About to flip the F out!

  • Sorry for the tone (no pun) but I'm about ready to have my straight jacket locked on because IMO the Rig Manager and more specifically the PERFORMANCE mode (In Rig Manager and in general) needs a serious overhaul.


    I'll be sweet and straight to the point, if you want and can help me thank you so much <3 here goes:

    I can for the life of me not figure out the Performance mode in the Rig Manager.


    First off all, I can never DELETE ANYTHING! On "All Performances" the "Delete Performance" (right click) is just always greyed out. Second of all, suddenly I can't switch between amps (slots?) inside the performances either with my Kemper set to Perform or set to Browser or when I'm at "AllPerformances (125) or "MyProfiler(125). I can do it with my Remote.


    I have accepted that we must, at all times, have 125 Performances although my OCD mind just screams out "please let me delete something I never use". I am a very patience man when I fiddle around with the nobs and when I sit down to create tones or learn songs ect, I just finished up a pretty sweet Don Felder tone. But things like this make me crazy. OK so we must have 125 performances, but why can I not leave these said performances empty? I want to delete everything inside those that I don't want or will ever have a use for!


    IMHO (AND I LOVE EVERYTHING KEMPER, hands down best gear around and might always be, yes I said it) this feature needs a serious overhaul and I can't be the only one thinking so, right? Everything else in the Kemper is so easy to use, so intuitive, so On-my-Team and friendly, then walk into the Performance mode and it's like it hates me and just kicks me in the nads every time.


    Any input; thank you! :) Sorry for wall of text.

  • I bought my Stage (used) a little over a year ago. First thing I did after sampling what was there was to delete all Rigs except those tagged "Favorite", then deleted all performances except 5 and created 5 new performances. I don't remember the steps I took do do that, I think there is an option to "initialize" each performance. I may be wrong, it was a year ago but was pretty simple.


    Now all I see is 10 performances and 115 empty performances.


    ymmv.

    "Faith don't need no second opinion"

  • On the Treeview in RM, near the bottom you should see "All Performances". When you expand that you should see two folders - My Profiler and Local Library. My Profiler has the 125 Performances that are the set physically on your profiler. There will always be 125. You can't add or delete them, you can only change what is in them. Much like patches on a synthesizer. It has some number of slots that you can set up to be whatever you want. Local Library is a set that you may or may not use. It is where you can create and maintain a large library of performances. You might later copy these Local Library performances to one of the 125 My Profiler slots if you plan on using it outside of Rig Manager. Such as at a live show.


    Within Rig Manager you can always select and play rigs from any performance - My Profiler or Local Library.


    To clear a performance, like one of your 125 in My Profiler, the easiest way is probably to right click it, then click Initialize Performance from the popup menu (you could also use the Edit menu item, then choose Initialize...). This sets the first slot in the performance to a Rig named Crunch (the default Kemper rig) and clears the remaining 4 slots. You can't clear slot 1 in a Performance since all performances must have something in slot 1.


    To change the rig in any slot of any performance, there are a few ways to get there. First, make sure your Profiler is in Performance mode and that you have some performance selected for editing. You should see the performance is highlighted and has the headphones icon to the left of its name.


    I find it easiest to open a second Window (in RM, click the Window menu item at the top, then New). A second window opens where you can now scroll through all of the Rigs in the top section of RM (the My Profiler and Local Library sections under All Rigs.). From there you can just drag a rig from the second window to the slot you want in your selected performance (whether a My Profiler or Local Library performance). You would be dragging to a slot in the upper right of you first window where you see the 5 slots in the selected performance. Or you can use Copy then Paste to instead of dragging and dropping.


    Saving can be a bit odd for many of us in RM, so best to make sure you save any changes after you make them. If you've changed a Performance in My Profiler, you should see a button in the bottom right labeled Replace Performance in <whatever performance # you're editing).


    I hope that helps you going.

  • Not sure it will help you but I have NEVER seriously used the PERFORM mode on any of my (4) Profilers in the 10+ years since I became a Kemperite ... because this crap just doesn't work the way I would expect it to work. Drives me nuts to even think about it.

    But I'm not a gigging musician, I'm "just" an audio engineer taking care of 2 studios in different parts of the world.

