Posts by LuizPauloDT

  • Open toughts about using the Kemper in an apartment

    A kemper through a guitar cabinet sounds great at low volumes. However, nothing beats the air pushing of a volume at the sweet spot.

    playing with a good pair of headphones can be really nice for stereo separation and all the convenience, but also ear fatiguing, lack of string acoustic reinforcement, sounding too hi-fi, harsh, etc


    As a reference, I manage to play the kemper into a Waza tube amp expander as power amp going into a Zilla 1x12 mini modern + a 2x12 MESA roadking cabinet at a good volume (cant hear my strings) , without bothering people. However I have a very chill girlfriend, cool neighbours and a tiny room that doesn't require much power to "fill it up".

  • upgrading from axe fx ultra

    Hi,


    I have owned an Axe Standard, Ultra, II and currently own a II XL+

    Tone-wise, both the Ultra and the Kemper are easy to come up with great sounding profiles/patches, just a different approach.

    However, in the feels department, the Kemper is king IMO, unbeatable. Through a guitar cab, it makes me believe I am playing a tube amp, it feels great.


    To give some more background about my opinion:

    I find very interesting comparing gear and sometimes I do some A/B comparison between my tube amps, Kemper and the Axe FX, all played through the same amp and cabinet (WAZA TAE (100W Class AB) into a MESA RK 2x12 cab)

    I usually start with the tube amps for building a baseline, then switch to the Kemper and the Axe FX.

    Both the Kemper and the Axe FX sound good, however the Kemper has a depth, richness, compression, elasticity ( for the lack of a better word) which I feel when playing the tube amps, that the Axe FX justdoesnt. Its really hard to describe, is a feeling thing ... Its something that you dont get in the recording. Its not enough that you only listen, you need to be the one playing and listening to get the feel ...


    To me, the Axe FX (my ref now is the 2 XL+, never played the 3 though) feels stiff (yes I have power amp modeling on, cab sim off). It just feels like the same as if I plugged in a non-tube pedal, like the KSR Ceres straight to the WAZA PA into the cabinet. it sounds good, but feels "stiff"


    At the end of the day, that's just my opinion. it's good if you try them by yourself and draw your own conclusions.


    Cheers,

  • Ticking Noise On Stage.

    Quote from Wheresthedug

    Sounds like the neighbours banging on the door. They either want you to turn down or play requests ?


    I haven’t ever heard a noise like that from my Powerhead but I remember the first time I heard a weird ticking on the playback of a recording. We tried to everything to locate the culprit but nothing we did made any difference. Then we noticed that it only happened when I put my hand on the guitar neck. It turned out it was the ticking of my watch being picked up by the guitar and amplified. That was 1995 and I still suffer from that problem to this day.

    I have experienced the same phenomena when wearing a soundbrenner pulse on my fingering hands wrist :p

  • Bad headphone sound quality

    Hi,


    First of all, it is worth checking: If some profiles sound bad to you, than there is a chance those are not good. If most/all of them sound bad, than you have to fix your monitoring method.


    I play mostly through headphones and I know what you mean.

    I have a pair of DT 880 Pro and DT 770 Pro, both 250 ohms.

    The fact is these headphones are great for MONITORING / MIXING WORK, specially the DT 880 Pro IMO as its freq resp is flatter than the DT 770, which has some slightly scooped upper mids and is a bit boomier in the low end.

    However when it comes to LISTENING I would rather not have all that piercing high end content these headphones have, which translates into harshness and fizzyness.


    What I found to be the SIMPLEST solution for me: to play using my Senheiser Urbanite XL headphones.

    It just sounds great out of the box. I just have to tame a bit the low end, make it less mid-heavy and that is it.


    What I found to be the BEST solution for me: KEMPER -> Presonus Quantum and to monitor through the DAW using Sonarworks Reference 4 plugin to correct the freq resp of the Beyers.

    I manage to low latency monitor (green Z) through the quantum with an RTL of 1,5 ms, on top of Kemper's latency.

    Good thing of this plugin is I can add the correction EQ to taste and tweek it if needed (change the target from flat to predefined target curves, tilt it, etc)

    My experience is I get much less ear fatigue when playing for longer periods of time, specially when using the semi open DT 880's


    Another work around I have done in the past was to dial in EQ presets in the kemper to match a "flat freq resp corrected" DT 770 / 880 in the DAW using the Refercence 4 plugin and then use that as a global locked FX block in the kemper. Matching was never perfect, but quite good.


