Effective way of organizing presets: suggestion

  • I like my Kemper tidy. It's partially an OCD thing, but as someone who hauls his toaster off to clients it's important that my tags are consistent and that i have a workflow that helps me find what i need quickly.


    Correcting tags on-board and using the knob to browse alphabetically is completely impractical. Until Performance mode or a librarian comes along, i had to find an efficient method of sorting everything -
    correcting tags, sorting by band names or sound types, truncating lengths so they show on-screen etc.


    I finally found a method that's practical and efficient enough to be used regularly - for me. Let's hope it works for you as well.
    Some of this might be a bit technical, so let me know - if there's interest, i'll go into details.


    First, get Laurent's tool (GuyTarero).
    I got it directly from him, i hope he chimes in and gives me a link to the thread but in the meantime, this is the file.


    The bare essence:


    -Putting the preset type (clean, crunch, effects etc.) into the 'rig author' tag. (Can also be applied to guitars (LP/Strat) or environments (live/studio/headphones))
    This allows you to jump between preset types by using 'sort by author'. Also allows you to limit browse mode to only lead presets, for example, by selecting 'current author'.
    Finally, it makes the type visible on screen when browsing, so you can keep two adjacent Vox AC30 presets and know with a glance if it's clean or overdriven without wasting precious preset-name space.
    The author names are still saved - in the amp and cab author tags.


    -Creating a 'Audition' category for testing new rigs before incorporating them.
    We all get lost in the presets now, with the amount of new cool stuff in the rig exchange.
    If you've found a preset you like, just edit the 'rig author' tag with the Kemper. Set to whatever category is appropriate. Takes seconds.
    When you save the rig with the new tag it's automatically added to 'favorites' (if you haven't changed the option in 'system') -
    so just use 'erase all but favorites' and you've got a clean Kemper again.


    -Modifying Laurent's tool to turn off caps-lock.
    For those of you who, like me, just can't stand it :D


    -Creating a conditional formula to alert you when a tag exceeds the visible length.
    I saved a spreadsheet that does this automatically, so i just take Laurent's tool's results and paste them in.



    When i go to a session:
    1. browse through band names (up/down keys)
    2. set to display current author only.
    3. sort by name/gain. Whichever is applicable.


    When testing new sounds:
    1. load 'em up on a DOK.
    2. use Laurent's tool.
    3. fix tags - so i know what i'm auditioning.
    4. 'rig author' = audition.
    5. load it on the kemper, browse to audition (up/down)
    6. if i find anything i like, rig -> show tag -> edit 'rig author' -> 'Rhythm' (for example)
    7. erase all but favorites.


    • Now it's finally simple and easy enough to use regularly. It literally takes minutes to sort through my 400+ rigs.
    • It takes seconds to find just the kind of sound i want - i can jump to lead sounds and sort by gain (i've got some low-gain and clean lead sounds as well).
    • I've finally got enough room in my preset name so nothing gets cut - and the amount of info you can squeeze into the screen is impressive.
      I can see that i'm looking at the second mode of the green channel of a Bogner Ecstacy for a low gain lead sound that works well with a volume knob. All at once.
    • I can also erase a whole session or set-list in seconds when the job's done or the gig is over.


    Hope this helps someone else. It's been a major breakthrough for me.
    If anyone has more tips, let me know!

    "But dignity is difficult to maintain
    stamina requires constant upkeep
    repetition is boring
    and you pay for grace."

    Edited 2 times, last by Quitty ().

  • Just a short notice ; my 'mod' of Laurent's code has an internal length limiter' so you won't be able to type upper than the actual KPA tag limits .


    You can also type in lower case :D.


    IIRC, your code doesn't support batch processing of .csv files, so it can't really help in this regard, unfortunately.
    If you can add drag&drop or loading files by command line parameters, though, it'll be great!

    "But dignity is difficult to maintain
    stamina requires constant upkeep
    repetition is boring
    and you pay for grace."

  • Yes! A batch mode with command line parameters would be awesome. Drag and drop, too. If it will open a kpa rig from command line then drag and drop on the editor icon would launch the editor and open the file. Should be simple enough.


    something like this where /setauth sets the author field and * would be the wildcard for all rigs in a folder.


    kpaedit /setauth "John Doe" *


    Very powerful!


    bd