Posts by lbieber

Quote from V8guitar

For high gain this is near impossible...the buzz/hum can be high at high volume and extremely noticable. Hum for me has been a real problem and hum doesn't always go away with backing the volume off.

I guess it depends on what is important. I don't often let notes tail off. I do a lot of "on/off" playing a la highway to hell intro. Seen so many people play songs like that with noise in between and its horrible.

It it always enlightening to hear how differently we use amplifiers and effects. I never find high gain desirable. Especially gain so high that hum dominates. How a note decays is a significant factor on how I decide if a tone is good. Long smooth decay that reflects how the guitar reacts unplugged is paramount to me. Noise dominating decay is a non-starter. In short, the signal chain must support my playing, not the other way around. Always good to understand other viewpoints.

I wouldn't wrack your brain too hard about this. This has been considered by MANY smart(and dumb) people for decades. I would ask why you think electrons are being supplemented with harmonics. Do you understand the physics behind electron flow in a conductor? Do you know what harmonics are, and how they are defined? It appears there is a rather large disconnect regarding these two things in your current thinking. It is hard to imagine how an amp model would, or should, account for the two things you mention.

On a secondary note, what is it about amp modeling that is missing from an aural perspective? As an electrical engineer and tube amp builder/ designer, I have concluded that amp models are so far developed that there isn't much, if any, need for improvement.

I guess I'm old school, but this discussion reflects why I don't like or use noise gates. Yes, some gates are better than others. Many times, the side effect is worse than the problem the gate is trying to solve. I am the noise gate in my system. Ride the volume knob and switch of the offending devices when necessary.

Most of it is unneccesary. And Joe has said as much in many interviews. He kinda has a travelling circus/freakshow of amps and guitars. Many go to see his shows just to see the gear.

The Kemper will work for what you have described. You will have most likely want one rig for for the acoustic/electric and another for the electric. If this is correct, you will want to change the rig on the Kemper when you change guitars. This will make the left/right scenario that you mentioned unneccessary. That is how I do it.

Bass tones vary a lot. What type of sound are you looking for? I find the clean SVT and B15 profiles to be very good for my preferred bass tones.

I never gravitated to the series combinations or the coil splits. I simply don't like either of them. I have a simplified wiring on my Pauls that allows for neck-bridge out of phase. This is very useful for me. There are a lot of different tones hiding in there. Some of Page's classic tones as well as tones in the Varitone type catalog that I enjoy a lot.

Quote from GuyJames

Been using the kemper since 2017 and it’s time to move on to greener pastures. It was a great unit to get into digital amps with however I’ve been using the same profiles for 4 years now because I can’t find any others I like and I’m just feeling uninspired with it. I’ve got a Fractal FM9 showing up this week. I have no doubt it will be as good if not better. I’ll be learning the FM9 for awhile and keep the kemper stage to compare but there’s no need to keep both.

Has anyone here made the same switch?

You imply in your post that the 'problem' with the Kemper is you. It is hard to imagine that the FM9 can resolve your predicatment in the long term. What will make you happy or inspired from an existential point of view?

Quote from theplayer

Yes, that's what I thought. It all comes from the guitar and that's how I did this. With one of these downloaded meambobbo reverbs from 2015. Sounds great for this song.

Interesting that Wicked Game is mentioned. For me the key to that song is not just reverb, but ~800ms delay with lot's of repeats. That tone is based on the delay IMO..

Quote from OneEng1

I don't know about smart, but an electrical engineer at least :).

From here: https://miro.medium.com/max/14…LzFj-r0rv_JmGntXulf1g.png

Imagine your pickup is basically a sine wave generator (it isn't of course), and some resistance. Your tone pot has a resistor and a capacitor. The capacitor can't change (without you getting a soldering iron out), and the tone pot is a variable resistor that can go from nothing (a hard piece of wire like it isn't there at all) to either 250K Ohms or 500K Ohms (these are the most common).

Capacitors present a dead short at very high frequencies and present a complete open circuit for DC signals (ones that don't move up and down at all). This is important you can see as the more of the signal you allow to go through the cap (ie, you lower the resistance on the tone pot toward zero), the less high frequencies will make it through and onto the volume pot.

