of the output! :) It is way too hot and getting a clean tone is so difficult. When I play even slightly harder, it breaks up and sounds horrible.


    I am using M Britt Deluxe Reverb patches as I have a real 65 DL Rvb to compare it with. This does not happen with my real amp...


    But the same happens with any profile I have tried.


    The profile I am using is the lowest gain profile in his pack and I have the rig gain down way low, pretty much 0.


    I have a 63 re-issue Tele with vintage pickups which sounds just great with the same profile/settings. Led stays green, clean sounds are great, easy to get a nice controlled edge of break up sound.


    I have spent hours and hours watching you tube videos and reading the manual relating to the clean sens & distortion sens settings. To be honest I still am not totally clear what they do and how to use them but I have tried all different setting on both and it really makes very little difference when the PRS is used. The led is still mostly orange/red and the sound is still distorted.


    It feels to me like there should be some kind of “Pad” option on the input to pull down the hot input levels but I can find no such setting.


    I love playing the PRS, it is an awesome guitar but just doesn’t seem to pair with a Kemper. I am on the verge of ditching the profiler as it seems like it is a choice of Kemper or PRS and to be honest the PRS wins every time! It sounds amazing through my real DL Rvb. I would love for it to work with the Kemper. Can anybody help please?


    thank you

    Mark

    Hmmm, that sucks Mark. I didn’t think the Paul’s Guitar was that hot but have never tried one. I have a 513 (which has a hot HB setting that is probably as hot as anything PRS do), a DGR (very vintage, P22 (custom 22 with Piezo with protypes of the 85/15 - mine a 85/14 ?) and a HBii with 57/08. I also have a couple of guitars with EMG. With all of them I set clean sense around -5 and they all seem to work fine.


    Try turning off the Stack section completely to eliminate the profile when troubleshooting. Then move the clean sense through its entire range. You should hear what it does more clearly and hear how big a cut/boost it makes. If it isn’t clipping before you add the stack back in then the issue must be with the profiles. Even if it is clipping slightly without the stack engaged the Kemper clips quite softly so a little clipping shouldn’t be a major issue once a profile is added to the signal .


    As for MBritt profiles. While they are great (definitely among my favourites) Michael doesn’t really go for totally clean. He likes a bit of hair. If this present in the profile it might be that even turning the gain to 0 doesn’t fully remove the grit.

    I play EMG actives and never had a problem with clipping the output LED. I have both my sens at 0.0 and my profile and rig levels at 0.0. I don't see how you could ever clip unless you added a large amount of your direct signal into the stack. Some setting must not be right.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    Quote from BayouTexan

    I don't see how you could ever clip unless you added a large amount of your direct signal into the stack. Some setting must not be right.

    Most of mine can definitely clip at 0.0. I actually often wonder if it is possible that the calibration of KPA input varies from unit to unit. As CK is adamant that my settings would only be necessary with super hot pickups but most of mine are very much average.

    Quote from BayouTexan

    I play EMG actives and never had a problem with clipping the output LED. I have both my sens at 0.0 and my profile and rig levels at 0.0. I don't see how you could ever clip unless you added a large amount of your direct signal into the stack. Some setting must not be right.

    it is the input section that is overloading/flashing orange-red. Not the output.

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    Hmmm, that sucks Mark. I didn’t think the Paul’s Guitar was that hot but have never tried one. I have a 513 (which has a hot HB setting that is probably as hot as anything PRS do), a DGR (very vintage, P22 (custom 22 with Piezo with protypes of the 85/15 - mine a 85/14 ?) and a HBii with 57/08. I also have a couple of guitars with EMG. With all of them I set clean sense around -5 and they all seem to work fine.


    Try turning off the Stack section completely to eliminate the profile when troubleshooting. Then move the clean sense through its entire range. You should hear what it does more clearly and hear how big a cut/boost it makes. If it isn’t clipping before you add the stack back in then the issue must be with the profiles. Even if it is clipping slightly without the stack engaged the Kemper clips quite softly so a little clipping shouldn’t be a major issue once a profile is added to the signal .


    As for MBritt profiles. While they are great (definitely among my favourites) Michael doesn’t really go for totally clean. He likes a bit of hair. If this present in the profile it might be that even turning the gain to 0 doesn’t fully remove the grit.

    Thanks for the advice, I will try these ideas and feed back the results.

    Played a gig last night using the Tele and it felt real good to get some true sparkly cleans. I love the PRS to play but it just doesn’t get on with the Kemper. I am also going to try dropping the PRS pickups a bit to reduce the output.

    Odd indeed.

    I have 8 different PRS guitars from single coil, P90, to various humbuckers and none of them overload the input in any way. That said I don't have a Pauls guitar.

    I wonder what would happen if you did an "init globals"?

    Quote from MarkOgier

    it is the input section that is overloading/flashing orange-red. Not the output.

    None of my LED's are red-lighting (Input and Output). I'm pretty much solid green on both, but I can get the Output to go orange only if I add the Direct Mix to 10.0 under the Amp setting. My guitar volume pots are always on 10 when I start practice. Besides the one guitar with EMG's my others are pretty hot passives like my JB, Duncan Distortion and Pegasus. I'm curious to know why you are having the problem and would like to see it resolved.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    If is hasn't been said already, I would submit a request to Kemper support. If they can't sort it out, no one here can.

    “Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

    Like 2

    Out of my 5 PRS (including a Paul's) only the DW CE-24 causes any clipping for me. I generally have the clean sense at .2, but the DW CE-24 needs a bit of a negative, like -0.4


    Definitely try lowering the pickups, is yours a TCI (newer) version, or older? The older ones may have a big more output I suppose. Regardless, lowering the clean sense is (afaik) the way to adjust for this - unless it's just specific profiles.

    Play using the hottest guitar signal you might normally use for whatever clean sound you're tweaking, ie. humbuckers with full volume. Lower the Clean Sens until the input LED is barely flashing red. That's your baseline. If you find it too loud/quiet after setting Clean Sens, use amp volume or rig volume to balance it with the other rigs. The profile should now respond as expected. Plus if you want to use the same presets with guitars that have noticeably different output levels, you can now also use Clean Sens to compensate for the volume difference and even save different Input presets for different guitars.

    I was able to go orange or red on output by using an EQ and boosting to about +5db or using a booster stomp. Using them in the effects slot (post amp). All sens at 0.0.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    I recently borrowed the fractal saying, "tickle the red" it's been really great using humbuckers with a lowered dist sense on high gain profiles. I used to always boost it 2 or3 dB, then I stayed at zero for a long time and now using the lowered value for high gain and lower for clean sense too on clean profiles. If I need anything there's plenty of other places further down the chain to get more volume, bass, mid and presence boost etc.

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    Most of mine can definitely clip at 0.0. I actually often wonder if it is possible that the calibration of KPA input varies from unit to unit. As CK is adamant that my settings would only be necessary with super hot pickups but most of mine are very much average.

    I always wondered how other people can leave these Input Settings at 0.0
    I have to lower all humbucker guitars to about -5.0 to prevent clipping. My dist sense is often even lower, somewhere between -5 and -10 db.

    Weird.