In the 80's some heavy guitar bands were starting to add clean guitar to the super heavy sounds. For a while it became the thing to do. You had your super heavy sound and the clean provided superior definition. Having wanting to try this for a while.. tonight I was recording my colonial pack at a pretty low volume and when I played it back, it wasn't as good. (Now in the studio I strive to make what I hear tracking sound exactly like playback) I realized what was lacking over the sound of the profile was I was hearing the strings of my guitar. So I went to the "direct mix" and added some until it sounded like what I was hearing sitting at my desk. It ended up being only 1.0 and really sounded great. The slightly furry but fat tone I was getting had a real nice sheen and top end from the clean strings. As I have wrote this is not by all means new to do, but try it sometime, just don't use too much.
An overlooked underused feature?
- Dynochrome
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I keep saying, The Kemper team said here is what hardware we have. Now, lets give users every tool we can think of to get the most out of it.
I use the Direct Mix once in a while. I have seen YouTube videos of metal guys adding in DM also. Adds some mid range chunk and definition as you said.
It is also the one way to get a dual tone setup. Use a pedal to get the cleaner of the two sounds then use Amp/Direct Mix to get the other sound.
I agree usually around .5 to 2.0 is good for gain stuff. Going even further puts you in blues territory with some brighter gain amps.
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I ran a little test once just for the heck of it. I set my Mesa on one side of the room and dialed up as heavy of a gain tone as I could on it and then I set my JSX amp on the other side of the room and set it to super clean. The sound in the middle of the room was freaking awesome. I understood why this became a huge recording trick at that moment. I don't really play gigs where I could do something like this but I wish I did. I would run that setup and love it. It is good that you can dial some of this in with the Kemper. I actually didn't know that was possible. I will be looking into that now. Thank you for posting about it.
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You can also use Parallel Path in the Rig Menu to blend a second tone. In this case you get the basic sound with up to 2 stomps in slots A and B plus the normal signal chain from Stomp C onwards.
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You can also use Parallel Path in the Rig Menu to blend a second tone. In this case you get the basic sound with up to 2 stomps in slots A and B plus the normal signal chain from Stomp C onwards.
Which is something i’ve never really tried, but want to. I use direct mix in the green scream stomp. It ‘s great. The amount of definition you can get, even with small settings, are indispensible to me. I can get away with playing with overdriven tones, where most would have to go for a cleaner one, and no-one really notices or thinks it’s too much. And that is all down to the definition.
This is one of many things, where i just never could go back to my old setup, even if it had other things i think it did better than the Kemper. But no tool is ever going to be 100% perfect.
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Dynochrome, agreed that this is a great feature. I added direct mix to my crunch and lead tones and it really helped fatten them up. Thanks for sharing. One of the things I love about this forum is people sharing these little tricks that can improve a good profile to a great one.
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You can also use Parallel Path in the Rig Menu to blend a second tone. In this case you get the basic sound with up to 2 stomps in slots A and B plus the normal signal chain from Stomp C onwards.
It's a more complicated setup to navigate. Direct mix is super simple.
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Which is something i’ve never really tried, but want to. I use direct mix in the green scream stomp. It ‘s great. The amount of definition you can get, even with small settings, are indispensible to me. I can get away with playing with overdriven tones, where most would have to go for a cleaner one, and no-one really notices or thinks it’s too much. And that is all down to the definition.
This is one of many things, where i just never could go back to my old setup, even if it had other things i think it did better than the Kemper. But no tool is ever going to be 100% perfect.
I thought I read tube screamers naturally let some clean signal through them like 20% or something
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Dynochrome, agreed that this is a great feature. I added direct mix to my crunch and lead tones and it really helped fatten them up. Thanks for sharing. One of the things I love about this forum is people sharing these little tricks that can improve a good profile to a great one.
Your welcome. As I wrote, don't use too much, it can become "swacky" fast especially on wound strings. Error toward using too little rather than too much. When I first was recording with it, I added a bunch until I thought it was right and upon recording it sounded like crap, the clean blatting through too much. You just need a pinch.
