Posts by andy_i

  • A question to the 'KPA pros' on this board...

    Always nice to hear of heavyweights considering the Kemper for touring. Here's my 2c worth:


    For our 2012 US/Canada/Euro tour (bus and fly dates) I decided to jettison my heads, cabs and G-System in favour of the KPA. My main concerns (being as I was already 100% happy with the sounds) were OS stability, power, patch controls via midi and fail safe redundancy (i.e. if the thing crashed, was there a solution that would let me keep playing).


    After a considerable amount of testing, I settled on the following (there may be far better software versions out now, but this was true for June of this year):


    Firstly, I ran two KPA units next to one another, both feeding the FOH simultaneously, cloned via USB stick (so identical patches and settings), switching via midi thru so that the signal from my foot controller changed both units simultaneously, monitor out for the IEM return was rigged to a Lehle a/b, so if my main KPA fell over, one tap on the A/B and my sound would be back in ears.


    To get the guitar sound to both units, I had a Lehle P-Split at the end of my chain that popped signal out to each one.


    OS - I froze the OS I was using at 1.04. This seemed to be stable, had the least reported issues and deficiencies at the time, and gave me access to all the tones and FX that I require.


    Power: I had a racked 1Kva UPS unit powering both Kempers. In the event of stage power going down, which only happened once during the whole tour, on a soundcheck, the KPA was the only thing on stage unaffected.


    Controller: I was using a Midi Moose for patch changes and a FS-6 for stomps (you could use two, but I only needed the one). I expect the bespoke unit that Cristoph is building will be more elegant. The key element of that for me was the midi thru.


    I can't speak to the reliability of the continuous control volume messages, as I use the master vols on my guitars for swells and the like. I have been considering putting a volume pedal on the board, but that would be a real volume pedal affecting the levels pre the KPA.


    Note: I use a Fulltone Clyde wah ( too hot for Kemper, apparently). I had to jettison that in flavour of a slightly less hot Cry Baby. I couldn't get the wah tone I was looking for out of the KPA, but that could be operator error :)


    For soloing, rather than use an internal stomp boost, I opted for an actual volume change, so I saved a new version of the sounds I needed for solos under a different name (e.g. "Mesa Rdstr Vintage B SOLO") to get the 5 or 6 db kick I needed. This ended up working just as well as the EP boost I had been using before.


    I had one unit in a Thomann road case that I imported from Germany and one (the backline rental unit) in a Pelican. The KPA in the Thomann case remains in showroom condition after about twenty flights and daily truck trailer load-outs. The case, of course, looks like a war horse now. The Pelican was slightly less suitable for the job - was not quite the right size and had foam inserts to pad the unit. Heres the Thomann case: http://www.thomann.de/de/thon_…_kemper_profiling_amp.htm


    There's a bit more info and some pics here: http://andyinnes.com/wordpress/?p=58#more-58


    Let me know if you need to know anything else about my experience. One thing I can tell you is that the post-gig geek-flies-to-poop attention-grabbing factor of the green German radio toasters is exceptional. I had a little crowd of techs examining the glowing units either at soundcheck or after the gig on every date, oohing and aahing. When quizzed on exactly what they were, I delivered my usual post-show punchline in my best William Shatner voice: "that, my friends, is the future of live guitar sound!"
    :D

  • Great clean tones?

    There's a great Mesa Mk V 10w clean profile on the exchange that I use quite a bit for clean sounds. Also a good 65 Fender Blackface there - growls a bit if you push it hard, but chimes nicely at low attacks. I also find one or two of the factory supplied AC-30 clean profiles are pretty good. I play about 70% of my gig with clean KPA tones.


    Admittedly, I do supplement all of these with bridge piezos. I have them installed on all my axes and they route separately to the Kemper outs.

  • The PHANTOM of the opera

    I have had this once or twice - keen to know if other users have experienced it.


    If I have the monitor out going to a power amp (separate to my main out) and the monitor or FOH guy accidentally runs phantom 48v down my XLR line, the monitor out shuts down.


    Anyone else had this?

  • The Kemper Foot Controller: A Proposal

    Weighing in late here, but I've been busy gigging with my Kemper :D . I'm desperate for the controller, but a few NB points for me (after having toured the KPA for two months straight with midi moose and FS-6):


    Rigs at the bottom!


    If the tap function is not on the bottom row, don't bother putting it in. No-one will be able to use it accurately in a gig situation in the middle or top row. The external momentary would be a logical fix to keep the width down.


    That screen everyone keeps talking about - the brighter and more legible in sunlight, the better. Recessed would be good.


    One other thing - bank button should arm the next bank, but you need to activate with rig. I often select a different solo sound for a particular song from a different bank. I set up the bank during the rhythm part (sometimes 4 or 5 banks away), then select the rig for my solo a split second before playing it - very important for me.


    Now where can I buy one? :P

  • BIG thanks to the Kemper team, Philip Kowalski & Oliver Munyak...

    Just on my way back home from this show. A million thanks to Kemper GmbH for the loan unit! Thanks to you too Lance for all the help on this. My road rig consisted of guitars and a USB key! What a perfect touring solution. I'm thrilled with it and, perhaps embarrassingly, all our FOH engineers on three continents tell me my tone has improved dramatically.

