Posts by RosboneMako

Well, I was not able to return my Kemper (which may be a good thing). Kemper support feels my unit is working normally. Since I do not feel the unit sounds correct I do not want to unload it onto some poor bastard on the used market.

So I set out to get the original tone I was looking for when I bought the unit. To make sure I have tried everything. So I purchased M.Britts Profile 1 pack to get the 3P Plexi + Tim 6 2 profile used in Paul Davids Top 5 Kemper Profiles YouTube example. This sound is the main reason I bought the Kemper. What is another $40 when I have an $2000 brick sitting in front of me.

Of course my unit does not sound anything like PDs video. Not even close.

So I went to MBritts SoundCloud example of this amplifier. His MP3 sounds very close to my Stage. His is a touch clearer but they are very similar. This confirmed what Kemper support claimed, my unit is not broken.

But MBritts example sounds nothing like PDs video. It is a little muddy and the bass is flubby. Very unlike PDs video, but very much like all of my Kemper profiles. So does MB have a dead Kemper that sounds like mine does???

My unit has 2 issues: No singing overtones and distant compressed flubby sound. Playing low notes it just disappears into flubby nothingness.

So I set out twisting and turning every knob on the Kemper. The knob that made it start to sound decent was actually the AMP COMPRESSOR. If I jack this up to around 5-6 the sounds gets a little more in your face with some overtones.

This got me about 40% there to match PDs sound. Looking at his WAVE file display in Goldwave, I see that his loud parts were much more compressed than mine. But his sounds WAY more present and lively, how can it be MORE compressed than mine????

So I added a stomp compressor AFTER the amp section set to the SOFT default. KA-Freakin-BOOM! It was as if someone turned on a light and I could see for the first time.

So now I am about 75-80% there to where I want to be. I still dont have the overtones I hear everyone else get. And the answer to a dead sounding over compressed sound was to add two more compressors. Who would have guessed. So I am finally at a sound I am happy with. still not 100% but closer.

I also tweaked a few other things like the Amp def, EQ, Direct mix. Maybe if I start all over again I can get closer to PDs sound.

Here is a sound clip of where I am at this point. IT IS VERY LOUD!!!

https://soundcloud.com/user-88…m_campaign=social_sharing

I have tried all of the possibilities. Clean Sens, Dist Sens, turned off all comps, sag, clarity, etc. It does not matter what I do the sound is compressed and dead.

I made a similar Marshall tone with a J-45, screamer, and a tube drive on my PodHD. It sounds rich and dynamic. 100 times better. It has a ton more dynamics than my Kemper. It sounds like a real amps dynamics. The Kemper sounds so weak and choked. When you dig in instead of getting more harmonics and louder it just gets mellow and muddy. Loses all pick dynamics.

I clearly got a bad one. Something is wrong with it. It is going back to where I bought it to get a Helix or maybe exchange it if they have another Kemper on site (they normally do not).

I did the factory reset in the menu and its all packed up and ready to go. This is why I never spent more than $500 on a modeller before buying the Kemper. I went out on a limb and it snapped off

Thanks for trying to help me out guys. I love the Kemper ecosystem and community.

I did some more testing today and on the M.Britt 68 Marshall the clean sense does not make any difference to the tone on my unit. It seemed to make a big difference on a high gain rectifier profile I was playing. Maybe I am just that bad at guitar. But mine sounds like it is very compressed so all of my playing sounds dead and weak. It is not inspiring at all.

A weird side effect of the overly compressed sound is after playing for like 15 minutes everything just sounds terrible to me. I am constantly playing harder and harder trying to get some dynamics out of my playing and get some life out of the sound. It just does not happen.

If I play a single note very softly or I tear into it as hard as I can, the notes volume does not change. The harmonics come up in volume a little so you get a feeling that it is louder. The volume may change 3dB max. On a real amp in the room the volume would probably change 20 dB or more. And the tone would change drastically.

I was explaining my issue to someone as the profiled amp has a curve where the gain and frequency response changes and my unit sounds like it never gets to the upper 1/3 of that curve. But when I watch videos or listen to mp3s of Kempers, they all get in that curve.

If I tweak my CLEAN SENS up to about 6 the amps start to come to life more. I think this has been my main issue since day one. Watching videos of people saying "you can tweak it for different guitars but I always keep it at 0". And why would you adjust the CLEAN SENS on a distorted profile

Well 0 sounds terrible on my unit. All of the amps sound like modellers, not the real thing. So either mine is messed up (which I still believe it is) or everyone runs CLEAN much hotter than 0? I wonder if this is one of those things where people come on here saying they have no sustain? Adjust the CLEAN SENS?

In order to troubleshoot things, I have moved my Kemper from its normal spot so I am not 100% this has fixed my issues. I will test and post here soon...