Note, that even when you have your pot turned all the way up, there is still SOME high frequencies going through the capacitor. The higher the resistor value, the less this is true.

Also, just a note, there are several different ways to wire up your tone knob and volume control to your pickups. I have shown only the most simple one for the purpose of explanation.

This guy goes through this simple setup in a video here:

Note: In this video the internal resistance of the pickup is ignored.

Display More

As mentioned, this is an oversimplification. All of the above is relatively incorrrect depending on how accurately you want to understand how the pickups, control, cables, etc.. work as a system.

I attached a file that I found on the web several years ago. It will either help you understand fully, confuse you, or make you decide that you would rather not know. GuitarFreak_6_60_051219_xlsm.pdf Due to allowed extensions I had to rename it as .pdf. Download it and rename to GuitarFreak_6_60_051219.xlsm.

Have fun

BTW, the answer to your original question is that it kinda acts like a low pass filter in a first approximation. The devil is in the details and in the end there are quite a few factors that can contribute to errors of that approximation.

Quote from nyandres

Not sure it helps... I profiled one of my favorite clean amps a few days ago...
Evans AH200 (under author TiltSound). Hopefully I did the amp justice. I think the profile sounds really good, and very very very clean.

Also by the way, i noticed on really clean amps, I have to lower the master volume to like -10 so that I hear it as intended in some FRFR amps.

I got a couple of my lap steels out of the closet and used your Evans profiles. They are absolutely perfect for the clean sound I prefer for country, jazz and Hawaiian. Love CLEAN, full range rig. A bit of hall reverb completes the setup for me. Thank you!

Soon I'll give it a go with 6 string electric.

Quote from paults

Total load would equal (8+16) / 2 = 12 ohms. 12 ohms is within the recommended range of 4 to 16 ohms.

8//16 = 16/3 = 5.33

Are you saying RM is unresponsive every time you open it? If so, then I would uninstall and reinstall.

Many of us have experienced RM losing connection to the Profiler. In that case, rebooting the hardware, software or both will resolve the issue for a period of time.

Quote from Wheresthedug

...I find the best way to practice with tracks in a different key is to transpose the track rather than the guitar. I use Transpose! seventhstring.com which is relatively cheap and the single best practice/transcription tool I have ever bought.

I agree. VLC is free and can transpose the track. To be honest, I normally just retune. Takes a few seconds on a fixed tail piece guitar. A bit more on a floating trem system. I keep a wedge on my desk for that.

A lot of good points made so far. For me, IEMs are never going to sound as good as natural hearing and suffer from unaviodable issues. Plugging your ears leads to less that optimum results, always. My ears physcally fatigue just from being plugged for long periods of time. Bone conduction is a real problem. No matter how the IEMs are fitted, ear canal changes have an impact on the sound and feel. This is true especially for singers. The disconnected feeling is also real. The hassle of a separate mix is just that. I use IEMs when volume issues dictate that I 'save' my hearing. IMO, the best situation is to get everyone to play at at proper level. This allows the freedom to not use IEMs and experience natural hearing. This is absolutely the best situation for me. IEMs are a fallback when I am on a stage where the volume levels are out of control. Otherwise, I don't want them.

Just because 'everyone' uses them, doesn't mean they are the optimum solution. Natural hearing is always best and it is worth taking steps to avoid any other compromised 'solution'. There are pros who refuse to compromise, i.e Derek Trucks, one of the most talented guitarists on the planet, won't use them.

There are also tactile problems with transpose. The guitar is vibrating at the a different frequency than the transposition. This is an issue for me. I can feel the dissonance between the two and it is not natural. So, it is not only a hearing problem from my POV

I am in favor of consistency with gain and eq. The high level of detail built into many of the modelers make them more difficult to use IMO. Simple and consistent is my preference.

I have designed and built many tube amps with different topologies. One thing that can make a real amp 'tweaky' is cascaded gain stages. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Kemper approach to address cascading in detail anyway. Get a modeler if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

I harbor no hate for Rhett

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.

I enjoy playing at different tempos, but every well-written song sounds better at a slower speed to me.