Posts by tz57strat

  • Hello Kemper world!

    ST - thank you so much for the kind welcome and the resources! I am delighted to be here. I'm not as creepy as Ed, I promise.


    Monkey Man - with 14,000+ posts it's not exactly like you're hiding out!


    Thank you Zapman, that's good to hear! I tend to believe it's the last amp I'll ever need.

  • Hello Kemper world!

    First, thank you for allowing me to join this awesome community and the opportunity to say hello and introduce myself. I have been researching and lurking for months. Remember the Andy Griffith episode where the new guy in town freaks everyone out because he's been reading the paper forever and he acts like he knows all the town people? :DA lot of great people here have been sharing excellent answers and experience for a long time and it was a tremendous blessing as I walked this path. It looks like all the answers you could ever want are already here, thank you for that!


    I got the unpowered toaster head and the remote - given my budget, my gigs and my other equipment list, this felt like the biggest bang for my buck. My last direct experience was a Line6 XT. In the middle of an acoustic gig, the volume/gain went to 10 and stuck there. It was a frightening 5-10 seconds, then of course I had to go straight to the PA for the rest of the gig. I built a pedal board and have been "organic" since. These days, we do mainly acoustic gigs and we're down to 20 or so of those a year (from 50-60). Pre-covid we did 3-4 good size weddings or private parties as a full band. We're kind of tired of the acoustic duo bit, so we decided to begin recording our originals and explore a more fulfilling path. I say we - it's me and my singer Jessica.


    That brings me full circle here - I am recording everything with Superior Drummer and an Iridium pedal, now the Kemper. The Iridium was ok. Very serviceable. You can tweak great tones from it, especially with your pedal board and efx from Presonus or ProTools. But it was always 98-99% to my ears with a certain falseness I could not tweak out. I preferred the sound of my Boogie mic'd. A buddy of mine who is a fantastic player and owns every amp it seems has been a Kemper guy for years. His tone was always amazing, way before the Kemper. After researching more and more IRs for the Iridium, I started to understand the Kemper was way more than than an IR. It's ALL of it. So I went down the rabbit hole for a couple of months watching videos, reading, lurking, listening.


    Like many of you, I've been at this a long time and I'm not easily impressed. I have to tell you I am more than impressed - I am blown away. The first patch I heard was Mark Knopfler clean. It sounded like Mark was in the room with me and it gave me chills to know I had that tone in my hands. I lost about an hour right there. Down to the Waterline with that phaser, What it Is with the Les Paul... every lick from Sultans...


    The next one was Michael Britts EVH Plexi. I mean just Damn. There it is. Right there. Eddie's amp, in an arena, in your hands. Boom. Then a JCM 800 and all the 80s rock songs we used to do... then a jumpered 72 Plexi, then a Matchless, then a... All these iconic amps I could never afford. From there I put in 25 hours of set up and learning the amp. I already, re-recorded guitar parts on one of our tunes and I could not be more pleased. The first thing I did was buy MBritt 2020 pack. He has 4-5 performances already set up that are amazing. If you've seen Lonestar live and heard his tone it's like pouring water of a glass. The free pack from Bert Meulendijk is also spot on - and did I say free! The learning curve for me has been very short and straight up. I'm ready to take this anywhere and confident that I am going to sound better than I've ever sounded.


    I even had a power outage happen while I was connected to rig manager. It gave me an error on reboot, told me to email a pic of that to Kemper. It restarted and had no issues. Kemper was right behind me, figured out the issue let me know there was no concern and had my back. That's incredible enough right there. You don't see that these days from any equipment manufacturer.


    Sorry for the long intro, but hello Kemper World. :S I doubt I'll be saying a whole lot here, but I will be reading the papers and I feel like I know you! I am glad to be one of you now and I could not be happier with my decision. This is the real deal and I am so inspired to play and practice again because it just sounds so freaking good! Hopefully one day I'll be able to return the favor and help someone else like you guys helped me.


    Travis Franklin

    Jessica Brooks Band