Posts by RosboneMako

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.

Quote from Yoda Guitar

I don't see any added value or point in this, profiling a modeller is like making a copy of a replica.

This is closed minded. The Kemper will give you all kinds of adjustment on the Axe profiles. Since it is not an exact copy you will get the distortion profile and a freq curve baked into the cab. Then you can use this amp with other cabs. Use the new cabs with other profiles. All kinds of options.

Why not make something new and exciting?

Why limit yourself to a profile someone else did? Was it done well? Correct mics etc? The gain you like? EQ'ed how you like?

Why even own the Kemper, profiling is half of the fun? Put an EQ in before the Axe and boost the mids where you want them, then profile it.

I thought for sure when I bought the Kemper I would be using all these great profiles on the RE etc. No, I use the ones I made on my old modellers 90% of the time.

Half of the profiles in the RE are much better with a new CAB because they have amateur mic placement, etc. You can do some super clean Axe profiles and EQ after the amp/Axe to get some decent sounding CABs that work for you. Then put them in a folder in RM and cycle thru them with your favorite amps until you get the magic combo.

You own the stuff, why not use it? I bet you could make some crazy profile and call it something traditional and post it and no one would be able to tell the difference.

Quote from Kim_Olesen

Cheap earbuds are not made to play at the spl levels needed. Even molded buds only blocks out 25db of ambient sound. This means that eventhough we might not be aware of it, we play much louder in earbuds when on stage, than if just walking the dog.

So no, cheapo socalled iem (everyone will call even the cheapest of earbuds an iem) just wont do. They will crap out and sound terrible, because they are being maxed out. There is a reason companies like Ultimate Ears and Vision Ears excist.

Add to that, that there is a pretty big difference in what sounds good on an entire mix playing from your mp3 player, and what feels comfortable for a guitar sound. The most hifi sounding buds are not very suited for guitar playing. You need more rounded highs and smoother mids for that.

I agree with everything you have said here. As soon as a company has a design that has the smallest difference to all the others, they jack the price up. It is mostly marketing. It still may not cost any more to make. So the prices go up exponentially once you get away from the pack.

My point was people tend to try the cheaper models knowing these facts. And for some people, this works out fine. And some people want a specific thing and are willing to pay for it.

The real problem is also the fact that sound is impossible to define. What sounds good to one is not good to another. That is what is great about forums is most people have several headphones and you can at least compare the ones you own or know what they sound like and get a good reference point.

Quote from joshriggs

It sounded like 💩.

I do this all day long every day. I tweak a profile to where I think it sounds amazing. Play a different profile for 2 minutes and come back to it like "Oh man, this sounds like garbage." And after about an hour of high gain stuff I think they all sound like garbage. I need to stop and come back later.

And when it comes to guitar pickups just forget it. Every guitar I have sounds completely different on the Kemper. I cant use a single profile for more than one guitar. I have 4-5 guitars with humbuckers and none of them sounds remotely the same on the Kemper.

Quote from Kim_Olesen

Why do people buy an expensive guitar, expensive Kemper/Fractal etc, and then when it comes to the equally important thing, how they are going to hear what they are playing, buy the cheapest wireless iem system and iem they can get. It baffles me to no end.

Because the construction of speakers and microphones is a very simple thing. Most "cheap" speakers are "good enough" that most people cant tell the difference. When you pay $99 for an SM57 you know you are throwing ALL of that money in the garbage can because the mic itself only costs $2.57 to make. You are paying for that "sound" and hopeful that their is some good quality control.

There is no valid engineering reason someone else cant make the exact same mic and sell it for $10 and make huge profits.

Money does not equal best sound.

Now once you start adding in wireless etc, things can get a little more complicated. I agree.

Quote from Feckless

I was wondering about the same thing, trying to make a direct profile of a tube amp using the xlr out of the Waza tube amp expander with the cab ir turned off in the TAE software.

