Ghost in the machine? Odd but good!

  • Had a different experience yesterday with my Kemper Rack. Some background:

    Purchased Kemper 2017, ran it through the effects loop in of a combo amp until last summer, had a matching open back 112 cab and 6u rack built. Bought a Bam200 (new for $6) and a Kone.

    The Kone didn't work correctly, contacted Kemper support through the US store and received a replacement, night and day difference without changing any settings, and thank you Kemper!

    Even though my rig sounds pretty good it still was not on par with demonstration videos I've seen and those only translate a portion of live, in the room experience. Perused the forum, read and reread the manual and tried every combination of settings imaginable but always had to set the Hi Cut at around 4500hz or I had extreme fizz on the top end at any gain level above clean, still sounded pretty good but a little muffled and loss of definition. I update firmware with every official release, last one was a week or so ago, no change in settings were able to be made though without that high end fizz.

    Now here's the odd but good:

    Bought a Kemper Remote which was delivered Monday, got the chance to hook it up yesterday. All I did was plug it in then power up the Kemper, went to browse mode and hit a cord on whatever rig it was left on and noticed immediately something had changed, didn't touch one switch on the remote or one setting in the Kemper.

    So I figured, let's mess with the settings, can't hurt anything. Went to Hi Cut and started going up a little at a time, hit a cord and see what happens. It makes no since to me but I'm one happy camper! Ended up with the High Cut set at 7500hz, no fizz, completely changed the sound, open, clear, brighter but not harsh, sounds fantastic. Deleted all the profiles on the Kemper and now I'm going through and auditioning my purchased profiles, will be loading a whole different batch than I had previously. And now the profiles that Kemper has preloaded in Rig Manager are a whole new animal, didn't think to much of them previously but now I'm finding a lot of them sound really good, now I'm starting all over from the beginning.

    I can't give any explanation at all to what has happened, but I'll take it!

    Best regards fellow gear enthusiasts,

    Happy Old Geaser8)

  • That's an interesting, yet worrying set of circumstances. I'm guess I'm a pessimist because I would not be nearly as positive as you seem to be. You don't know what caused the fizz and you don't know why it's gone. If you're lucky, it'll stay gone. If not, the fizz will return and you will be back where you started. Curious if the fizz returns if you remove the remote from the equation? I typically use the high cut for fizz reduction, but I have found profiles that don't need nearly as much cut as others.

  • Curious if the fizz returns if you remove the remote from the equation?

    This I had to try, you made me curious as I had not considered it.

    So, unplugged the remote and powered up the profiler a few minutes ago and didn't notice any change, then I started comparing different profiles with the remote plugged in and the remote unplugged, profiles sound the same. I will admit, I was quite apprehensive with the first couple of comparisons though, thought the new mojo might disappear.

    I did notice quite a difference with the reverb also, really opened it up. I'm looking forward to some free time next week just to revisit the effects.