a clean and clear rig without clipping

Quote from Wheresthedug

I will preface this post by saying “there is no wrong way to do anything “ if it sounds good to you it is good for you. However, there are efficient and inefficient processes and audiences generally have a subjective view of good sounds in their ears which may or may not match you idea of good sound.

Having said that, you continually seem to be fighting the Kemper trying to make it work in ways that it wasn’t designed to work. While you may get the result you are looking for at any one specific moment working this way often results in other problems further down the line. Fixing these problems then creates other problems which also need fixing and before you know it you are in a vicious downward spiral trying to fix an ever increasing number of issues.

There is no way you should need Clean Sense at +12db. That would l imply you are using super weak pickups. Lower output than the lowest output vintage single coils. Like active pickups with no battery weak. As you use a Les Paul you shouldn’t need Clean Sense above 0 to do its job. With fairly mid output pickups I run mine around -5db to stop the cleans being too loud.

I think you have stated in previous posts that you have some sound engineering experience? If so you will be aware of the concept of gain staging. Slamming the Clean Sense is like boosting the mic preamp gain until it is clipping like crazy then slamming a brick wall limiter after it to bring the level under control for later in the signal path.

If you have clean sense that high with a Les Paul I can pretty much guarantee that your overdriven sounds will be super quite in comparison and will need either the Amp/Rig volume pf the clean sounds massively reduced OR the Amp/Rig volume of the dirty sounds cranked up to compensate.

If you have clean sense set correctly and all of your Amp and Rig volumes set to 0db you should need to do only very minimal level adjustments between rigs. When you are doing these adjustments don’t forget that you can reduce the volume of the louder rigs just as easily as increasing the volume of the quieter ones.

My advice would be to totally reset all your rigs and Input and Output settings. Put Clean Sense back to 0, set Amp and Rig Volumes for all rigs to 0 also.

Take a single rig and adjust the gain from 0 to 10 (i would do this with an expression pedal set to morph the gain knob). Now adjust clean sense until the perceived volume of the clean and super high gain sounds is roughly equal. That is the “correct” setting for clean sense as its purpose is to balance clean and over driven rigs at a global level.

Once this is set properly you might find that solo rigs need a little boost to make them pop out. No problem raise the rig volume a touch for those righs. You might adjust EQ etc also but I am just focusing on the fact that the volume adjustment should be a few db hear and there never plus 12db on one an -12db on another. If you need to do that then something else is wrong.

If boosting clean rigs causes clipping just reduce overdriven rigs instead. But once again, if clean sense is set correctly you shouldn’t need to change it much at all.

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Hi Wheresthedug, You're absolutely right about me on all fronts. It's sometimes a struggle to get exactly what I want . I can read a manual as much as I like but several times I struggle too to really understand what a number of terms mean and how they influence each other (in the wrong way...) I know my Enlish but often you lose me in this matter, so I try too keep it simple.

I have a volume of 972 rigs and a backup of many more. I can use a lot of them for gigs but you and others undoubtedly will sound much better, more profound and more professional (no offense!) It's the engineer against the amateur.

Quote from Dynochrome

I can tell you the tone on that album is difficult to get. Live I use a MB profile that comes with the Kemper as it is the closet thing I've used and found easily. (One of the cleanest /13) On the album he used a Rickenbacker and a HiWatt. It sounded real thin so they triple tracked it. I love the clean sounds on "In Heat" and I've spent a lot of time attempting to mimic them.I consider those sounds somewhat of a goal to achive and a prime example of perfect clean sound. Sometimes I play some songs on that album with a Les paul custom with 498s. With that profile and a little compression & delay doubler I can get about as close as I feel I can with that guitar. Single coils MUCH better but sometimes our set clicks off so fast, I don't have time to switch guitars in certain situations so I just have to make do. If I had my way, I would use a tele or a guitar that splits the bridge pickup but I don't let that dictate what guitar I'm using . I hear people using distorted sounds for those songs sometimes and it irritates me knowing that to me so well. I get WAY closer than that using that profile tweaked. It's not the "super clean" that makes that tone, it's the punch,compression and stacking. Sometimes super clean can be very anemic, and there is a big area to experiment between ultra clean and light crunch tones.

Great story Dynochrome! You'r digging in deep! You know how to get somewhere!

By the way , Is this the full name: MB13. Rig Manager doesn't recognize this profile.

Hi MuddySludge, Thank you . Good useable profile!