    Other than EQ corrections, I always have some "space" dialed in the global menu or some reverb for ambience. I m not a big fan of the pure cab feature though, but found some use for it in certain situations already.


    This post was not suppose to be so long, but I thought it would have been good to share this experience and hopefully it can give you some hints how to make your headphones playing experience more enjoyable! :)

  • ENGL E580 DA Profiles

    Hi everyone!


    I've just uploaded into Rig Exchange some DA profiles I've made yesterday from my ENGL E580 preamp into the power section of my Hughes & Kettner Triamp Mark III.

    The profiles were made from the standard presets available in the preamp.

    Personally I love this preamp and might shoot some more when I get the time.

    Just search RE for "DA ENGL E580"


    I hope you guys and enjoy and find a use for them :)

    Have fun!

    8)


    Below you find some description about the presets, taken from the E580 manual:


    Lb1: Modern Eddy

    Latter day brown sound; just add a pinch of pitch and delay

    to tap your way into the hearts and minds of your audience.


    Lb2: Full Shred

    Shred is not dead, it just nodded off. With this one, all pickers who thrive on

    speed, accuracy and great tone will wake up to some hip hi-gain lead sounds.


    Lb3: Classic Lead

    Typical retro lead sounds of `70s vintage harking back

    to the first amps equipped with master knobs.


    Lb4: Moore Lead

    Gary's notion of tone: Les Paul plus gobs of gain equals endless sustain.


    Lb5: Angel's Rhythm

    Straight-up, mids-heavy hi-gain rhythm. Great contemporary sound

    for guitarists who like to stand out in a crowd. Creates a wall of sound

    Phil Spector would have been proud of.


    Lb6: Devil's Lead

    The evil twin of preset Lb5. Modern hi-gain lead sound with a bulldog's bite

    and balls to boot. Packs a mighty punch; great stuff if your band mates

    won't back off the volume when it comes for you to strut your soloing stuff.

    24


    Lb7: Ultra Sandman

    In all humility, this one may set a new standard for ultramodern heavy metal

    riffage. Punchy low midrange, tight bottom end and sparkling treble. Tweak

    the presence knob and shape to taste. That should do it then ....


    Lb8: The Healer

    Searching for a singing Latin rock lead sound? Search no more. Particularly

    owners of set-neck mahogany-body guitars will appreciate this one. Sustain

    like there's no tomorrow, notes may actually hang around until the next day.


    Lb9: Strat Lead

    Plenty of punch to beef up every single coil-equipped guitar. Remarkable

    dynamic range, much like a hard-working British amp cranked to the hilt.

    Try an arpeggio or two and revel in the power and definition ...


  • DI-boxes suitable to create Direct Amplifier Profiles

    Quote from dB Cooper

    Another vote for the Behringer Ultra-G. Very transparent and natural. I used one for 6 months before I "upgraded" to a Two Notes Torpedo Cab Captor reactive loadbox. If you don't mind having the speaker cab engaged, the Behringer is tops.

    My experience with a Behringer Ultra-G was far from satisfactory in the past when profiling a Mesa Mark V.

    In the end I profiled using the slave out instead, which gave me the result I wanted.

  • I Intend to start a study about commercial profiles

    Quote from Symec24

    What confuses me with regard to the guitar aspect is that I read on here that with the updated profiling process the guitar does not influence the sound of the profile any longer at all. So why do so many profiles still sound so different with different guitars? Have almost all of them been created with the pre-Profiling-rework-OS?

    I think it means that there is no "pickup content" into a profile, but of course if one dialed in the tone in the profile using a single coil strat, it wont sound the same as if using a Les Paul with a humbucker.


    Yes, they sound different with different guitars. Thats the nature of the beast, like in a real tube amp. Something would not be right if it was not like that.
    I cant use the same profile for my Ibby J Custom and the Caparison Dellinger e.g.
    They are both mahogany body, mapple set neck, H-H (different Pups), but the dellinger is wired without a tone pot, with a lot of bite and top end, whereas the J Custom sounds softer as velvet. I will chop people heads of if I use the J Custom profile on the dellinger :D


    In the "real tube amp world", If I change to a different guitar, I might have to adjust the amp settings. On the kemper is the same, I tweek to taste and save as another preset, simple like that :)