Posts by Grooguit

I believe this simple to implement idea could revolutionize the acceptance of all-in-one devices like the Kemper in live situations. Lack of this simple feature is a reason why some guitarist that honestly love the sound for of the Kemper profiles and effects have gone back to their traditional pedal board, even if they still use the Kemper for amp sounds only. They just want to be able to bend down and adjust the tone or gain or volume on their OD pedal and/or amp once and be done with it. They don't want to have to think about al the places that they have one of their core tones (edge of break up for example) saved in various slots and performances.

Here's my suggestion: Press the "Quick" button (which you can currently personalize) Up comes menu with the following choices: Global Stacks, global delay blocks, global, reverb blocks.... (and whatever else).
You select "Global Stacks" The screen shows the following list: "global stack 1, global stack 2, global stack 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, etc. are listed. If you select "Global stack 1", for example, you can now scroll through all your rigs (technically just the amp and cabs) You select a Vox AC profile that is on the edge of break up. You make your tweaks to the amp and cabs and save it. Exit out. You plan on using that Vox AC stack in numerous rigs located in different performances because you use it with various combinations of different delay, mod, and reverb effects for different songs. So you go to all of those rigs that you'd like that Vox AC edge of breakup profile with the tweaks you made. Instead of choosing "Vox AC" in the stack, you choose "Global stack 1." A month from now you get fickle and decide you'd like to use a different edge of break up profile or would like to tweak the same profile. What do you do? Go to your "global stack 1 preset" and either select a different profile or tweak the same one and hit save. Now all the profiles that had "Global stack 1" selected in the amp block change with it! No need to worry about all the rigs located in different slots and performances that contain that stack to make the changes to each and every one. If tomorrow you decide you'd like to swap out the twin reverb clean profile you'd been using for a roland Jazz chorus, you can do so and change it back just as quickly.

This feature request gives the guitarist the ability to make last minute changes on the fly during a sound check even if they use many performances. At the moment the only "on the fly" thing you can do is adjust the output EQ and volume, as you'd never have time to go through all your performances and tweak when your sound man says "you'd edge of break up tone sounds off tonight" I can tweak it quickly and be done with it, not do it 10-20 times. Best of yet, you can use this feature as much or as little as you'd like. You still retain the ability to assign Rig specific amps and cabs like we do now, which will be unaffected by the changes you make to the global presets. In other words, it's a feature that could be completely ignored and even unassigned to the Quick button for those that see no personal benefit from this feature.

Here's a common scenario for Kemper users and in fact users of every digital modeling all-in-one device ever made.
Just like traditional guitarists using tube amps and pedal boards, you have a few gain stages that you use in a live setting. Perhaps Clean, edge of break up, Crunch, and Lead. However, you like to use them with different combinations of other effects including reverbs, delays, modulation, etc. One of the benefits of a Kemper or other digital all-in-one is that you aren't limited and can save multiple banks of combinations of sounds. However, if you're like me, regardless of how many delays or reverbs you use, you probably use only four or so combinations of your basic gain stages. In other words, you'll have identical amp blocks in many different slots and performances. (I particularly use a lot because I sing and lead worship which includes talking between most songs and I can't worry about doing tap tempo. Therefore I need a couple rigs or so with the tempo saved for each song in a set)

So what's the problem with the current Kemper capabilities? I'll invariably have a dozen banks of rigs for various effect combinations for different songs, even though there's only four different amp block/OD effect combinations in these 60 or so rigs. In a live situation, if I want to make a tweak to my edge of break up sound for example, I need to do some combination of either locking the amp block and hitting "amp block, save, save, save" over and over again after selecting each of the rigs containing my edge of break up amp block and OD effect block. Or I can just manually tweak the ones I need at that moment and hit "save save save" for each rig. Or I could do the copy paste thing and hit save save save for each rig.