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

Quote from HELL-G

_{RosboneMako Did you ever contact support? https://www.kemper-amps.com/contact}

Just sent an email asking how to reset it to Factory Defaults so I can return it. Thanks!

Quote from RosboneMako

Well now I am conflicted. No preset on my Kemper sounds that good. My Kemper must be busted also

I looked thru my M.Britt folder and did not see it. I removed a ton of presets, that one must some place weird. Thanks

Well it looks like there will soon be another Kemper on the USED market. My Kemper comes no where even close to Joshuas tone. I tried every guitar, pedal combination, added Noise gate, etc. My Kemper sounds like complete shit compared to the MP3 provided.

This is why I have been spending 40 hours a week on trying to get good at adjusting the Kemper tones, because mine is busted.

Looks like a Helix is on the near horizon???

Joshua I would kill to have the tone you provided. The whole reason I bought the Kemper was for this tone. I heard videos of M.Britt marshall profiles singing with harmonics like this. Mine has never done it. My $200 Peavey Vypyr does it. But not my $1800 Kemper.

Thanks for this post. You have saved me months of tweaking mine. I will just get rid of it.

My Kemper puts out a ton of like 50Hz and somewhere around 3-4 Khz. The low to mids are compressed all to shit. No matter what I do I can never get that mid range singing over tones. My Kemper never has that deep 4x12 cabinet thump either.

Well it was fun talking with all you guys, best of luck in the future.

Quote from paults

M Britt 69 mars 50 9 3 is a Kemper Factory Preset.

Well now I am conflicted. No preset on my Kemper sounds that good. My Kemper must be busted also

I looked thru my M.Britt folder and did not see it. I removed a ton of presets, that one must some place weird. Thanks

Quote from JoshuaL1

The profiles are M Britt 69 mars 50 9 3 and JCM 800 1 5 2.

What pack are these profiles from? The 2020 pack seems to have a 68 Marshall and a JCM800?

I think the good Fender Deluxe CAB is on Rig Exchange as:

Fen69DLX V-Clean

TorOskarOvaJohnsen

This cab has a ton of dynamic range, good bass, and a specific high end. It may work good a Marshall type sound.

Just a good example of how a good CAB will change things.

I still have not figured out how to get a good CAB sound. The CLEAN setting seems to make more dynamic versions but not always. And the frequency response does weird things to CABs and makes them sound very compressed and dead. I have made about 200 CAB only profiles and still not figured it out, because I am not to bright

Quote from musicmad

Or maybe slightly more precise: This affects how the person profiling dials in the tone.

No, I think it literally alters the IR/CAB and locks in the tone (Freq Resp of the pickups). You will also see the AMP DEF being different. Same guitar same profile will sound different if different pickups are used.

What you play during the REFINE also tweaks the CAB. I am still trying to figure out what works best for me.

So if I were to make a clean Fender profile I would use the neck pickup. Doing high gain stuff, the bridge and a humbucker. Super high gain I would use a metal pickup like an EMG 85.

But I agree with your statement, that the profiler may adjust the sound to the guitar afterwards. M.Britt always has some small tweaks like a compressor or echo.

As people have said already, it sounds pretty good. The fizz usually lives around the 3-5 kHz range. 5k and up gives you the pick attack and "airy" sound.

THINGS TO TRY:

M.Britt usually uses his P90s when making profiles. He may have used Humbuckers since these are a little more gain than normal for him. If you are then using Single Coils the amp will sound gritty and bitey, since it is tuned to the humbuckers. I would roll the AMP DEFINITION down. Too much and it will get real bassy and you will lose a lot of the pick attack. Which is another thing you mentioned. The AMP DEF really changes the sound of the pickups/profile so make large adjustments to find where your limits are, and then make slow adjustments to find just the right tone. There will be a small sweet spot.

Next I would try a little EQ. Generically set Presence on AMP EQ to about -2.3. Then bring the Hi/Treble up a little to get some brightness back. You may need to adjust the MID down a touch if it sounds too dark/muddy after killing the highs. After playing a while you may bring the Presence back up a little.

Next attempt would be to switch the AMP EQ to PRE. This will let you tweak the pickup response using the AMP EQ. Then add a studio EQ after the AMP. This will give you total control of the fizz and attack. The 3rd filter should be set around 3.3 kHz with a large Q and roll the gain down to reduce the fizz. I normally set the HI filter to around 800Hz and add a little gain to bring the brightness back.

AMP GAIN

Another thing to try might be rolling the AMP GAIN down a touch. A lot of profiles get fizzy/scratchy when you add more gain than the profile started with. Then you need to add a pedal to get some gain back in a cleaner way. Having a pedal and some AMP DIRECT MIX always results in a more dynamic sounding profile.

