Posts by raylinds

For sale is a near mint Kemper Profiler that is so new the plastic protective film is still on the LCD screen. It will include a USB thumb drive of many rig packs including the $200 Everything Collection of Tone Junkie rigs downloaded 5/30/2020 )see screenshot). I looked closely and could only find the tiny marks on the bottom shown in last photo (though you cans see dust in some of the pictures). I hate to part with it but seriously need the money.

Price is $1550.00 including shipping to continental US.

Thank you so much for putting the time and effort into these great profiles and documentation.

Your post is extremely timely for me as I play surf and other early 60s guitar instrumental music and just recently got into The Shadows in a big way. Hank Marvin was (and is) a truly gifted guitarist. His playing sounds deceptively simple, yet to get the subtle nuances of his feel and phrasing takes a lot of practice. It is well worth the effort, though, as it will make one a much better overall guitarist.

There are a lot of variables including the pick you are using and your picking style but mainly about the tone you are after, how the strings feel to you and what kind of music you are playing.

I was a huge SRV fan and used .012s and .013s for a while on my strat tuned to Eb, but nowadays use .010s on most of my guitars as I do a lot of bending and tune them to E. I was shocked when I learned that many of my favorite guitarists like Bully Gibbons, Brian May and B.B. King used really light gauge strings, as I think these players get great tones and I thought you needed fat strings for that.

I use .012 flatwounds on my jazz boxes and instrumental surf guitars as they just sound right for that kind of music. I have a couple of baritone guitars that I use for Spaghetti Western style instrumentals, and they sound better with fatter strings as they are designed to be tuned to B. I have one tuned to C for one particular song, and I wanted to use flatwounds on that, and the biggest gauge I could find was .013s. The strings felt like rubber bands which shocked me because the longer scale length increases string tension and was tuned a step up form normal. I was probably just used to the .014s to .068s that came on the guitars. Anyway, I ended up ordering a flatwound bass string and combined a set of flatwound .013s with the unwound B and E from the bari sets to make .014 to .070s (I couldn't find an .068 single bass string). It feels much better.

My point is, don't be afraid of experimenting with different gauges.

I've been seriously into surf instrumental guitar lately so needed the proper weapons:

[Blocked Image: https://live.staticflickr.com/…98403133_bab4714a68_o.jpg]

[Blocked Image: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49999175372_4e2373c3a6_o.jpg]20200603_182509 by raylinds, on Flickr[Blocked Image: https://live.staticflickr.com/…99175372_4e2373c3a6_o.jpg]

I've had the Profiler for a few weeks now and have given it some decent playing and tweaking time. I am currently working on a project recording early 60's instrumental surf, spy, and spaghetti western music, so I am using clean Fender tweed and brownface tones. I purchased the complete package of Tone Junkies profiles and have found some great clean Fender sounds, especially the Bandmaster and Bassman clean profiles. I am really impressed by how realistic the Kemper sounds and feels.

I am also going through a reissue Fender Reverb unit with NOS RCA 6k6, 12AX7 and 12AT7 tubes. Playing with my Fender Jazzman and Jaguar, they really sound authentic.

How much do I like it? I've got my Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue and Marshall 1x12 tube amps up for sale, along with a number of pedals.

What a great forum! So my Kemper arrived today and I spent some time playing with some profiles. I have been focusing on clean vintage Fender amps and have not been disappointed! This product really lives up to the hype.

Quote from tubelube

They have said we won't get that option. I'm using symlinks to get around it.

I guess I'll have to figure out how to do that. If this is my biggest problem with them, I have nothing to complain about. Let them focus on making it sound great (and it does).

This is a very basic feature that all software has except Rig Manager. Kemper needs to add this.

It is typical with gear this powerful that there is a learning curve. One day you stumble across something and think. "Man, I could have saved myself a lot of time and hassle if I knew about this from day one." As a newbie still waiting for delivery of my toaster, I would love to hear about your "eureka" moments with the Kemper.

Thanks,

Ray

Quote from jfmguitarist

Welcome and congrats! Which version did you order? If not a Stage, will you get a Remote? How about expression pedals to control things like Wah, Pitch, and Volume.... or to use the rig Morphing feature?

I got the toaster model head. It's intended use is in my home studio- I don't currently gig. So right now the plan is to not use a remote. I have a wah pedal that I absolutely love as well as a volume pedal. Right now my intention is to use those, but once I start playing with the Kemper, I may rethink that. Most of what I play is early instrumental guitar instrumentals, blues, and jazz so pretty clean basic sounds for now.

Of course, once I start to play and experiment with the Kemper, things could change.

Man, I think I'm going to like it here! For twenty years I have been intrigued by the prospect of having a device that could emulate great-but-unobtainable-by-the masses amps. I think Kemper may have done it. I can't wait to start playing.

Thanks for the warm welcome I will be posting my impressions and progress. For a variety of reasons, I had to lay off playing for a number of years, so am still working on getting my chops back, but now playing every day.

Expected delivery moved from tomorrow to Sunday.

I have been playing guitars on and off for over thirty years. Most of those years were spent in NYC where micing amps was out of the question. Even with my apartment on the 34th floor, the street noise was too much, so digital amp emulation was the way to go. I started out with the original Pod and ended up with a Digidesign Eleven Rack. Over the years I kept abreast of the advances in technology and kept reading great things about the Kemper and Ax FX units. As much as I lusted after those, I could not justify the expense for a hobby.

Fast forward to the present- I retired early and bought a home by a lake in Connecticut. All of a sudden owning physical amps became an option without all the street noise and no neighbors to complain about loud amps. I have always been a fan of the sound of real tubes- I have a high end Hi-Fi setup that is all tubes, so I bought a Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue for cleans, and a Marshall SL-5 for the overdriven Marshall sound. I also started collecting boutique pedals. I play a variety of styles including blues (from BB King to SRV), Jazz, classic rock and hard rock.

Recently I decided to focus on playing and recording early 60s guitar instrumentals- mainly surf stuff like Dick Dale, Bel-Airs, The Challengers, The Ventures, etc.. After acquiring a vintage reissue Fender Jazzmaster and a Jaguar, I was ready to make some authentic sounding surf tones (I already had a Fender Reissue tube reverb unit). I was able to dial in a decent sound with the Blues Deluxe. I started a project to record a surf album that would capture the original surf sound from '60 to '63. I did a lot of research on the recording techniques and equipment from the period and quickly realized there were some challenges.

First off, the SM57 had not been invented yet and most of those records were recorded with expensive tube condenser and ribbon mics on the cabinets of Fender Brownface amps. Being retired, I didn't want to have to spend a ton of money on mics for one project, so I decided to experiment with the Eleven Rack that had emulations of these amps and mics built in. I was thrilled to find that I was able to get a great surf tone by putting the Fender Reverb Unit in front of the eleven rack and dialing in a '59 Bassman miced with a Neumann U67. I really think the Fender reverb putting a couple of real 6L6 tubes in the signal chain helped.

Now I had read many times that the Kemper could blow away the Eleven Rack for authenticity with the right profiles, so I started doing research. I quickly discovered that there were a large number of great rigs consisting of some great Fender vintage amps, so I ordered a Kemper.

I am still awaiting delivery, but I am very excited about my new acquisition. Beyond this project, there are also some great rigs for the other styles I play. I have also purchased the complete collection of Tone Junkie rigs.

I look forward to participating in this forum.