Posts by Gary_W

I like NI Komplete software but, interface wise, I had one from them a few years back. On my system at the time, I couldn’t get it useable.

I’ve had a couple of Focusrite interfaces over the years (including my current Clarett) and they’ve been great. I have had issues but here’s where the difference really stood out. Focusrite tech support were available over the phone, NI were tickets that took a while and told me to read the manual.

That experience is from a few years back so they may have improved and lots of positive stories out there with the interfaces. With any interface, if it works with your system, it works. That’s the most important thing followed by ‘who helps when it doesn’t work’. IMO of course.

I used to use loads of pedals but my reason was because I gigged with a single channel amp. Riding guitar volume like a pro is beyond my capability (so is the magic 4th chord, I only know 3). Pedals were the answer.

I still have most of them because most were home made. Really, I was using most of them to overcome the limitations of my amp in terms of variety. These days, I choose a different profile. I still dig out my home made germanium fuzz occasionally as, for me, it does a better job than the fuzz pedals in the Kemper. For all the others, I’m good to go in clean.

I’d absolutely welcome the OD offerings in the Kemper getting a facelift but, for me, that’s for the fun it gives rather than ‘I need this and I’m broken hearted’. I don’t think they’re terrible but I also don’t think they’ve kept up with the advances that the rest of the unit has benefited from. I’m a long term user and, back in the day, the delays and reverbs weren’t awesome in the Kemper. They are now excellent IMO. I sold a Strymon Mobius and I miss the tremolo options on there / the phaser and flanger. In my opinion they beat the current ones in the Kemper. However, I couldn’t justify keeping it for how often I use those effects. I do miss the trem though so I’d welcome a re-do of that if Mr. Kemper is looking for a suggestion

With the guitar plugged in.... turn the volume pot of the guitar all the way down.

Does the hum disappear? If it does, it is airborne interference. If the hum stays, you may have a ground loop (lots of info online about those).

If it's airborne, try the following:-

1. Move to different parts of the room where you play with your guitar. Face the guitar in different directions. Hopefully something obvious will strike you that could be the cause of the hum. You might find you can face a certain way to play / record and suddenly your problem is tollerable.

2. Investigate obvious sources of airborne interference. These can include:-

Fluorescent lights / old style energy saving light bulbs. New style LED bulbs tend to be OK (or I've had good luck anyway!)

Dimmer switches. Especially cheap ones. Replace with on / off switches or play in the dark!

Computers (some motherboards are ridiculously noisy because of how they do power throttling to save energy. Works great for the environment but unfortunately can really upset guitar pickups

Computer monitor

Some 'brick' / wall wart chargers

3. Investigate things in other rooms. It's possible for a fridge that is 'electrically noisy' to put a bunch of buzz onto the mains in your house. Then every other wire in the walls acts like a transmitter. There are clean plugs you can get which you can plug the offending appliance into to try and help with this.

There are many possibles. Hope you find what the issue is as hum can drive you nuts.

Sorry to tell you what you already know but.....

Turn it down. You don’t actually need any more gear. Neumann are awesome. If you can’t trust yourself with volume at home using studio monitors, a cabinet will be a fun thing that will ultimately make your problem worse. Sorry to be ‘that guy’ but sometimes ‘that guy’ is needed

Limiting any particular frequency will likely have little effect to hearing damage if you’re otherwise loud enough to cause ringing. Also, if you attenuate any particular frequency then your favourite tone will sound different and it’s unlikely to be a good different.... any particular tone only sounds the way it does (to you) because of the range of harmonics it has. This has to be the case otherwise a middle c on a piano would sound the same as a middle c on a distorted guitar. Affecting certain frequencies will change the tone from how you intended.

Hearing protection always affects the quality of the sound too - it’s the best we can do at someone else’s concert (I have some of the metal things from Ultimate Ears for when I go to a gig and they’re brilliant in those environments) but, at home, they will always make things sound worse than simply turning down.

You’ve identified that you like high frequencies. That might be because high frequency is typically the first thing to die in our hearing response as we age / expose our ears to extremes. If you are often exposing your ears to sounds that get to ringing, that’s damage each time you do it, and it starts with the high parts going. The result of this, as a musician? We crank the treble on everything so it sounds normal. To a teenager it sounds like nails down a blackboard because their hearing still works.

