I just finished my first instrumental track with Bert's fantastic profiles, it's a slow ballad called "Black Rose".
Here's the link to Soundcloud.
Guenter Haas - guitars, bass, keyboards and drum programming, produced and mixed with Cubase Pro 8.5.
Equipment used: Fender '58 Strat (neck-pickup) and 2 profiles from Bert's pack, Bogner (B.E.C. ch1 mgain) for the clean rhythm-guitar and Custom Audio (CA 3+ ch3 A#) for the lead-guitar.
harry: I'm working regularly with classical musicians, on many tours I hired string-players (excellent musicians) and only a few of them could play without notes. So that's just my experience as a musical director and guitar-player.
Of course it's important that the classical world will come to a paradigm shift and gladly many young musicians are changing that right now.
Yehudi Menuhin should have said once:
One day not practiced is only noticed by yourself.
Three days not practiced is noticed by your friends or colleagues.
One week not practiced is noticed by the whole world.
I think for the majority the truth will lie somewhere in the middle.
cheers - Harry
Don't get me wrong, I'm playing guitar all the time, but now I'm much more into playing, improvising, composing and producing. Of course especially in the beginning of learning an instrument rehearsing is essential. I rehearsed like a maniac when I heard something (like Jimi Hendrix) I urgently wanted to play. I remember that I rehearsed for 6 months (!) until I could play "Mood For A Day" from Steve Howe (Yes). Later on you will develop your own taste and style, you will start to sort out and find your own way. I learned most when I played with other musicians, I had my first trio when I was 14 and we started to improvise endlessly. Listening to other musicians is essential, too. Nowadays guitarists often are practising alone in front of their computer and they miss the precious interaction between excellent musicians. Of course I'm still learning a lot, gladly music is such an endless field and there's always something to discover.
There's also a difference between classical players and f.e. jazz- and rock-musicians. Most classical players can't play if you'd take away their notes and many of them cannot compose or improvise. They will play written music from other people their whole life. When I studied classical guitar my teacher at the conservatory (a great classical guitarist) couldn't play a note without his notes. For him improvising and "free" playing was an admirable myth.
So, please no misunderstanding and no comparisons between peaches and apples. 
Of course everybody is on another level of playing and every person is different, too, we shouldn't forget that. I'm playing guitar for 45 years now (started with 8), so my guitars became another part of my body. I don't rehearse, I'm just playing and I don't have to think about technical skills, scales, harmonies ect. anymore. Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm going somewhere else when I pick up a guitar or I'm composing and arranging songs. It's similar to my girlfriend, who is a very talented painter, while painting she can get lost -in a positive way-, too.
I think it's a myth that your profiles are best on single-coil-guitars, they sound great with my Gibsons (LP, SG, ES-335) and my Charvel San Dimas 2 (2 x HB), too.
By the way, isn't the rundown strat from your pictures the "Folreden John Mayer" and probably the newest one?
Kempermaniac: a very complex subject, indeed.
For me playing guitar and producing/composing music is something similar to meditation, my current mood actually doesn't matter much. As soon as I start to make music, I'm "travelling to another planet", there's something spiritual behind it. My brain stops thinking all the time and I'm diving into something different, really hard to describe. Anyway, for me making music/playing guitar is an essential part of my life and it's always very refreshing. The rest (becoming a professional musician with studio-sessions, tours ect.) just happened, the basics always are the pureness of making music. I hope this doesn't sound too esoteric.... 
Back then there was no chance to rehearse with drum-loops, they were not existing yet, I'm talking about 1985/86....
I bought a Roland TR-808, one of the first drum-machines and back then this was better than just a metronome. When I started with studio-sessions (1987), drum-machines became very hip, just remember all the 80's pop. Very often a guitar-player was hired to "humanize" the recordings. This was the time of the first sequencers, Akai and Emu samplers, using Emagic Notator (later Logic) on a Atari 1040ST (no harddisk !), synchronizing midi via smpte on a tape-machine.
Since then I always had the luck to work with excellent drummers, of course now it's a different world with plugins like Addictive Drums, all kinds of loops, YouTube, vids ect. ect.
Great vid with a lot of truth about the right way of playing guitar (and making music generally).
Gladly I grew up with "masters of all classes" like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Steve Howe, Larry Carlton, David Gilmour ect. Of course it is always important to take an honest look how our playing can be improved. When I already was quite a good player, I realized that my timing has to be improved. I just had the timing of my long-time drummer.... That's when I bought my first drum-machine and rehearsed for one year to improve my timing. Shortly after that I had my first studio-sessions, just a coincidence? I don't think so....
Paul Gilbert seems to be a very different musician now. Long ago -when the first guitar-lesson-videos were released- I bought one from Paul Gilbert. In the introduction he played fast runs and scales for about 5 (!) minutes without a tiny break. I already was so exhausted that I never got deeper into it, except learning a few good techniques and scales.
tylerhb: I think your video is not very representative, everybody is playing fast metal-riffs with a high-gain sound. Take a few guitar-players and let them play the guitar-solo of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and you will hear a much bigger difference.
Display MoreThese are the guitars I used for my profiling and profile checking.
