Thanks for the kudos!
What can I say? Not my PA...
I have yet to hear a band play with a Kemper that the guitar didn't sound great.
I suspect that this is due to a couple of reasons. The first is that only someone pretty serious about having great tone would put down the cash for a Kemper, and the second is that the Kemper just really sounds great ..... moreover, it is fairly easy to get it to sound great.
So, in summary (as there is no Kemper 2 on the horizon) the optimal solution for you @Spid would be a Kemper plus a little MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with RigManager.
Convenient and not compromising in regard to the guitar sound.
+2 
Hold down the output button until the output menu shows up.
On page 5 of 6 at the top, the 3rd button from the left enables pure cabinet. When it is enabled, the 3rd encoder from the left (on the bottom) adjusts the amount of pure cab.
I thought it's not supposed to affect clean tones.
I'm keeping mine on at 6 for now. I still feel like it sometimes reduces the character of a profile, but I do appreciate the smoother sound.
I think so too. Seems like it takes a little of the bite out of the rig. I ended up creating a whole new set of performances with a bit of eq to get the bite back.
I do agree that the sound is smoother with all distorted tones. The harmonics mesh better now. I suspect that this is also the reason some have reported better controlled feedback on stage.
Just gave it a try. I like what it does to some profiles, but others, not so much.
It seems to cut some highs and add some lows while putting some cab like breakup into the rig that wasn't there before.
I think I will have to work with this in context of the entire band playing together to get a better sense of how I like what it is doing. After all, if I wanted more lows, and less highs, I already had several tools to get this with before. The break up though.... that doesn't appear to be the same as just adding a bit of gain..... just as the speaker breakup in a cab isn't the same either .... so that appears to be a nice nuance to this feature.
Thanks guys!
The pure cabinet function is AMAZING! To me it took the KPA to a whole new level sonically.
Would this only be an advantage with profiles that were created with 3.xx? I suspect that older profiles would simply sound the same. Is that correct?
the pure cabinet worth upgrading for sure.
Thanks! I'll upgrade it after this weekends gig then.
I am on 3.02.
Since I don't have the Kemper controller, is there any advantage to upgrading my firmware?
I would definitely upgrade for a spring reverb
There are two ways of looking at the issue of cannibalizing your own sales.
Sure, some people would purchase the less expensive unit instead of the more expensive unit. As long as there is NO competition in the market, then making a Kemper Jr would be flat out stupid squared.
But there is competition in the market.
I don't look at a product like the Kemper Jr and envision how much of the high end products it will impact the sales on. I look at the Kemper Jr as a way of remaining relevant in the marketplace.
If Fractals pedal board becomes very popular ......
First, they will own that market all to themselves. Kemper will get NONE of that market.
Second, Kemper will very likely lose sales to the lower priced Fractal product from their higher end products.
Third, I think we can all agree here that no matter what, a floor board version of the KPA would be a huge improvement over the current setup.
I sure would love reducing my hookup to just a pair of XLR's and a power .... all straight into my floor board.
Companies that rest on their laurels always get over-run by companies that continue to innovate.
I guess it all depends on the goals of your company.
At the very high end (where the Kemper resides today), there are people that will pay nearly anything for a really great product.... but there aren't very many of them (as a percent of the market). Your profit per unit can be quite high; however, you must amortize your engineering and overhead across a small number of units.
If you get into the middle of the price range, the amount of unit sales gets MUCH higher. This allows you to take less profit on each unit and spread your engineering and overhead across a much bigger population.
That is the business side of it.
If you want to look at it from a social standpoint, then selling a $700 Kemper all-in-one floor efx processor would bring tonal bliss to much more of the population as well as their audiences ..... and the world would be a much better place as a result
Come on CK! Lets do this thing. Can't have Fractal one-upping you. Put em back in their place!
That is pretty much what I used for this live performance of Jump (KPA Rack with DXR10, monitor out to DXR10, main out R to PA, unlinked at about -15 dB or so), using the bundled Gundy Brown Sound EVH factory rig... audio quality not that hot, as it was recorded on a little handheld camera. BTW this was the first night out with the DXR10, I received many compliments on my tone that evening, including from our bassist...
Great sound!
Seems a shame to have a Kemper in the same room as those Behringer speakers though
There are currently only 2 competitors in this particular product field. Kemper and the Axe II Fx.