I think the manual is saying that an amplifiers output interacts with the impedance/resistance of a physical speaker. The amplifiers sound is designed to work with a speaker loading its output stage. It is an integral part of the electrical circuit design.

So your amp should always have a physical speaker or load connected.

A speaker or load box create the needed electrical load. That signal is captured and reduced to a line level signal where an IR can be used to "color" the sound. The IR is not part of the electrical circuit.

Imagine you took a picture with a great camera and great lights (Amp and Speaker). Then you took that picture and put it under a blue film (IR).

Speakers are rated at their 0 Hz resistance (DC). But they are made of large coils of wire which are inductors. Between each winding of wire is some capacitance. You also have a magnetic field and moving parts. These things have resistances (impedances) that change with frequency. So an 8 Ohm speaker at DC (0 Hz) will be wildly different at other frequencies (AC). This is what can give an amp/speaker combo a certain voice.

So you may not get an authentic sound when using a load box that has a fixed 8 ohm resistance (only using resistors, no inductance/capacitance) that does not change with frequency.

All of your stuff sounds amazing. Great writing as usual.

If you are talking about improving your vocals:

- Brush your teeth before you play to clear any flem etc from the back of your throat.

- Warm up a little with some soft scatting.

- Belt that shit out!!! It sounds like you are trying to be too quiet in this song. You wont get a great vocal sound unless you are pushing enough air to squeeze thru the gunk on your neck and make them chords vibrate!

I used to live around people and had thin walls so I always sang quietly and it sounded just like this song....Now I live in the woods and can scream my head off and the vocals improved drastically. You gotta make some noise for vocals to work.

Funny story I have recorded friends singing and they all sing quietly because it is very embarrassing. Then one day this little girl came over to do a song. She pulled up to the mike and started wailing. Song done in one take. This 6th grader had major balls. No worries.

HER: "When do I sing? Oh here.. on a 4 count... ok....WAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH"

ME: <Jaw on the floor> "Yep, that should do it. Wow. I really need to up my game."

I still try to live up to her guts when singing

I think we would need a sound clip of the POD and the Kemper to get a clear picture of what sound you are going for. You can make an account on SoundCloud and post there (most people here do).

I have a POD XT and POD HD. Was never a fan of the HD. The attack never sounded natural to me, so I have not spent enough time on it. I bring it up because every profile I hear on MY Kemper has a lot of bass and is missing a mid-high freq presence. Hi gain / metal likes no bass and a lot of mid-high, just like the PODs are dialed in.

If this is what you feel is missing you can try:

Dial down the BASS before the AMP:

- Adjust the AMP DEFINITION towards 10 to get rid of the flubby bass, but too much and the highs sound brittle/harsh. But it also gives you a little bit of mid range tweaking. There seems to be a sweet spot on high gain profiles.

- Roll down the BASS amp EQ since you are running it before the AMP. Make up for it after the AMP.

More gain and sustain:

- Compressor, after the gate, set to SOFT default setting. Adjust the first setting between 4-5.5 to get a gain and presence. Adjust the attack between 0.5 for more picking and 5 for a softer more over driven attack.

- People have commented that pushing the volume in a pedal slot is slightly different than adding gain. So you can also tweak the compressor volume up/down. Default is 1.5 for SOFT.

MID BOOST

A lot of gain profiles I hear on the web seem to have a lot of mid before the amp. So you can try to boost the mids in the amp EQ section. May need to add some highs also since the Kemper mid EQ is not the right frequency (too low). Again you have to rely on the post amp EQ to get it back to where you want it. But getting the right freqs pushed before the gain stage can help a lot.

You can always set the amp EQ flat and use a STUDIO EQ to cut the 80Hz and dial in the upper mid voice before the amp stage. Then you can roll back the AMP DEF since the 80hz flubbyness will be gone in the EQ section.

CABINET SETTINGS

Adjusting the cab settings can help tweak the high freq fizz. And if you feel the cab IR is too dark I would dial back the character to around -4.5 and bring up the AMP SAG a little to get some speakery thump back.