'53 Les Paul Goldtop (original)
'56 Tele (original)
'65 Strat (almost original)
Les Paul R9
Folreden John Mayer strat with Klein big dipper pick ups
Bert, we seem to have exactly the same taste...... I'm a bit jealous about that wonderful '53 Goldtop.... 
I'm always using the studio-profiles, didn't get the merged profiles-discussion either. I'm using my KPA like that:
- studio-sessions and recording --> KPA stereo out into desk
- touring using UE 11-Pro inears --> KPA stereo out into desk
- shows not using inears --> KPA Powerhead speaker out into Boogie cab and 2nd out into Matrix Q12a
In all 3 situations the KPA sounds outstanding, I'm using the profiles of Bert, Guido and a nice collection of Armin, Andy, MBritt and MWagener.
I gathered some information: my '58 strat doesn't have a V-neck, it's a C-neck, that's why it feels very comfortable to me. Fender used V-necks mainly on '56 and '57-strats.
sambrox: what you're thinking about Bert's profiles?
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Maybe I'm insane, but I found the perfect KPA-solution for playing with cabs:
Matrix Q12a AND Boogie Thiele-cab (1x12" very old EV-speaker). Powerwise it's more than crazy, 600 watts from the Powerhead going (Monitor out, Cab Sim off) into the Boogie-cab + 260 watts from the active Q12a (Cab Sim on).
This is the only way I like to use my KPA with cabs, playing the Q12a alone I'm missing the warmness and pure character of a guitar-cab. Using the Boogie-cab alone, I'm missing some of the nice trebles and "shimmer" a FRFR-system will offer. And no "harsh-trebly-jingle bells"-sound at all.... Ok, I have to carry two 1x12" cabs for this solution, but hey, I remember carrying two 4x12" Marshall-cabs and a 22 kg-head....
Funny, I never had any problems with necks from old strats or teles, I really like them. My other 50's Fender is a '54 Tele Blackguard , the sound of this guitar is outstanding, too. A fat jazz-tone on the neck-pickup and and a fat twang on the bridge one, much more mids than the normal tele-bride-pickup.
These are my main 2 guitars followed by a '69 Gibson ES-335 and a Gibson Les Paul '73 Goldtop.
Bert's profiles also work great with the Gibsons, not just with single-coils.
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Wow, great profiles and unbelievable singing lead-sounds, similar to the best Marshalls (or boutique-clones) around. Already one of my favourite packs. 
For me the strat is still one of the most versatile guitars around. On the photo you'll see my main strat ('58 all original except new frets) and this "beast" is still up-to-date.
This guitar in combination with Bert's profiles is a killer.... 
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prsgary: as long as it is global I don't use Pure Pab at all. I'm playing my KPA (stereo out) straight into my monitors (Klein & Hummel O110).
sambrox: normally I would say something about comments like "You seem to be quite quick to go in to defensive mode" or "Youre a bit too quick to get on your high horse, dude" without knowing me at all. But this is a thread about Bert's fantastic profiles and I think any further "discussion" would disturb it, so I definitively stop here. Gladly my girlfriend never complains about being too quick... 
It seems you didn't have the time to check Bert's profiles and I'm much more interested in your opinions about that, than in hobby-psychologist-distant-analysis of my personality.
apr13st: there's everything in the pack, not just great cleans tones, everything from crunch to singing lead-tones, too.
As Eltzejupp said, I also would recommend to try Bert's profiles with different cabs, I tried some cabs from Tillmann and I could get even more out of this fantastic pack. After spending enough time with Bert's pack, I can say it's my favourite one from all packs I bought (and I bought a lot....).
"Good music" amd "the worst clean tone" are my subjective taste, that should be clear and there's no room for misinterpretation. I'm totally against any "fanboyism", trying to convince everybody to love their idols, too (or Mac, iPhone, car ect.). That's the reason I don't post any videos here, I have my taste and everybody else can have a different one, that's called pluralistic society. And too much "political correctness" can make our planet very boring.
Let's really go BTT, I have to say that I have a lot of fun with Bert's profiles.
@sambrox & Eltzejupp: thanks, but I know Steve Vai, I have seen him long ago with Frank Zappa and I've seen some solo-shows, too. Can I please have the right to find him horrible? I'm more into good music and songs, not into high-speed scale-racing and floyd rose-guitar gimmicks. I'm not a big fan of music for musicians generally. If you like the clean sound on the videos it's fine, I don't like it. If you are a big fan of Steve Vai and guitar-players in that style that's fine for me. We all have our taste and gladly a very different one, that makes the world so colorful. But we shouldn't set our own taste and opinions always on No. 1 and try to "convince" anybody else. I'm 53 years old and I'm playing guitar since I'm 8, the last 28 years being a pro-player, so there's been enough time for me developing my own taste of playing guitar and listening to music.
Let's be tolerant, if I don't like Steve Vai, Al di Meola and John McLaughlin (especially on electric guitar) that's my right as a free person. I'm just much more into tasty playing with time for space and not into scale-racing, that's why I prefer Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, Eric Johnson, Larry Carlton, Pat Metheny ect.
Let's get BTT.
