How to increase or decrease input ?

  • Hi everyone,


    Sorry for the stupid question but I can't seem to find info anywhere. I was in a studio session when my bassist asked me if he could plug his bass in my Kemper. I said sure, no problem. The problem was, he needed more input into my Kemper. His volume was at 10 and we barely heard him. Where can I go to increase or decrease, if need be, the input in my Kemper ?


    Thanks !

  • I use high output pickups on guitar and low pickups on bass and all my senses are Zero (Okay, no jokes here ;)). The signal ouputs are relatively the same levels.


    But you can increase the Rig Volume and it will be set for just that profile and does not carry globally.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • But isn't it more of a balance thing than a input gain boost?

    Yes. However, it also affects input level in doing so. The wording in the manual has changed a little over the years but I don’t think the actual Clean Sense function has.

    Quote from Kemper Profiler The Basics Manual 3.0

    ♦ Clean Sens

    Extremely “hot” guitars can generate unwanted distortion, indicated by the Input LED flashing red. This is only relevant for clean sounds, however - prominent amp distortion will fully mask a subtle clipping of the input. You can verify this fact by trying different settings of Clean Sens. However, if you want to avoid a red input LED, you can always lower Clean Sens.

    Quote from Kemper Profiler The Basics Manual 3.0

    Input LED (12)

    The LED reflects the level of the input signal.

    I think Clean Sense is the most misunderstood feature of the KPA. ckemper explained it really well in a previous thread a while ago (but I can’t find it). If I remember correctly I think he explained CleanSense was designed to maximise signal to noise ratio and works with a limiter so lowering input level affects the threshold of the limiting. I can’t remember the details though.


    I use high output pickups on guitar and low pickups on bass and all my senses are Zero (Okay, no jokes here ;)). The signal ouputs are relatively the same levels.

    This always amazes me. I literally can’t set Clean Sense above -6db or all my Clean sounds completely obliterate my gain sounds. Doesn’t matter what guitar I use. CK told me I must has super high output pickups for that to happen. However, it is the same for all my guitars ranging from lower output single coils, mid output teles, regular PAF style humbuckers, higher output PRS, Seymour Duncan JB, and an EMG equipped Musicman Luke.All of them and m Jazz Bass need clean sense reduced that much or I need to add about 6db to amp or rig volume for each individual dirty rig.


    This has always confused me to the point where ai can only assume my profiler is wrongly calibrated somehow. It’s not the end of the world as I just lower clean sense and lock it. In fact it does show how much of a genius idea Clean Sense actually is as it has saved me from tweaking every single rig and resaving it just to make it usable. 😎


    The geek in me got a bit fired up last week and I actually decided to do a little test. I set up a performance with 4 copies of the same rig as follows:


    Slot 1 - Clean Sense 0 , Amp Volume 0, Rig Volume 0

    Slot 2 - Clean Sense -6 , Amp Volume +6, Rig Volume 0

    Slot 3 - Clean Sense -6 , Amp Volume 0 , Rig Volume +6

    Slot 4 - Clean Sense +6, Amp Volume 0, Rig Volume -6


    They all sounded almost identical. So I recorded a DI signal and reamped each track. I then flipped the phase and tried a null test. I had to nudge the track position a few samples to line them up properly and compensate for slightly different latency but they almost cancelled out. They are not identical as the results don’t fully cancel but the gain reduced by around -50db. To be honest I’m not even sure what I learned from that but it was fun trying 🤣