There is now a mini Axe to deal with. If it does indeed have the same tone capability as its big brother, this will most certainly drive competition (Kemper) to create a similar device.
A smaller Kemper floor unit would indeed eat a small portion of the sales from the big brother; however, mostly what it would do is create sales that would not have existed before.
There is an exponentially larger market for a $700.00 device than there is for a $2000.00 device.
In my field it is normal to sell 7 to 1 the less expensive device as compared to the higher priced device. You guys can do the math
A $700 device wouldn't just impact the mini Axe either. At $700.00 you start to grind away at the higher end Digitech, Boss, and Line 6 stuff.
I don't know about you guys, but I would GLADLY pay $700 for a Kemper Jr rather than paying $500.00 for a Line 6.
I don't know that Kemper and Fractal are ever going to be making a competitor to something like the Digitech RP500 (or lower)..... but I can definitely see the business logic in a Kemper Jr at $700.00.
Great thread!
First off, when I was considering replacing my venerable VHT rig (head, 2x12 fat bottom + 4x12 slant top), I read zillions of posts about the various options out there.
My biggest draw to the Kemper was that the people who recommended it the most tended to be people that previously played out regularly, and who previously owned a boutique or high end tube amp.
What I am getting at here is that it is one thing for someone who used to use a little digitech stomp box to say the love the way a Kemper makes them sound, but quite another for someone who used to play a Bogner or Matchless to say the Kemper is the shit
Live sound quality:
The biggest thing people get confused over is that there is a big difference between what you hear on stage from a tube amp, and what the audience hears. I play rhythm and sing lead in my band. The lead guitarist has a couple of tube amps he plays with.
When I first got the Kemper up and running at practice, the lead player was not convinced. Fast forward a year later, and he now can't get his own rig to sound as good as my Kemper. The difference that one year had was that I had time to audition different profiles, and learned how to bring out the characteristics I find good from each profile.
As mentioned, consistency from gig to gig and song to song is exceptional. Way better than what is possible with a real tube amp and a bunch of pedals.
Finally, live sound isn't about what it sounds like on stage. It is what it sounds like throughout the audience. Guitar cabs are very beamy. They are very loud directly where they are pointed, and not so much everywhere else. I have never heard a band that I thought sounded great out front that didn't have the guitar volume low and the FOH doing the work for the guitar output.
IEM's
I have been using IEM's with the band for around 10 years now. It has been quite a trial since it is difficult to replace band members with those who will use them. Lots of guys are old school and simply don't like them.
Using IEM's has HUGE advantages in all sizes of venues. You can hear everything, and it allows the stage volume to be brought way down (this is particularly true if you have vDrums in your band ).
The disadvantage of not having any stage volume is that the harmonics and string interaction suffer for the lead guitarist. I believe that it is absolutely necessary for good lead tone to have a guitar monitor cab pointing at the guitarist. As the rhythm guitarist, I get enough action from the sound reflected back onto stage. Not so for the lead player IME.
Setup/teardown
Much easier with the Kemper. Light, fast, and nearly impossible to get wrong. It is the ideal live gig rig.
Practicing at home
The most difficult thing I had to overcome with home practice was that my headphones are NOT representative of my full PA rig sound. Something that sounded good through my headphones, might lack clarity and cut through the PA. Something that sounded brutal through headphones might sound muddy through the PA.
To fix this, I found that using the master eq was the answer. I setup rigs on the PA to sound good for gigging. I then used the master eq at home to get a pleasing sound through my headphones for at home practice. Problem solved!
Gig Setup
I use an FCB1010 with the Uno-4-Kemper chip in it. I have seriously considered making modifications to the FCB so that I can use a single 7 wire cable to both power it, and provide MIDI IN and MIDI OUT all in one connection, but haven't done this yet (it is on my list).
I have about 4 banks of performances setup that I use at gigs. I arrange each bank from clean to heavy. I fit songs into one of the 4 banks. I have a separate 5th bank that has a few gizmo's I use infrequently.
The KPA goes directly into the PA through 2 XLR cables.
This makes for a very simple gig rig that sounds great every gig.
In the long term I think that tube amps and guitar cabs will continue to be researched and developed, possibly more than ever. Once a prototype has been perfected, a full range of very high quality profiles will be made. A set of such profiles will then be marketed without the need to put the amp into production at all!
Excellent thought.
I would elaborate on this a little.
