Posts by meambobbo

curious ...what was the solution?

p.s. were you deafened when you finally got the full power?

see that's my thought - why SHOULDN'T I get 1 or 2 Alto's? The price is a PRO, not a CON, especially when I just spent some big bux on the KPA. I intend to read some reviews, but of course I'm looking for some descriptive comparisons, not fanboyisms and uninformed snobbery.

lots of good starting points, guys. thanks

So I'm looking to eventually get a FRFR (ish) wedge to go with the Kemper to jam at friend's houses or eventually with a band. I know rather little on the topic which is why I'm asking for advice here. I primarily enjoy metal music, so I THINK I'd need something that can keep up with the low end - ie a 12" vs. a 10". But I want to know people's experiences. 10" vs 12". active vs. passive.

I'm not looking for the ultimate in quality and I don't need stereo seperation. I would prefer to carry a single wedge vs. two. However, if getting 2 of a cheaper model will sound better than 1 more expensive one, I am open to the idea.

• Alto TS112a ($300) - I am initially attracted to this option because of the cost. Of course, I don't want to end up with more unused gear to hock because it didn't hack it and had to get replaced later anyway. But it seems like I could get 2 of these guys for the price of one of most of the others.
• Yamaha DXR10 ($600) - Seems like it hits the sweet spot for the money! Might be the winner here. How's the 10" for the low end?
• Mackie SRM450 (~$500?) - looks new, but any reviews?
• Mackie HD1221 ($800) - don't know much about this guy at all.
• QSC K10 ($750) - I know the K series initially had some very nice reviews. If I can find a good deal on a used one, maybe this is the way to go?
• Atomic CLR ($1,000) - Obviously I would jump right on one of these, but the price is rather high. I'm doubting I'll be able to find them for cheaper than street prices considering their popularity.
• RCF? - I have heard good things about this brand but there are a few lines and they seem real expensive...
• EV ELX112P ($600)
• others?

Thanks in advance.

do what Don said for lasse's cabs - they are easy to identify because all the rigs starts with "LL". If you read the liner notes on Lasse's rig pack, it looks like he uses the same 3-4 paradigms of cab/mics for all the rigs; but it'd be interesting to see if they are the same tone or differ for each profile. I saved off my 3 favorites as presets.

What is more difficult is when they're all spread out because of the rig names, especially when you have nearly 1,000 rigs on your KPA like me. Also, a lot of times the cabinet descriptors will be the exact same for different profiles. Trying to find my favorites of TillS cabs just browsing rigs was very difficult. But you can just import them as presets from here: Update 19.07.2012: TillS Cabinets - 1960 V30/T75 / Mesa Recto 4 x 12 / mixed / G12H30 cabs Download the zip and copy the .kipr files into the "Cabinet" folder on your USB stick and import. They'll all be named Tills 1960 or Tills Rectifier or Tills Mixed, etc. Yes, there's a bunch, but if you find some are of no use to you just delete them.

Another popular one is the S. Mehl Greenbacks cab. I am assuming this is what all the S. Mehl rigs use...?

adorable doggy. i have to avoid showing this to the wife.

Maurizio, for your case, I think an even better option would be to allow the EQ block to be a Graphic EQ instead of the BMTP tonestack. I would definitely get behind that.

liking everything about this. FOLLOWED

ah, so that acts as a global wet/dry kind of mix parameter that would be global while retaining all the individual patch settings. I guess the only downside is having to output 2 signals. So if you output in stereo, you would need to connect via 4 output cables. Is this correct?

I see where the OP is going. I find the tonestack can be a bit lacking to get that perfect EQ to your sound, which is why the "X" slot works great for a Studio or Graphic EQ. But if you want more post effects, like 2 mod effects or a mod and a pitch effect, there's no room.

I think the better option instead of 2 effects in one slot is to allow stomp slot D to be routed as pre or post. So you are still limited to 8 effects and the software doesn't need to worry about DSP limits, but you can run a 3 pre, 5 post config as opposed to the current 4 pre, 4 post.

I disagree with the idea of greater routing options. I think the delay/reverb balance is enough - it is the main place where you want to change parallel/serial operation. Optional true parallel routing for all effects would muddle the interface for little gain.

i agree and think this would be a good feature. as a workaround for now, if you have a volume pedal, you could assign it to volume but set the range so that heel position is "normal volume" and toe position is "solo volume".

superb playing and tone!

trust me the "work" was my pleasure. I just wish I played better on that clip. I think there's still room for improvement on the patch, but for my purposes it's not worth the bother.

also, for reference, I was using an EBMM JPM (first line) but I switched the pickups for the Crunch Lab/Liquifire that Petrucci currently uses. And the strings are 10's. I think with some more 80's-esque pickups, a Jem, and 9's, it would sound a bit closer. But I dunno. Curious to see what kind of tweaks people need to make it work.

ok, here you go:

http://foobazaar.com/kemper/vai-love-of-god/

I tried a bunch of TillS 1960's until I found a couple that were really close and I got tired. THAT'S A LOT OF CABS!!!! I settled on 019 and tweaked it just a tad to really get there. Then just some post EQ. I am not sure about the delay and verb settings, but they seem to work to me.

For the initial part of the clip I had the Space parameter in the Output settings on about 3. I thought I could get this out of the reverb, but it didn't match Vai's tone - I needed more space.

The rhythm tones at the end of the clip are with the compressor and delay turned off. For the Animal riff, I turn on slot B which is just a sub-octave.