To be fair, one other solution is to change my approach to organization. That is, instead of creating separate rigs for songs, is to create presets of single effects or a preset containing the four post amp block effects . However, even this is limited to either the left group of four or right group of four. Plus it doesn't allow me to save a tempo!!! That value is saved as part of the Rig. If I create the perfect combo of Mod, delay, and Reverb for a particular song and save it to an effects block preset, it's still more complicated than just calling it up. Once I do call up the effect preset, I still have to go into "Rig" and change the tempo to match the song. This then still requires me to have copies of rigs with all the gain stages needed for each song in their own Slot. Thus again still giving my multiple versions of the same amp block spread out over several performances needed to cover the songs in a set and all the pre gig organization that goes with it. Once again, limiting my ability to do last minute tweaks to my core tone. I have about 60+ rigs spread out over 12+ performances. They currently possess one of four basic profiles from clean to lead. I sometimes want to swap out those four profiles for a different set. I never seem able to make up my mind about which set I like best. Sometimes I feel like my MBritt Guytones, sometimes my Amp Factory Evil Robots, sometimes I even want to tweak them a bit. I change my mind a lot and it's a hassle when I do.

Ways to expand the features of this idea:
1) On rigs that are currently assigned to "Global stack 1" for example, give an option "MAKE LOCAL." When this option is chosen the amp block screen no longer shows "Global stack 1" as the amp, but the name of the amp that was assigned to be the global amp. In my example above, it now shows "Vox AC" This rig can now be saved and it's amp block won't change when you change the global amp block preset as it is now a permanent part of the Rig just like the Kemper currently functions.
2) Give the ability to assign some or all of the A,B,C, or D blocks as part of the Global stack preset. for example if you like to keep the Screamer Overdrive effect in the "A" block you could make this as part of the global stack preset. In other words, when you select "global stack 1" you could also link "effect block A" to it. Then you could make changes to both the overdrive and amp and cab settings that you use to craft your edge of break up tone at the same time. Then when you hit save, al the rigs that have Amp stack preset 1 as their selected Stack would be changed along with slot A. In additional the ability to link the Noise gate to it would be helpful as well, as the noise gate is the sort of thing you like to adjust while adjusting your amps. Perhaps a warning pops up if you select "amp stack 1" that says, "this also overwrites slot A. noise gate. Of course, you'd have to hit save afterwards anyway.
3) You can have Global delay presets or other effects. For example if you're the sort that like to use a go to sound for delay all the time like you would on a traditional analog delay, you could have the ability to the same thing with your delay block as you do the amp blocks. just assign all the rigs that you want to access a global delay block to "Global Delay 1." Same thing could be done for all 8 blocks. So you're at your gig and your like, "my go to reverb seems a little muddy in this room." Just make the tweak once!
4) Possibly give the ability to group global amp stack presets together. For example, 1,2,3,4,5, be replaced with 6,7,8,9,10. Thus 1's become 6's and so on. This way you could select a group which contains five stacks from clean to lead if you like and swap them out with another five. For example, if you primarily rely on one guitar for a rig say a Strat and like a different set of core tones (or the same ones tweaked a bit different) for your Gretch on another night. I'm not so sure how this last part would be implemented though.
5) ability to remain them: For example instead of the screen showing "Global Stack 1" it could show GS 1 plus another word. Such as "GS 1 Clean" Obviously this wouldn't force me to put a clean profile in. This of course, would be renaming done globally when editing through the Quick button, not rig specific.

I doubt they will ever release such a remote. But I certainly can see it's value for some users. If there was a switch for each effects slot, there would be no need to program. Plus it would allow access to more effect combinations in a live setting using fewer rigs. Using less rigs is always beneficial. to having the same amp blocks in various rigs to accommodate more effects combos.

Why? Because guitarists typically use no more than 5 basis tones from clean to their heaviest lead, many only use 2 or 3 gain stages in a live setting. How do they traditionally achieve these gain stages? Either a multichannel amp or several OD/Dist pedals either stacked or used individually but set at different gain levels. Regardless of how complex the rest of their guitar rig is. (for example a board full of strymons, eventides, and half a dozen analog mod, delay, pitch, synth, or reverb pedals and a complex switching/loop device) Tweaking their core tones is always as easy as turning a few knobs on their OD pedals, and/or amp.