  • Andy Innes in WW tournee with the KPA

    Quote from Stemast

    I took a look at your blog and you describe your gear and connections excellently, Andy! Very educating!


    One question, have you made your G-System redundant?


    Thanks for the compliment. The G-system - I thought I would end up using it with the Kemper, but there's no real gain. It's not worth carting the G around in a flight case just for pitch-based FX. My G is currently for sale :D

  • Andy Innes in WW tournee with the KPA

    Quote from and44

    Thats cool to see it used like that!
    That is my goal eventually to use it live like that, we have a big tour approaching but worried about its long term stability, espically when the midi side of it does not work correctly yet. - and we have differnt flavours in our setlist so I cant just dial a tone and play!.


    I see you position it very close to where your standing. - is this so you can dial in your presets quick? as you mention you dont have a foot controller yet?


    Best of luck
    Andy


    Thanks. I wrote a blog post which explains in detail how I'm using the units. See it at http://andyinnes.com/wordpress/?p=58

  • KPA track off my new album

    This was one of your recent Mesa 4x12 cabs. I forget the exact one, but out of a series of around 60 cabs, this one was in the upper 40's. You rock my friend! If you give me an address, I'd be happy to send you a copy of the CD.

  • Charging for profiles?

    Quote from luntho

    ...don't like the idea of buying profiles at all...


    It sounds like the p2p "content wants to be free" argument.


    If some guy is using boutique amps with a selection of top-quality mics going through his $100,000 audio chain and Neve preamp in his perfectly flattened room to check the frequencies, I see no reason why he shouldn't charge for that kind of quality. If he doesn't charge for the use of those facilities for recording (and equally for profiling), he'll eventually go bust and you'll be left with a plethora of guys jamming sm57's into their Peavey Classic 50's (no offense to those who do).


    Show me the site where that guy is selling his wares and I'll haul out my credit card, no problem. I've already said I would gladly pay towards Tills and one or two others here. That quality doesn't come cheap. I'm about to make my own investment - just finished an album using a Route66 and a Roadster simultaneously, with three mics on each cab going through monster pre's. I'm booking the studio for a day to get ten variations of exactly that tone down into my KPA.


    I've learned first hand, as have a few of us, that simply popping a mic in front of the amp and A/B-ing through a pair of headphones will not necessarily produce the greatest results. Just saying...

  • The Kemper Foot Controller: What's important to you?

    My 10c worth from another thread:


    My ideal foot controller for KPA:


    • Up/Down 5 or 10 switches per bank - led for whichever patch is active stays lit


    • Large, clear, BRIGHT display indicating the name of the patch and the patch number (so two-way comms with the unit)


    • 4 x Stomp controls with colour LED to match the colour of the stomp available / being used and a separate on/off LED. Using two FS-6 momentary stomps got confusing, as I had to keep looking across at the KPA to see what was on/off and which effects I had loaded.


    • 4 x XMDR controls (x, mod, delay, reverb)


    • Takes its power from the KPA


    • Does NOT have foot pedals for volume / wah, but instead has option for external controller in via balanced jack and feeds that signal to the KPA. Maybe they could do one with pedals for the home enthusiast, but the bulkier the board is, the worse it is for the touring musician. One top reason for me buying the KPA was to scale down without losing tone. If I suddenly have the equivalent of a G-system to tote onto planes again, it would defeat the object for me.


    • Tuner button / mute button

  • Monitoring through Headphones - 2 problems

    Quote from novocaine

    1. I've been using the KPA with just my headphones quite a bit.
    I realized that it clips very easily on the Clean profiles, you can hear the clipping clearly over the headphones when you casually strum just a tad harder. I'm sure this happens for the distorted profiles as well but it's not as obvious.
    However, when you put the KPA, using the same clean/distorted profiles, through a power amp + cab, clipping does not occur at all.
    I'm using passive pickups with clean sense at -3.1 and distortion sense at 0.0.
    Anyone is experiencing this? Is there anything i can do?


    2. Using distorted/high gain profiles gives this really annoying pick scraping sound especially when you palm mute quickly, this is especially evident over headphones and its almost common on all the high gain profiles, anything i can do to minimize this? Take away some frequencies or something?


    I haven't experienced this. Have you tried radically reducing the clean and drive sense? Those values set too high will get you the digital clip. Next question - have you set the individual patch volumes higher than usual? If not, have you tried reducing your phones volume?


    Are you using good phones? I find the KPA sounds great through a pair of industry standard cans like the Sennheiser HD-25 1 ii or the Sony mdr7506. By comparison, I do occasionally get breakup in cheaper sets of headphones.


    If none of the above works for you, you may want to submit a fault report with Kemper to see if you have a faulty phones out stage.

  • Road report / The perfect foot controller please Kemper

    Quote from carydad

    Bounce back would be a nice feature. Being able to press the button you are on to send you back to the other patch you were previously using. Useful for going from a clean tone to a mean tone for many songs. Or between a crunch and lead patch. Nothing wrong with taking what works on other units and incorporating them. That is a nice feature of the axe.


    Now THAT sounds fantastic! +1 for bounceback.