  • I use the Kemper mostly live. I first started with it using browser mode with two different midi foot controllers. Both gave me mixed results due to a more complex workflow, limitations, and a non-ideal live use case. I then got a remote and switched to performance mode. The improvement is remarkable. I have about 90 performances which took only a few hours to create via RM. Live performance is much easier and less error prone. It took about 15 minutes to figure out how to program Performances via RM. I could condense the number of performances compared to what I have now, but why bother? I don't see any reason to condense as it will take some of my time to plan and implement. Plus it will lead to a bit more confusion to use live because of limitations with the number of remote effect buttons and the number of effects that I require.


    I should mention that I play in 3 different bands currently. One is strictly a cover band and I have about 70 performances specifically to cover the well-known sounds required. I have a blues/rock/jazz horn band for which I have another 10 performances in different section of the performance bank. I also play in a duo for which I have another 10 performances in a third performance section. In the duo, we switch between guitar and bass and I have performances in there for when my partner plays guitar.

  • I use performances to sort out settings for different guitars. I may use the same rig in more than one performance but each is adjusted for a particular instrument. I name them for the instrument i.e. Stratocaster, Telecaster, Steel Guitar, etc.


    I still have about 15 more instruments I need to set up but I'm old and moving slow so it might get done or it might not.

    "Faith don't need no second opinion"

  • Not sure it will help you but I have NEVER seriously used the PERFORM mode on any of my (4) Profilers in the 10+ years since I became a Kemperite ... because this crap just doesn't work the way I would expect it to work. Drives me nuts to even think about it.

    But I'm not a gigging musician, I'm "just" an audio engineer taking care of 2 studios in different parts of the world.

    Martin, if I was was using the KPA exclusively in the studio I wouldn’t bother with Performance mode either. Browser mode and RM is a perfect combination. However, for live ise I couldn’t live without Performance mode. RM certainly isn’t perfect but ot has improved dramatically in the last year or so and does work really well now.

  • Thank you. That worked very well. It helped me a lot to Initialize performances to clear up some of them that I will never use or need. I was also able to clear out the slots except, as you say, the 1st one (Crunch preset / stock) and I was able to make my own 70's style tones performance with 5 different presets.


    All is well that ends well and this ended well :)


    Thanks again everyone.

  • I spend 99% of my time in performance mode.


    I sample sounds in browse, then move what I like and want to tweak into a performance slot. Then I can tweak to my heart’s content without worrying that I’ve destroyed the original rig in browse.


    At a gig, it’s 100% performance mode.

    As for the idea of overhauling it so you can ‘delete’…..right click in RM on a performance. Initialize……that memory slot is clear.


    That is as empty as you’ll get.

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


  • That is actually brilliant.

  • I will say - I do wish there was an option in browse mode in RM to add a rig to a performance slot. The way it works now feels more like a hack than a genuine workflow.


    We can save performance slots to the browse pool.....but not the other way around?


    That one change would make most of this dual RM screen stuff unnecessary.

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

  • That one change would make most of this dual RM screen stuff unnecessary.

    I don't use dual RM instance when editing performances. I leave the chicken head on performance. In RM. I browse the rigs and copy the one that I want, select the performance, select first slot, and then paste. I don't like the dual RM stuff because the RM GUI is not set up well for a partial window and I'm not using two screens on the PC that I use for this.

  • I've played all my gigs in performance mode. Never a problem. I actually find it easy to use as it is familiar to me as other midi controlled gear I've used in the past. I basically treat each performance slot like a preset & use a midi controller to select the preset (performance slot) I want to use at the time. I spend almost all my time in performance mode.

  • I use both. I hear what you're saying about RM and performance mode because in the past there used to be LOTS of bugs while editing - I actually got used to do it front the front panel so that I wouldn't lose my mind - but yesterday I made a performance for the first time in two years or so and it went super smooth so it looks like things have been sorted out in the latest versions. Hope you sort out your issue.

  • I’m a denizen of the performance mode. I have spare performances for just testing out rigs. I guess it’s because I came from the boss GT series and am rally at home with the layout and workflow there, plus I use the KPA a lot for gigging.

    A brace of Suhrs, a Charvel, a toaster, an Apollo twin, a Mac, and a DXR10

  • Performances can only be 'Initialized' when you're editing slots on the KPA itself. There are 125 slots and you can reset them, not delete them. 'Delete Performance' is available in Rig Manager if you've copied the Performances to a separate folder OFF the profiler (which I do quite often as a backup, within RM. I make dated backups). Those, you can delete.

    I'm not sure why you can't swap rigs within RM? I find that quite easy... As others have said, there have been quite a lot of bugs in the past, but I am finding the latest S and RM versions much more stable.

    Kemper Powered Head / Stage / Powered Kabinet