However on the Kemper and every other digital all-in-one device ever created, there is no way to quickly tweak your core gain stage tones, unless they are each used in only one rig. If I need 7 rigs to cover the 7 combinations of various effects I use with my just on edge of break up tone, I have my work cut out for me if I want to make a few minor tweaks. The easiest thing that I can do is make the tweaks to the amp block in one rig, lock it, go to the other rigs that use it (which I need to avoid getting confused with since each rig will now show the locked amp in the amp block) and hit "save, save, save" on each of the seven rigs. Or I could copy and paste the amp block and hit "amp block, paste, save, save, save, copy" for each of the 6 other rigs that use that exact same edge of break up gain stage as the amp block. Or just make the exact same tweaks 7 times and hit "save, save, save." The problem is made even worse if my edge of breakup sound was made using an internal overdrive effect in combo with the amp block. Just a simple "turn up the gain on the overdrive effect and back the gain down on the amp block effect to compensate" takes several minutes and careful attention to not save over the wrong rigs, plus remembering where all 7 of the edge of break up rigs are. Then finally, if I have other copies of the edge of break up rig for other songs that I didn't use that night, I'd need to remember that I made tweaks to some, but not all edge of break up rigs.

All that to say and emphatic YES it would be beneficial to not need as many rigs to cover all the effect combos I would like to use. Having a switch for all 8 effect blocks would cut down some.

Please!! do this. Perhaps it will happen in 5.0 at this point. Of course, once 5.0 comes out, I might not even need to use external effects.

Everything sounds fine and no issues. I used morphing on a rig with Remote switch, but only used it to adjust amp gain with instant change, not swell. However, the remote display has a big lag. like an second or more. This can be confusing, because when banking up or down for example, you're tempted to press the button twice as nothing happens on the screen for a second or so. Not a big deal as I don't need to switch performances in the middle of songs.

I have a redbox 5 DI. Since I play exclusively direct these days with the Kemper, this is a perfect substitute. I have a tc electronic Mojo drive pedal and a boss tuner that I run into it set up with a cheap daisy chain power source. If everything goes out, I have a ready to go backup with the gain on the tc set to be somewhere ideal for lead and rhythm and I just work the volumes. It actually sounds surprisingly good.
Since I have an eventide H9, line 6 m5, boss od1x, Mxr torino drive, and dunlop exp/vol pedal on my main board with my Kemper, should my Kemper go down for a while I could piece together a decent set up using the redbox.

I'd say save your money and wait; just be prepared to wait a while. I have an eventide H9, which is awesome, but I find I don't use all the wild stuff it does nearly as often as I thought I would. As much as it is a great compact tool, it needlessly complicates my set up. Once Kemper can cover a chunk of that territory, I probably won't bother setting up the H9 anymore. The only other effects I use are a Line6 M5 used excluxiely for autoswell. Which I'm hoping Kemper will roll out with their delays and reverbs.

I use a couple OD's up front. They work the way you'd expect just as going into a traditional amp. I use an Eventide H9 in the effects loop after the amp block, mostly for more extreme stuff that the Kemper doesn't do: in particular ambient delays/reverbs. The only downside is that with only one effects loop and limited midi functions, you do lose a bit of the ability to program everything ahead of time and will likely need to do at least a little bit more tap dancing than using everything inside the Kemper. Although, with enough extra equipment, (a multi-loop midi-controlled switcher for example) you could use all this external gear and have it programed. However, even here there are limitations.
For example
Use only the Kemper and you need: 1 guitar cable to kemper input, 1 cat5e cable from remote to Kemper, plus whatever you need for amplification.
Use the Kemper with just a single OD and one post amp effect like delay and you need:
1 guitar cable to OD input, 1 cable from OD pedal to kemper input. Two cables from kemper's effects loop to pedal board for delay effect, possibly a midi cable from Kemper to delay effect, power supply and/or power strip on your board and power wires to pedals, and extension cord or power source available where you will be standing, a pedal board to hold the remote and all this junk, a case for your pedal board, plus whatever you need for amplification.

This means not only cost but more to carry and much longer set up times. It is also more work to program my H9 than if I only had to program the Kemper to get those effects. It works for me since I exclusively leave my gear set up at a church. And when Kemper comes out with the delay and reverb effects that they have been talking about, if they can compete with the H9, I'll probably just use the Kemper and the Remote.

What!?! I didn't know you could trigger tempo that way! Have to try it.