A Compressor before the AMP set to 4.5, 2.6, 85%, 1.0 is a good place to start. Dial the 4.5 up/dn for gain and the 2.6 up/dn for pick attack. The 1.0 gain can also be up/dn for gain, but this pushes the amp more like the gain control on the amp so it may result in the fizz coming back.

A pure DS pedal with gain set around 2 gives a decent push without mangling the tone.

CABINET

Sometimes the CAB in the profile just sounds wrong to you. And no amount of EQ will fix it. I would try some different CABs. This will squash that fizz before it even exists. I posted a DSL40 cab I made on here some place that sounds pretty good. There is also a FENDER DELUXE profile on the RE that has a great CAB. M.Britt has a great Rockman profile that has a darker sounding CAB that may work great for this Marshall tone and Single Coils.

DSL40 CAB POST

I have found when making profiles that the guitar used is key to the result. The bridge pickup has more mids, the neck more hi/lows. This imprints into the profile. Bridge will sound smooth and the neck will sound bassy and fizzy. So you can look thru the RE for amps that used humbuckers in bridge position (99% of gain profiles) and swap those CABs with yours in RM.

SUMMARY:

Your tone sounds amazing. Great playing also. Sounds like you are really close to where you want to be.

I forgot to mention the one thing that fixes most sound complaints with the Kemper:

The Kemper outputs are VERY HOT. They can drive well over a typical LINE OUT signal level. So make sure you are not clipping your output into what ever you are plugged into. I normally run my main volume at -12dB or less to be safe. Even at -12dB I can over power things if I am not watching.

Another thing I find with some profiles is they feel like they go from to 100 in the gain. Adding a touch of AMP CLARITY (.5 - 2.5) seems to bring them closer to what my brain expects. Many profiles also benefit from adding some DIRECT MIX.

Many higher gain profiles are done at very loud volumes. Some may not be. If the profile is missing that low end thump of a loud amp, add some AMP SAG. I also like the pedal Compressor since it adds some more thump. Just trying to think of things that may not sound like an amp in the room cranked.

Since you mentioned using the neck pickup for these profiles, a Treble Booster after the AMP with a low MIX setting can help liven some bluesier to rock sounds.

Quote from steveboss007

Basically, what's the problem? Clean and crunch tones are OK, even though clean lacks "body" or headroom feel, but you could work with them, the effects are also great, but lead "gainier" overdrives. It’s so artificial and plastic that it sounds like the cheapest multi-effect.

To get the best help here, you would need to post some sound clips to help people figure out what the problem is.

There are some settings depending on where you are taking the sound out of the Kemper. Such as PURE CABINET, SPACE, Etc I would turn all of these off in the global settings (OUTPUT).

From my experience, the CABINET is the "voice" of the sound. Clean and crunch sounds have less distortion. Distortion creates harmonics (multiples of frequencies). So a high gain sound will be playing a lot more frequencies at the same time. When you hear all of these frequencies at once, you hear the full frequency response of the CAB/IR.

The more gain, the more the CAB/IR affects the sound.

Depending on your monitoring source (PA, Amp, etc) your sound will also be "colored" or affected by the speakers you are hearing it come out of. Because of this fact, the PROs on here sometimes have two different outputs. They adjust the sound to be great for the PA and use MAIN OUTPUT. Then they use the MONITOR out for on-stage monitoring like an AMP, FRFR, etc.

If you dont like the sound in general your best bet is to adjust the EQ and the CABINET. In the CAB section you can tweak the CHARACTER up/down. CHAR down removes the effects of the CAB creating a clearer sound closer to a direct out. CHAR up adds more of the CAB effect.

Without knowing what you are trying to do, it is impossible to give you any exact help. Everyone likes different things. SoundCloud is your friend for posting clips that people can hear to guide you.

The dynamic range of clean sounds is usually very high.

High gain stuff goes from quiet to very loud with very little difference in how hard you are picking.

Most people will add some compression to a clean sound to reduce the dynamic range. This will make the profile sound louder to you/me. Most pros have compression in the profiles they release.

To keep the sound the same you should use the compressor in the AMP section.

To "color" or change the sound a little bit you should use the pedal/fx compressor before the AMP. This gives a nice mid range gain boost also and you can control the pick attack.

You can also tweak the AMP SAG for some low frequency compression. Makes your amp sound like it is on 10.

Quote from lespauled

The code isn't the problem. The problem is that the Kemper would need to know the impedance of the cabinet. Cabinets don't have the means to transfer the information back. The only way is to use a multimeter, which is not built into the Kemper.

Power = Voltage * Current

Power = Voltage^2 / Impedance

Power = Current^2 * Impedance

With some adjusting for power factor, crest factor, etc.

There are two easy ways to measure the power:

1) Measure the Voltage and Current at the output of the Kemper.

