Getting better clean tone esp with Gain at 0.0

  • Hi all,


    New to the Kemper. Most of the time fender-y profiles with gain at 0 end up being too hollow, especially for my tele. Even though the tele has pretty hot pickups (Tom Andersons), I feel l need to do some major surgery on the profile. This goes for free or commercial profiles.


    This happens with other lower gain profiles (say 2-3) but adding a light comp or adding my Keeley C4 in front and boosting the midrange really helps. However when profile gain is at or near 0, no amount of tweaking seems to restore that blackface spongy low end or warm top end. The highs are too crispy and the lows are too bloated. Any thoughts?

  • Welcome to the Party.


    You may need to adjust the Clean Sens and Dist Sens on the Kemper. Download the manual and read more about those settings...


    https://www.kemper-amps.com/downloads/5/User-Manuals


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    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

  • However when profile gain is at or near 0, no amount of tweaking seems to restore that blackface spongy low end or warm top end.

    My blackface Deluxe didn't get spongy until I turned it up enough for the tubes and speakers to come alive. If you really want gain that low, try turning the Gain down on a profile that sounds good with higher gain.

  • Welcome to the forum!


    What are you using to hear your Kemper?

    I'm using JBL305s to monitor the Kemper.




    This helps...namely pushing the clean sense. I thought that the common wisdom was to leave them near 0 but in one case pushing the CS to 3 and the dist sense to -3 had better response. I also increased the gain from 0 to 2 per Don's comment. Was still able to keep it clean without sounding "pushed"

  • ... This helps...namely pushing the clean sense. I thought that the common wisdom was to leave them near 0 but in one case pushing the CS to 3 and the dist sense to -3 had better response. I also increased the gain from 0 to 2 per Don's comment. Was still able to keep it clean without sounding "pushed"

    According to my personal experience in your particular case only " Clean sense" is important! "Distortion sense" is valid for different scenario. But maybe I am wrong ;)

  • According to my personal experience in your particular case only " Clean sense" is important! "Distortion sense" is valid for different scenario. But maybe I am wrong ;)

    According to the manual at least, pushing CS from 0 to 3 would increase volume only, whereas increasing the gain to 2 and reducing DS to negative 3 would be equal to increasing the gain to "something lower than 2 but higher than zero" (i.e. the sum of gain increase of 2 and some negative offset from the DS, which has a different scale).

  • According to the manual at least, pushing CS from 0 to 3 would increase volume only, whereas increasing the gain to 2 and reducing DS to negative 3 would be equal to increasing the gain to "something lower than 2 but higher than zero" (i.e. the sum of gain increase of 2 and some negative offset from the DS, which has a different scale).

    My understanding was (probably wrong) that norcalEric has a problem with volume. Than the Clean sense would be the right tool. If his intention is to tweek the overall sound of the the respective low gain profile you are of course right.

  • when profile gain is at or near 0, no amount of tweaking seems to restore that blackface spongy low end or warm top end. The highs are too

    crispy and the lows are too bloated.

    Try a compressor. You have the compressor in the Amplifier settings or you can add a stomp if you need more control. Fo an example I tried a rig with gain around 5. Then I set the gain to zero and the Amplifier compressor to around 5. Stomp compressor does about the same thing but with more controls available. To my ear, seems to do what you describe.