I'd say that the reason some are clamoring for delays and reverbs is because there are limitations associated with using the one effects loop on the KPA.
First, you can only send midi messages on Rig changes.
Second, turning off the effects loop in the KPA doesn't let delays and reverbs trail off.
There are workarounds to these issues, but they require a whole bunch of cabling and extra equipment beyond simply "having an H9" or other effects, as someone suggested.
1) You need cables for the effects loop going from KPA to pedal board
2) You need a midi cable going from KPA to pedal board
3) You need a power supply for your external devices and/or a power strip on your pedal board
4) You actually need a pedal board (which you don't need if you have the Remote and were able to get by with just KPA effects
5) You need a case for your large pedal board (which you don't need if just using Remote)

In short, the beauty of the KPA+Remote is that it's designed to be all-in-one. I would LOVE to be able to use it that way. Just one cable from guitar to KPA, power up the KPA and run a Cat5E to the Remote. Just "including an H9" requires a lot of extra equipment to lug to gigs and twice as much set up time. All for what? because the KPA hasn't developed the Delays and Reverbs that a lot of guitarists these days, even far off things like Spring Reverb! However, the KPA was always marketed as more than an amp. That's why it included a swiss army knife of effects from the very beginning.

I'm with you; haven't upgraded yet. In fact, I haven't even done 3.3 yet, though I think I'm going to do that this week. There's so much noise on this site with those that expressed issues. Some solved them, discovering they were user errors or misunderstandings. Others were voicing concerns with 4.01 and might have been fixed already. Hard to sort out and know. I really don't want to install it and have intermittent issues at critical times, then have to go back. While most seem to be using it with no issues, there are a few and I'd rather wait and know that I won't have issues. There's likely a reason that Kemper haven't elevated 4.0X to an official release as they are likely still working some bugs out. As much as I'm dying to implement some of the new features in 4.0, I'll wait.

Strabes, that's generally what I do. I keep the H9 in the effects loop placed in the X slot after the amp block, and use here and there. In general, I find it easier to just stick to using the Kemper's effects and use the H9 if I need something more ambient. I have a couple go to all clean rigs, but don't use them much preferring to have a little bit of break up in the profile, not too much but enough that it cleans all or most of the way up if I back my guitar's volume back and pick lightly.

To clarify, I love using my Kemper by itself, but just had an interesting curiosity from the Kemper owners who were getting much of their gain from pedals and what they found successful in terms of successfully stacking so that "all on" and "one on" gains both sound optimal vs having your high gain sound ideal at the expense of low-gain and vise versa.

I think though my issue is just the standard Gear Acquisition Syndrome. While I have absolutely no need to modify my set up, I keep looking for reasons to do so.

So I guess my biggest question is: How do most stackers find success. push one pedal into another for high gain, then turn off the first pedal relying on the second pedal as their lighter gain? Or turn off the second pedal and opt for the first pedal to be their lighter gain. Obviously, it's possible to turn either one off and use either the second or first by itself.

With all the experimentation that I've done, I always achieve better results having a dedicated OD for each gain level, rather than trying to stack them. It's not that I can't achieve great tones when stacking, it's just that so far it isn't flexible when trying to unstack and just use one. One or the other, either both on or only one on is a compromise. Obviously one could have two OD's dedicated to being stacked and kept in a loop.

If I'm running OD pedals, I tend to run them into a slightly broken up amp. In general, I prefer, even for clean sounds, a slightly broken up sound when my pickups are up and I'm playing normal, thus I can get all clean if I roll back the guitars volume a touch and pick lighter. I've done the unity thing and can achieve volume balance that way, the issue, I'm guessing is true by definition is that if I set the pedals I'm stacking to sound ideal together, it's not likely that their setting will be ideal if I use them by themselves. However, for the most part, I've stuck with just using profiles at the different gain levels I need in different rigs (or the same profile tweaked for lower gain in another rig).

As much as I love getting all my sounds from my Kemper, albeit using an eventide H9 for some effects here and there, I do miss the tactile feel and what you see is what you get flexibility of overdrive pedals, and even have a couple on my board just to give me a few more options. Mostly, I missed the last minute tweak without worrying about messing with my presets thing. (You know, you have a dozen presets with many of the same amp profiles, feel like tweaking that sound, yet don't want to mess with saving all the ones that use that sound) I often love the tone of many guitarists that stack overdrive pedals. However, in my own experimentation I find it extremely useful to do in practice.

Obviously, the various combinations of OD pedals, which can be put in different order, set differently, with different guitars, primary pickup choice (bridge or neck) and amps and the way they are set up, aside from style of music, the technique of individual guitarists, and desired tone make pedal suggestions almost worthless. Rather, I'm curious about how you use them.

