More realistic gain & eq please (frontpanel knobs)

    Hi everyone


    Rhett Shull just streamed a 1-hour Q&A on Kemper. In the beginning of the vid he says some interesting things about gain and eq, attached to the front panel knobs. It comes down to the profiling process, I guess. His points sound familiar to me - and my feature request would be to develop a more comprehensive profiling such that the gain and eq knobs can be used the way they are on real amps. Apologies if this has already been discussed before -


    Here is the video, with many more interesting topics and observations (mostly positive) on Kemper as it stands today-


    I guess since he already ticked off the Fractal crowd it is time for him to tick off the Kemper crowd. I typically like Rhett but he steps in it once in a while.


    I think his comments on the gain points more to his poor job of profiling and understanding it than it points to anything wrong with the Kemper. If he wanted higher gain in the profile, he should have profiled it with more gain dialed up on the amp. Then he can roll his volume back and get a more accurate representation of gain and how the amp reacts to the roll back. He is correct when he says that the Kemper is trying to guess, or figure out, what adding gain would sound like.


    I am a little surprised that he said that the Fractal stuff is way better than Kemper. From the live acts I have seen, Kemper is the clear choice of professional traveling musicians. I have actually seen Kemper as the most common with Helix rack units being next in line. I rarely see a Fractal unit on stage. I know Rhett is a Helix guy so some of these comments surprise me.


    So for Rhett, the most common unit on the professional circuit is his last in line, outdated and long in the tooth and not worth it in 2022. This is where I really disagree with him. This is one man's opinion. I am shocked that he rated the Axe number one. He even states he got a lot of hate because of his video on it. He hates the interface but thinks is it number one. That is where things don't make sense for me. If you hate the interface, how can it be number one, especially if he thinks the interface is much better on the Kemper. For being 4th on his list he sure does talk about how good it sounds and just keeps saying how good that profile sounds and how he could play a whole gig in one band with that one profile.


    Wow, Axe FX III and FM9 are close on the heels of the Quad Cortex. He is going to get a lot of hate for this video just like he did for the Axe video. He says the Helix is better than the Kemper but then tries to justify it by saying things that actually paint the Kemper as better than the Helix.


    Here is a revelation for him. Some of us don't want a touch screen on our floor unit.


    Finished watching it. Some of it was ramblings and incomplete thoughts. He danced around and didn't really answer some of the questions. He had some critical things to say but then basically walked them back the longer he talked or contradicted the statements.

    I have been catching myself in his bad posture when playing guitar sitting down. I need to correct that and do more standing.


    He is asking for the profiler to behave as the actual amp when it cannot since the profiler is basically a recording of that amp at a specific setting and time. Would I like if Kemper would mirror the actual amp all across the EQ and Gain spectrums? Absolutely! Then no one will make real amps anymore.

    The more you find what Kemper can do then the harder you try to find what it cannot do -- like make a good cup of Frappuccino.

    Making the EQ curves match the amp profiled would be a disaster. Every amp would react differently to the controls. Confusion is all you’d get.


    How do you remember what one amp does versus another so you can get the results you’re looking for quickly? And AC 30 reacts very differently than a Fender Twin or JCM 800 or…….


    No, thank you.

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

    Quote from Jasperidosio

    What I recognize in his remarks is that I find myself hardly using the gain knob on the Kemper. To a lesser extent this also goes for the eq knobs.

    whenever I plug in to an amp and play a few notes I automatically reach for the Gain and EQ knobs to make a few quick adjustments - almost without thinking.


    I do the same on the PROFILER and it's UI is made for just this. It's a tube amp/digital preamp analog that I haven't encountered too often in this simplicity.

    Quote from BayouTexan

    I have been catching myself in his bad posture when playing guitar sitting down. I need to correct that and do more standing.


    He is asking for the profiler to behave as the actual amp when it cannot since the profiler is basically a recording of that amp at a specific setting and time. Would I like if Kemper would mirror the actual amp all across the EQ and Gain spectrums? Absolutely! Then no one will make real amps anymore.

    Which would then be modeling, not profiling. It is another example of him expecting something from a device that it wasn't designed to do. It is back to understanding the device he is criticizing.

    Rhett's online video presence is mainly click bait. Comes across as a nice guy, but I don't find his opinions valuable. He's trying to generate income so he has to keep creating new 'content'. I'm not convinced he has enough expertise to back all the content he is creating.


    I would probably find his comments on the coffee he had this morning just as valuable. I won't be surprised if that video turns up.

    Why the hate of the guy?


    He said he used the kemper a lot, that it was the most used unit in the pro world and said it was a really good unit.


    He also pointed that the kemper has a sound’ signature and that using the gain and eq knob is something very special to kemper and I think he’s right.

    It's not "hate" Joshua. bieber has a point. I think these guys are pressured to try and stay relevant in a virtual world that is flooded with content (and a lot of it useless), and each tuber trying to get their share of an audience which results in a lot of mess.

    The more you find what Kemper can do then the harder you try to find what it cannot do -- like make a good cup of Frappuccino.