Sorry to tell you what you didn’t want to hear but probably suspected

Thanks Pippopluto.

I guess that’s something else worth asking..... are they intending the Kone to go into your own ‘flat’ cabinet or are the saying, because they can make it sound like a real guitar speaker, that it will work well in a real guitar cabinet? Logic would say that the acoustic sim would work better in a flat cab but for the actual guitar shapes? I wonder

There’s a brief sound bite of the acoustic sim on Kemper’s FB feed

A question.... I haven’t played live for a while and am unlikely to in the foreseeable future. The Kone price isn’t horrific and I have an actual guitar cab that is unused with a regular guitar speaker in it where I could obviously drop the Kone in. But I have an unpowered toaster.

Forgive me if this is silly but...... for home use, could I simply use a hi-fi amp? I have an old one laying around..... not quite sure why folks are needing 600w power amps to feed a single speaker?? It’s kind of overkill isn’t it?

Have a look on social media - a Kemper / Celestion speaker is shown

NAMM teasers here we come

At the 2019 Winter NAMM they showed an early version of the editor and also the cone. They also mentioned the acoustic sim. So it’ll be good to get an update on these.

I’m loving the editor and am hoping it will evolve to allow complete fx chains to be saved / allow batch editing so as you can quickly and easily put in your own preferences when you buy a profile pack. Maybe we’ll get an update on ‘evolution of the editor’ too.... I’m sure we’ll all be listening out for the interviews.

Who knows what else? All I know is that it continues to improve after all these years and I haven’t felt the need to investigate other products since I’ve had it. Which is good going for digital gear in the guitar market where you’ve normally been superseded 2-3 times by now.

In - PRS Vela

Out - Burny Les Paul copy

Apart from that it’s been the odd bit of software. Got my eldest daughter a Ululele for Christmas so I might need to learn to play that

For sure the guitar is the first ingredient in the recipe. How much that original ingredient comes through really depends on the amp / fx chain.

Keeping with the food analogy. You start off with pork or chicken (Strat or Tele) If you just fry in butter you can absolutely tell them apart. But if you put it in a dish with 48 other ingredients then the differences between those original ingredients are masked. You might still spot which is which but not necessarily. If you start off with beef (les Paul) it’s still easier to tell but again give it enough chilli and garlic and the dish tastes more of those things.

Sorry, it’s Christmas. I’ve been cooking for several days now as that’s another hobby of mine

So the bad news is I'm short on time this weekend.

The good news is that my first impressions are 'absolutely fantastic'. Thank you very much to the team that made this. I've had my Kemper for many years and it's incredible that it's actually still improving each year since the time I had it. This does not happen with most other electronics and I'm very grateful that it's the gift that keeps on giving.

I have been politely asking for an editor for many years and I am over the moon - the layout for doing this stuff on a PC screen vs going through 6+ menus on some of the delays just makes so much more sense to my brain. For the guys that don't want it / need it, no worries. For me, this has given my beloved green box another massive boost in the usability. We are all wired differently and this works for me better than the front panel. Strange but true.

As I use it more over the coming weeks I'll no doubt make some suggestions but so far, so good

One thing - I followed the instructions (latest software via USB and then installed Rig Manager). Reboots, cable fiddles etc did not help me - the Kemper worked, and I could see my local library but the Kemper just would not talk to the PC. I unistalled Rig Manager and re-installed. It then worked without any further problems. Thought I'd share in case this helps someone else.

I appreciate the update and look forward to seeing it when it’s ready

Being able to pull performances together in the editor is one of the main things I’m hoping for. Personally, I am not a massive tweaker who obsesses about the small things - for my own mindset I am hoping for something that makes it easier to make a performance in terms of the fx layout / morphing and then save this as an fx chain that I can easily duplicate elsewhere. It will also be great to see (for example) all of a delay’s parameters on one screen as I am convinced I’m missing some neat tricks simply because I don’t go to the 4th or 5th screen of parameters. There is hidden magic that I’ve been too lazy to find so that will be good too.

I’m hopeful it makes the obsessive tweakers happy too and I’m sure it will - we all want different things out of this box that make sense to our own personal needs and preferences. For me, it’s about simplifying certain aspects of the use.