Of course! I'll get it up later tonight. I am careful right now to only use free profiles, so that I can freely share. I would have shared a lot more already but I don't want to start dropping works in progress.

right now my version of the rig uses one of Lasse Lammert's cabs of a Rectifier with V30's, so I'm sure it's not going to be accurate to the record. it does sound phenominal, though! I'll try out S. Mehl's and TillS Greenbacks and see if I can find one of them with a 1960 with V30's.

Quote from JeffTD

I don't care about a graphical representation; I have ears and the numbers are more than enough for me.

What I do want is a true HPF/LPF in the equalizer, and no, the Wah filter blocks DO NOT cut it. I wan't full parametric control of the unit like I'd have in the most basic of stock DAW eqs.

I approximate this with the Studio EQ's shelves. Unfortunately you have no Q control, but if you set them around -10 db then fiddle around, you can find good frequencies to approach the HP/LP drop-off you likely want. I find I like to use frequencies that are below/above what I'd use on a real HP/LP. So like 40 HZ and 30 kHZ. At some point in the near future I'll post some graphs or a video of what the Q factor looks like and how you can get them to approximate a HP or LP filter.

I find ears are like a Fourrier Transform. When you tweak an EQ and expect X but are actually getting Y, you are listening for X and hear something change but it's not what you expected and may end up chasing your tail. Numbers are very helpful (L6 can **serious explitives**). I certainly wouldn't mind a graphical visulation of the Studio EQ. The Graphic has one!

Just read through this whole post. One thing that I noticed when watching review videos before purchasing was that the Kemper profiles often sounded a tad thinner than the reference, which is especially noticeable for chug-a-chug metal. Since getting the unit, I haven't actually tried to profile anything (who wants Pod HD rigs?!), but I am very pleased with the low end of the tone.

To contribute, for those who want to perform the EQ trick tgs describes using the Kemper's Studio EQ, keep in mind that the low and high shelves have rather round knees. I haven't sat down with the pink/white noise and visually checked it out yet, but I know I can set the high shelf to 33 kHZ and still hear it affect the tone (if you don't understand, human hearing doesn't go much higher than 20 kHZ). So my guess would be to set the low shelf to about 50 HZ and set the gain down to about -6 db. You won't match the slope perfectly, but with those frequencies being so low and softer than the peak frequencies of the tone, it'll be difficult to hear. You may get better results using a lower frequency in combination with a lower gain level, for ex. 30 HZ and -10 db.

Then you can just set one of the mid peaks to dial up the 110 HZ.

Trying to acheive tgs's EQ solution using the BMTP tone stack is lunacy. There are a couple posts on this forum that demonstrate the frequency ranges they cover, and they are VERY wide compared to what tgs is talking about. I think Bass will affect everything from 300 HZ and lower. Mids affects from like 200 - 1200 HZ.

To me the crux of the issue though is not the frequency response but the distortion characteristics. it'd be simple enough to compensate the amp settings or some post-eq to force the profiler to get that frequency response. But the roughness of the bass is why profiling is so great - you can snatch up those quirky nuances that a budget modeler just ignores.

...as to the "sound engineer" who believes it is due to the Kemper's low sampling rate, this guy obviously knows nothing about DSP. Any frequencies below 200 HZ can be accurately (i mean like 100 freakin %) represented digitally using a 400 HZ sample rate. This is why 44 kHZ is a common rate - it is 2x the highest frequency a human can hear. In theory, a human could never hear the difference between 44 kHZ and 96 kHZ sample rates. In practice, devices are subject to deviation from reference and higher resolution tends to capture things more accurately. Since guitar is primarily a midrange instrument, I think 44 kHZ is more than accurate enough. In any case, he has it backwards - HIGH frequency sounds require HIGHER sample rates to accurately represent. See Nyquist frequency.

Sampling rate in DSP is a totally different concept than bitrate in mp3 compression. AFAIK, the Kemper isn't using a lossy compression to perform profiling. I doubt it stores any raw audio signals, let alone compresses them.

Anything Lasse Lammert, Ola Englund, or Keith Merrow is great. Thuman has some great ones too - I like his Mark III profiles and ENGL Powerball. Erik Stamm's Legacy profiles are great. STEPH.L has my favorite MESA MARK V LEAD+.

The best advice I can give is to definitely get Lasse's rig pack then save his cabinets as individual presets. They make what appear to be not-so-great profiles sound great.

Does anyone know what speakers/cabs were used on this song/album? Best I can find says 2 4x12's with Celestions. I would assume Marshall 1960 cabs, but T75's, Greenbacks, V30's? I know Vai likes V30's now, but I seem to remember him saying something about Greenbacks a while ago. The Legacy cabs were originally loaded with Greenbacks. But I also found an Ebay listing for a Marshall 1960A cab with EVM 12L's. If I remember correctly, Eddie van Halen used Marshall cabs loaded with 2 Greenbacks and 2 EVM's on the first few albums.

I also see he used a 421 and a SM 57 in terms of mics.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say either 25 W Greenbacks or Greenbacks + Vintage 30's is the right sound.

I also saw a post that said the two cabs were put in opposite corners of the room and also mixed with a DI through a Palmer's speaker simulator.

have you held the OUTPUT button then scrolled through those parameters? I don't have the power'ed version, but I remember seeing some of the outs had default send levels of -30 db or something like that. I would just try to work backwards turning up whatever output levels you can.