    Hi everyone, my point in the thread was not whether Rhett is OK yes or no, just the question if it would be possible to develop the Kemper such that the gain knob (and eq knobs) would become more useful. Like I said, I use them rarely and this was what triggered me in Rhett’s remarks. I leave most of my profiles gainwise as they come and that’s fine, they sound great and I love my Kemper, however isn’t there an opportunity to do more with the gain knob?


    Clearly this is my impression and if the far majority of us thinks this is not an issue I’m perfectly fine with it of course.


    Thanks for all your comments

    Rhett is a good guy but seems more focused on churning out videos, and hopefully, some are controversial. Good for him. He makes a nice living from it. He's taking care of business. If you are doing a gig or recording, you are not fiddling around with your amp knobs. If you want less gain, you have a volume knob right there on the guitar. I find that the Kemper Feels most like a tube amp, and that's the Only thing that matters to me. That makes me able to be more expressive, therefore play better. If you are using IEM's The Kemper is invaluable.

    I wish the Kemper would offer us the choice of using the generic Kemper EQ controls, or modeled versions of the “accurate” EQ controls.


    The gain knob is used very infrequently, and when I do use it I use it very sparingly. Turning it up is ok in small doses but too much starts to sound weird to me. Turning it down works however far you go.

    From what I can guess, it would not be possible to make the EQs work like the actual amps. They are interactive and have tubes around them etc. There is no way they could do that for the 19000 amps on the exchange. That is why modelers exist.


    The closest thing the Kemper could do is something like the studio EQ. Which we already have. Just set the AMP EQ to PRE and add a studio EQ. Then search the web for the amp controls in question and get to work 8o


    I am a huge fan of the Studio EQ, but it seems to pull some of the pick dynamics out. probably not noticeable at stage volume though.

    I agree that the consistency of the Kemper EQ is a fantastic feature which many underestimate. There is and increasing number of younger players who have never actually played a real valve amp cranked or if they have they have only experienced one or two different models. Therefore, they don’t actually know how the tonestack on a Fender style amp works compared to a Marshall or Vox. They are wildly different beasts and the tone controls are heavily interactive. Turning up the treble typically also reduces the amount of signal that makes it through to the Bass and Mid controls. The frequency ranges of the individual controls vary from amp to amp.


    The Kemper gives us a consistent experience whereby if we reach for the Treble control we always know what it is going to do - it does the same thing every time and doesn’t affect other frequencies in strange unpredictable ways. I find it funny hearing the love for traditional tonestacks now as I got into amps in the 80’s and 90’s when we all used to complain about how “interacive” the controls were on Boogies as nobody could understand them so getting a sound was total trial and error.


    Although there are thousands of different variations on tone stacks there are really only 3 generic types in common use Fender/Marshall/Vox. HiWatt use a different style but other than that nearly everything is a minor variation on FMV.


    It would be a nice feature to have access to those but I definitely would NOt want to lose the consistency of the current Kemper tonestack - I can still remember learning to use a Boogie 🤣

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    I agree that the consistency of the Kemper EQ is a fantastic feature which many underestimate. There is and increasing number of younger players who have never actually played a real valve amp cranked or if they have they have only experienced one or two different models. Therefore, they don’t actually know how the tonestack on a Fender style amp works compared to a Marshall or Vox. They are wildly different beasts and the tone controls are heavily interactive. Turning up the treble typically also reduces the amount of signal that makes it through to the Bass and Mid controls. The frequency ranges of the individual controls vary from amp to amp.


    The Kemper gives us a consistent experience whereby if we reach for the Treble control we always know what it is going to do - it does the same thing every time and doesn’t affect other frequencies in strange unpredictable ways. I find it funny hearing the love for traditional tonestacks now as I got into amps in the 80’s and 90’s when we all used to complain about how “interacive” the controls were on Boogies as nobody could understand them so getting a sound was total trial and error.


    Although there are thousands of different variations on tone stacks there are really only 3 generic types in common use Fender/Marshall/Vox. HiWatt use a different style but other than that nearly everything is a minor variation on FMV.


    It would be a nice feature to have access to those but I definitely would NOt want to lose the consistency of the current Kemper tonestack - I can still remember learning to use a Boogie 🤣

    what could be great would be to have some pre set eq type templates in the amp block.
    like - original eq - mars eq - etc. Not replicating the complète eq circuit but just mimicking those.

    It’s only a matter of frequencies, range and peak after all.

    Quote from JoshuaL1

    Why the hate of the guy?


    He said he used the kemper a lot, that it was the most used unit in the pro world and said it was a really good unit.


    He also pointed that the kemper has a sound’ signature and that using the gain and eq knob is something very special to kemper and I think he’s right.

    Just to be clear, I have no hate for Rhett. I said that I generally like him. He posted a video of one man's opinion. I posted a reply here with another man's opinion. That is all. I don't agree with everything he said and there were inconsistencies in his own words. That is the summation of my posts. Don't read anything else into it. There was no hate expressed.