My issue: Let's say I stack two overdrives with both of them being engaged in order for that to be my highest gain. In which case I turn one of them off so that I have a lighter gain sound. Finally, both off for my cleanest sound. What I find, is that if I like the way the combined drives sound and tweak the pedals individually so that sounds good to me, invariably when I go to just one of the OD's, I don't like that way it sounds without tweaking it. The biggest limitation is the volume jump. If you set up your first OD to push the second, and then turn the second off, there will be a big volume jump. In any case, it always seems to be a compromise between what tweaks sounds best when just one is one to what tweaks sound best when both of them on.

So far, I have the best success setting up the second OD to be on for mid/light gain by itself and only using the first when combined with the second for the high gain sound. However, even in this case, I cannot find settings that allow both OD's to sound good by themselves and good together, let alone not have volume balancing issues. And this isn't even taking into account different guitars and different pickups selected on the same guitar. Any suggestion? are some of you doing this or are you taking the opposite approach, leaving the first OD on and turing the second OD on and off for higher gain?

This community editor someone mentioned. Followed the link, not sure which link to download and install for a mac. I'm assuming it's the Toaster_1.0.100_ALPHA.pkg link. Although, the previous versions had a "DMG" download, which is usually what you use for a Mac. Anyone know?

I'm currently using MBritt's Gutron profiles when I use my strat. Though I used to and still do use Amp Factory Evil Robot PhilX. I use amp Factory Morgon 20 for my Carvin maple bodied tele and my Gretch. I have a bunch of MBritts and when I have time I'm going to find ones most suitable to them.

I pretty much use nothing but my Kemper, but keep a Eventide H9 on the board when I need a more ambient delay or reverb. I have a Boss OD1X which is a good all around Drive that gives me another option. Plus it's real ergonomic so if I need to go back and forth in a song I sometimes use this. Since I'm singing and leading I can't look at my feet much. Quite often I use only one patch per song and prefer to change up my gain more with pick dynamics and guitar volume, aided by subtle use of the amp block compression. I keep a MXR torino OD, which I sometimes use to add a little bit coming in, and Line6 M5 used exclusively for autoswell.

The above options you guys listed would render this feature unneeded except in one circumstance:
You have a fairly complex morph saved with several morphed parameters. After using for a while you decide that it would suit your purposes better to have them reversed. Hit a button and done. Otherwise you'd have to write down the morphs or copy the rig to an adjacent slot and go back and forth and reprogram the morphs.

Best tone I ever had. Most guitarist who use real amps use the amp they do based on the limited experiences they've had and a limited budget. For myself, my exposure to the world of amps was limited to what the local guitar stores have on hand and their willingness to let you put it through the paces at any volume with your own gear at hand, or watching subjective Youtube clips, and a lot of trial and error. There's only so much time and money and we end up making decisions on the real amps we used based on these limitations. However, when you own Kemper, you can try virtually every amp ever made and you'll end up with favorites that you probably never had a chance to play, let alone try out, gig with, and tweak to your hearts content and come back to the next day or week when you have fresh ears. After a couple of years, you'll likely change your mind a bunch of times and go back and forth, but you'll have a much greater understanding of whats out there and a greater knowledge of what amps you really do have the most us for.

The Kemper is great for any style live, but extra useful for worship, since despite touching most modern styles (ok not metal so much) we church folk typically want lower than rock concert volumes during services, which makes low stage volume even more important. There is no better direct to FOH option than Kemper.

I'm expecting a lengthy wait, several months at least. While it's true that the delays appear almost ready, consider so did morphing. They even extensively demoed it at Namm in January. three months later and we got a buggy beta, finally an apparently stable beta. The delays weren't even ready to be showcased in depth then, and they've been mostly focused on getting morphing done. If so, they haven't even begun working much on the verbs. And like all things Kemper does, it seems they take their time to create useful features. For example, performance mode and morphing and pitch effects. Just considering morphing, it's a well thought out feature that goes beyond simple assigning parameters to a controller, but works in a very simple user friendly way. When they did pitch effects, they came up with some good musical ones and some innovative features. I expect that they will be a little shy of the mayhem by strymon and eventide, but quite musical, useful, and user friendly, and will be quite worth the wait.