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I thought I read tube screamers naturally let some clean signal through them like 20% or something
They do. I have a TS10 and compared to the TS9 it lets more clean through. So i do use a bit of extra clean mix on the Green Scream. Burkhard says that the Kemper Drive is exactly the same as the Green Scream just with a larger array of possibilities, but i swear to any god you want me to, that the clean through feels different to me. The Green Scream needed the extra clean blend. The Kemper Drive does seem to have more. Burkhard will tell me i’m wrong….
But real pedals have different tolerances in components, so my TS10 may just be on the extreme side of things in regards to clean blend. Now, ofcourse, my trusted TS10, my compannion through 20+ years of gigging, has been retired since i bought my Kemper.
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They do. I have a TS10 and compared to the TS9 it lets more clean through. So i do use a bit of extra clean mix on the Green Scream. Burkhard says that the Kemper Drive is exactly the same as the Green Scream just with a larger array of possibilities, but i swear to any god you want me to, that the clean through feels different to me. The Green Scream needed the extra clean blend. The Kemper Drive does seem to have more. Burkhard will tell me i’m wrong….
But real pedals have different tolerances in components, so my TS10 may just be on the extreme side of things in regards to clean blend. Now, ofcourse, my trusted TS10, my compannion through 20+ years of gigging, has been retired since i bought my Kemper.
I read somewhere once how much clean comes through (might have even been a Kemper document) to mimic a tube screamer. It's part of what gives it it's characteristic. Other drives may have more or less I'm guessing. I'll have to look later, but does the "green screamer" preset have clean added already in the proper amount? I would think if researched it would be the same as the actual model.
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It's a more complicated setup to navigate. Direct mix is super simple.
Agreed. Parallel Path has more control but Direct Mix is simpler - like Easy Mode Vs Advanced Mode.
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I read somewhere once how much clean comes through (might have even been a Kemper document) to mimic a tube screamer. It's part of what gives it it's characteristic. Other drives may have more or less I'm guessing. I'll have to look later, but does the "green screamer" preset have clean added already in the proper amount? I would think if researched it would be the same as the actual model.
CK has definitely done a lot of analysis and A/B testing and swears that the amount of clean mix in the Kemper drive is authentic to a real TS. He also maintains that the Kemper Drive can be set to match the Green Scream which implies that the GS also has the appropriate amount of direct signal. However, neither of these would be comparable to your secret weapon of using Direct Mix as the direct portion of a TS style pedal still gets any amp overdrive wheres the Direct Mix strategy completely bypasses any overdive in the amp section.
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I read somewhere once how much clean comes through (might have even been a Kemper document) to mimic a tube screamer. It's part of what gives it it's characteristic. Other drives may have more or less I'm guessing. I'll have to look later, but does the "green screamer" preset have clean added already in the proper amount? I would think if researched it would be the same as the actual model.
I think it does. But to my ears, not as much as the Kemper Drive.
Anyway, those two drives (GS and KD) are so fantastic. Everytime i think i need my TS10 back in the rack, i turn off the slot and try the pedal in front of the Kemper. But they are so close. And by now, i think i prefer the Kemper version. So no need to complicate the setup.
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Silly question, where is Direct mix then? Is it an output setting ( not got my KPA in front of me)..
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Silly question, where is Direct mix then? Is it an output setting ( not got my KPA in front of me)..
In the AMP section.
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CK has definitely done a lot of analysis and A/B testing and swears that the amount of clean mix in the Kemper drive is authentic to a real TS.
The manual reads the KD pedal output presets are set at 100%. So what I'm getting from this is at 100% mix you are still getting Kempers' set amount of clean mix correct? So if I set the mix at 90% that would be adding another 10% of clean signal to what is already going through right?
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He also maintains that the Kemper Drive can be set to match the Green Scream
So in reality there is no longer a need for the "green scream" correct?
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I believe that is what CK said a while back. If I remember correctly the Green Scream was left so that old rigs which used it would still work (like Legacy Delay and Legacy Reverb).