2) Measure the Voltage OR Current at the output and calculate power from the cabinet impedance.

Method #1 is probably the best way. It will be more accurate and does not require any knowledge of the cabinet impedance.

To use method #2, the Kemper would need to measure the cabinet impedance (as you suggested) or have the user enter the impedance manually (as the OP is requesting). Of course you will not get a true power reading since you do not know the phase angle between the voltage and current and therefore cant calculate power factor.

So yes, the CODE is the PROBLEM. The Kemper engineers just need to let you edit the cab impedance. Assuming this is the method they are using. I do not know or even own a power Kemper ... yet So I could just put down my crack pipe and be quiet. But what fun is that?

This has been the most confusing post of all time on this site.

First, I dont understand why the Kemper is posting the wattage incorrectly. Calculating wattage is baby sh*t compared to what the Kemper is already doing. Unless they are NOT measuring anything and just going off the volume knob and an assumed load. Just so people can have a ball park idea of how much power they are using.

Second, I dont understand why people are annoyed that someone asks for it to be usable. They put it in there and with 10 minutes of code could make it function better. Why not do it?

Whats next? Covid is not real and the world is flat? Guitars are really sticks of wood that shoot sub atomic particles at the far right to reprogram their brains?

Quote from DonPetersen

Tube amps are the references that matter

I would agree to this statement.

Here is my crazy "too long didnt read" idea of what the Kemper does:

The Kemper was designed to copy all of the great amps of the world. So I look at Profiles as single mathematical model of a great tube amp. But this great model can take on the sounds(Gain, Freq) and articulation (Cab, IR) of any amp and microphone combination.

Do not think of the Kemper as a digital copy. It will be its own thing. Will it sound like the original. Yes, if the original sounds like a tube amp.

Since the baseline of a profile is a model of a tube amp. Profiling pedals and modellers does not always translate. The may have weird non linear dynamics going on that do not translate to a tube amp model. Some devices also have time related things happening that will not translate in a profiling process.

The Kemper will sort thru the gain stages of the amp, copy the frequency response, and create an IR (CAB). These 3 things are the fingerprint/DNA of a tube amp. So if the device your are profiling reacts like an amplifier, the Kemper will do a great job of translating it into Kemper world.

And once it is in the Kemper, you can adjust the CLARITY, SAG, DIRECT MIX, ETC to take it to even better places than the original. So you will make a copy of a certain amp then be able to adjust it even further in the Kemper.

My argument:

Profiling anything may result in complete trash. Or it may create some amazing sound of an amp that does not even exist. Why would you not try?

Are you going to wait 10 years for someone to build the latest Dumble then profile it, when you could have had that sound 10 years earlier if you were not a tube amp snob guy? The greatest amp sound ever made is out there waiting to be discovered by someone profiling random stuff. This to me is the greatest achievement of the Kemper. Not what it is doing now but what is possible.

Buy an Axe or helix and you are done. You can only make it do what it can do. In theory, the Kemper can do things tomorrow it cant do today. If I realized this 10 years ago I would have bought a Kemper the minute it came out.

Quote from ERPERP

I have a Kemper, and love it. More curiosity than anything else. Would be a cool retort to someone saying the amps sounded better on axe.

I have done a bunch of Line 6 stuff and had varying results. Recently started doing a Peavey Vypyr 30 and I am very happy with the PLEXI model, The Twin and Deluxe models also came across amazing. Super clean and chimey.

A lot of it comes down to the CAB. The cabs in the Line 6 stuff were always bad. So they do not profile amazing as you would imagine.

The Peavey has a Line Out and the cabs come across pretty well. But like the Line 6 stuff, they lack a little low end for my taste. I added an EQ after the Vypyr and have made about 150 different sounding cabs. And will probably make about 50 more at least

From the 500 or so profiles I have made it seems like the CAB/IR is always the limiting factor. Would be nice for a Kemper update to be able to use two cabs within the same profile. The real amps seem to have a couple different levels and feel when you play. I cant seem to get with the Kemper. It sounds like its dynamic range is being limited by the CAB.

I do not have a powered Kemper. So I am not familiar with the topic.

If the Kemper measures the Voltage and Current they can calculate power. They would not need cab impedance.

Power = Voltage * Current

So it seems like it would always show the correct approximate power.

Me personally, I would try a couple things:

1) Gain as suggested above. Maybe tweak CLARITY and DIRECT mix level. Usually start around .5 and go up.

2) Compressor before amp set to 3-6, 0-5, 85%, 1.1

3) Treble Booster before or after the amp. Sometimes both. Adjust mix to get the gain you want.

4) One DS pedal at a gain around 2, adjust mix as needed.

Not sure fire fixs, but some things I have found that push the sound a little without drastic tone changes.