When creating a production tube amp, you have to take into account manufactureability, durability, output volume, and cost. If you are creating a tube amp with the explicit purpose of making a digital profile of it, then you can create a superior sounding amp.
In audio equipment today, the real reason to use higher frequency sample rates is not to avoid artifacts .... which as everyone who understands realizes that 44Khz is more than adequate (and in my case even 30Khz would likely do the trick ).
The real reason is to lower the latency of the processed signal. This is especially important in digital mixers when signals are frequently split, processed separately, then mixed back together. Any time difference results in a phase issue resulting in kind of a chorus effect (even when you don't want it).
Nearly all modern mixers (and digital domain processors like the Kemper) have time aligned channels that remain phase coherent in nearly all circumstances..... which again puts us back into the question of "Why >48K"?
I think that there are differences in the kinds of people that gravitate to the Axe II FX vs those of us here that gravitate toward the Kemper.
I won't speak for everyone, but for me, pure tube tone is what I most desire. Rich harmonic content that (prior to my KPA) could only be found with some hot tubes and a good cab. I have never put much verb or delay on my guitar live since the room generally has plenty of that already. If I use any pitch efx (like detune, chorus, phase), it would be on a very specific song that had a signature sound to it.
I can see where someone coming from a large rack of efx gear might enjoy the sound of an Axe II FX. For me, there is nothing more beautiful than my Strat, Kinman pickups, and a great tube amp (fill in the blank here for your favorite). Sure, I put a touch of verb on, and occasionally some delay when appropriate, but to my ears, the base tube tone is what I am looking to hear. I feel that the KPA has outstanding efx for my purposes (much better than what most gigging pros out there use every day).
What I love most about my KPA is that it has made me love playing even more than I did before.... and I really love to play
Perhaps my opinion is more based upon my personal usage model as suggested
Still, my recommendation stands. I would shell out the $10.00 for the Tone King TAF rigs if you want to hear how nice of a clean can be produced in the Kemper. IMO, the cleans in the stock Kemper are not nearly as beautiful as this one.
Thanks...those are some great clips. Some of the clean tones I've found have a good amount of effects on them, which IMO makes it harder to hear the real clean tone coming through. So I think I've heard some of your clips before, and while they sound great, there are just a small percentage that doesn't have some effects on them. Don't get me wrong...clips with effects sound better, and more realistic for musical purposes, but can often mask the "pure" tone behind them. Still, I can get a pretty good idea from them, and they sound great. Thank you!
Not sure I agree with your methods of assessment here. I did previously agree with you that MY personal experience was that the Kemper has great natural tone that captures that of the real tube amps that are profiled (the definition of "good tone" in my book). I agreed that I only lightly use efx and therefore it was very possible that the efx on Kemper are not as good as those on Axe II (although they are as good as most anything I have used in the past FYI).
It seems inconstant for you to now say that while the tones recorded sound very good to your ear, that it masks the "pure tone".
I have read literally thousands of posts comparing the Kemper and Axe/Axe II. I don't recall a single entry claiming that Kemper does not excel in capturing the "pure tone" of an amp better than the Fractal offerings.
This kind of discussion tactic is refereed to as "moving the goal post".
In addition to this twist in logic, I also would like to point out that any "pure tone" you would hear in a recorded clip would be MUCH more effected by the guitar, guitar settings, and eq used on that particular clip...... vs any meaningful information about how effective the clean tones the rig in the Kemper are.
Finally, the reason that most clips on both amps are distorted tones is because these are the tones that are MOST effected by the profiler/modeler. Getting authentic sounding guitar distortion is very difficult. Getting good clean sounds with some efx can be done fairly well with my $100.00 Line 6 guitar port.
Now, I concur that the Kemper cleans have a bounce and tube life that the Line 6 does not; however, I could easily do a gig with line 6 cleans.... while I would be embarrassed to go anywhere near a stage with a Line 6 if I had to use a heavy channel.
I was harping in my above post about the Ton King profile. If you are really interested in a great clean tone, that would be one I would go purchase right now from the amp factory. The link here: http://www.theampfactory.com/all-downloads/amps-pack-3/
The profile is called "King Metro" and is pretty cheep if you buy it all by itself. Nice stuff.
I don't know how you guys have so much time to argue! I am sitting here with my Tone King rig getting the most incredible stray cat strut tone ever and loving every minute I do wish I could type and play at the same time. Hmmm. Maybe if I practice just a bit longer .....