- Swapping out the CABS can totally change the sound also. I do this in Rig Manager. I have a list of cabs I copied out to a folder and just run thru them until I get something good.

MID-HIGH

- In the past I always used a Treble Booster after the AMP set to 2.5 and 10%. Just adds some brightness. But this is not a great solution for metal tones.

- Like you I tend to EQ after the amp. I use a Studio EQ pretty often and set the HIGH to 800Hz. This gives a push in that mid-high range I feel is missing in most profiles. The STUDIO EQ can murder some of the attack. So you might try the METAL EQ first. Since it is limited in what it can do it is more transparent (less filters getting things out of phase etc).

MIX CONTROL

Adding a pedal before the amp gives a little more control. Because you can make small changes using the MIX setting. The pedals also seem to have more dynamic range than the profiles. So things can get a little more lively and responsive.

A lot of metal guys add some CLEAN MIX in the AMP section also. Usually start at around .5 and slowly move up from there. It adds more mids and a more dynamic sound.

Nothing we can really say without hearing some samples of what you want.

I made a bunch of POD HD profiles that are up on the RIG EXCHANGE. I also just started profiling a Peavey Vypyr that hit a lot of the mid-high freq stuff I cant find in Kemper profiles but my POD stuff has. The bottom end on those is also pretty tight. I will be posting those pretty soon.

As far as my personal preference, I do not like any guitar alone in headphones. It all sounds bad to me. There is this weird "THONK" tone in the upper mids that is horrible. The pick attack is probably resonating in the small headphone cup area. Something you cant get away from.

So many people on here like IN EAR MONITORS . Which would get around that cup resonance. I have not tried any so I have no opinion. They may sound great. Air Pods, Shures, whatever might be worth a try.

For headphones I have several low cost brands, Sennheiser 280, and BeyerDynamic DT770 80 ohm. The 280's and DT770's sound the best of course.

The 280's are super flat and have the best response for dialing in tones/mixing. But the 770's are great for music.

Quote from Dynochrome

I know. Sometimes I get mad that I didn't have this in the 80's

Unrelated story, I have an amazing wife. I have so much stuff I have started to give it away. She always tells me "No! Do not get rid of any of it".

Well I gave away my Peavey Vypyr30 right before I got the Kemper (against her wishes). But luckily I got to borrow it this week. And the Vypyr Line Out with the Kemper is nailing all of the sounds I have been looking for since I got the Kemper.

The Vypyr alone sounds OK, but not amazing as you would imagine. But once you get the Kemper involved it comes to life.

So to your post, I made a Plexi tone on the Vypyr that nails my favorite guitar sound, Rush's Alex Lifeson tone from Moving Pictures on... very close to Signals. And I said to my wife today "I finally have the sound I have been trying to get since 1982 when I first heard Signals." Only took 40 years

So I have been wailing on Witch Hunt, Subdivisions, Tom Sawyer, Dream Line, Show Dont Tell, Far Cry, etc and been in heaven.

Thank You Kemper, this unit is amazing.

Quote from Dynochrome

Yeah I've read lots of posts of people bashing a KPA, and then to be revealed that they were using it in a way that was unsuitable.

Every time I look on websites for modelers they always have a lot of used ones in great condition. It does not matter what brand. All of those "I had them all but this one changed my life" units are all on sale, used by the ton.

The speaker you play it thru will have a dramatic impact on how it sounds, no matter what speaker it is. So I think every person gets one and never likes the sound because of their speaker / monitoring system / etc

I think that is what keeps these companies going. They get a bunch of sales they would not normally get if people understood how to listen to the device.

As for the OP, I do not play out with a band so I only use my studio monitors.

With other modelers I used them thru the FX loop with solid state amps, tube, amps, 1x12, 4x12, etc and had to tweak the tones for that application. I have not hit this milestone with the Kemper yet. Too busy making 10k profiles