Looking forward to it whenever it drops and I am grateful the company showed it in January - I know some folks have got upset and for sure I’d have liked it already but, for me, I prefer the excitement of knowing that something is coming as opposed to complete silence. The complaints are changed from ‘can we have one’ to ‘when is it coming’ so I guess Kemper can’t win but, as a customer, I have preferred this 9 months of knowing.

There was social media info last week about CK doing a video with Andertons music. As Andertons is a shop, that will likely be hardware as in the new cabinet for the Kemper Kone.

The editor was shown back in January and the occasional questions on here by mods have still said q3.

My guess is that we’ll see both at the same time so ‘keep hitting refresh on the Andertons Youtube channel’.

The company does not currently have to worry about piracy as they do hardware based modelling.

If they have a sustainable business that makes them happy and they have zero worries about someone stealing their IP then why change? I realise protection can be effective but it can never be 100% and, when it’s gone, it’s gone. You’re then relying on the honesty of customers which isn’t a business plan. They’re obviously making enough money to make the business work and indeed grow with new hardware whilst being able to afford to give free updates to customers who have zero chance of being pirates.

Also, if they were to make a full Kemper plugin it would have to be a fraction of the cost of the hardware. Whilst some folks would ‘need’ the hardware, some potential buyers would be happy with the plugin so you’d see a fall in sales of the hardware. Would this be overtaken by masses of sales of plugins, especially when some folks would inevitably wait for the crack?

They’re a business. If it was do-able with the team they have and the numbers looked favourable they’d do it. Who knows, still might but I’m not holding my breath for the above reasons.

I’d still like to see the plugin that controls the hardware Kemper at some point - it would be another great feature that adds value to their product and gives no risk of lost sales / piracy.

As Nicky says, piracy concerns would make most companies think twice about this.

I would like a vst but purely to control the Kemper - it would be nice if you selected a channel on your DAW with a Kemper Control vst that did not have the ability to be a Kemper but just talked to the hardware Kemper and selected the profile you were using last time. It’d be nice if daw automation worked too, again just to play with parameters on the hardware Kemper.

Thanks for this tip Don - I’ll try it when I’m home. Outside delays / verbs, trem is my most used effect.

I recall prior to the update last year that a tweak to the legacy reverb was suggested as a means to getting a spring reverb sound. The tweak helped but didn’t really get where it needed to be. The actual spring, when it finally came, was awesome and showed that tweaking only gets you so far vs having a better algorithm for the effect in the first place.

I am hopeful that the new rig manager / editor will allow users to share tweaked presets that could help users get ‘as close as possible’ for certain things that they’re struggling to get (such as the harmonic then mentioned here). That’s a quick win all round as both factory and community can, hopefully, do some inspiring things with what is ‘in the box right now’ and tips such as yours above will be shareable in ways other than a description.

In the meantime, I hope that FX such as the trem / other modulations / stomps get the kind of love that the delays and reverbs have had. Delays and reverbs have gone from ‘ok if you tweak them but basic’ to ‘brilliant quality and crammed with creative possibility’. I’ve had a Strymon Flint for years which used to outdo the Kemper for spring and trem. IMO it still outdoes the Kemper for trem but you’ve stolen its crown with the verb update. I am convinced that, if you decided to do it, the trem in the Kemper could outdo the Flint / Mobius for quality and flexibility. Here’s hoping

So my first question for the lucky folks who get their Stage is.....

How’s the new 7.0 browsing and is the acoustic sim in there (it was mentioned at Winter NAMM as ‘coming’ so I believe it’s supposed to be in 7.0)? If so, ‘clips please’

And, of course, any other good things you want to share that might also be in there

I don’t know the answer but I believe the guys for rig manager (editor) might not be the same guys for the KAOS version. So, whilst it was said on here that rig manager would be a while longer, nothing was said about the latest software for the existing units so maybe that is still possible?

Either way, the thing about enjoying the Summer is making sense here as my little room where I play is crazy hot on the rare occasions that we have nice weather so I thank them for allowing me to sweat outside rather than sweat in a small room due to playing with new software..... I’m really looking forward to it all but I’ll survive for a while longer. I’m looking forward to users getting the Stage so they can feed back how the browsing is. Also, I wonder if the Stage will have the acoustic simulator on there that was mentioned at Winter NAMM? If it has 7.0 then I think it’s supposed to be there??