Posts by Monkey_Man

Ha!

You know, I should warn you that although all the L6 products I bought were reliable (POD v1.0 through to POD X3 Live & Pro), things changed with the HD line. The Variax story is interesting too, so here's a brief summary:

POD HD500
Twisted chassis - wouldn't sit flat on floor so used carpet.
Software updates often complicated by bank-name changes and bizarre, obscure (hidden 'till you search the 'net for them) firmware reset procedures and checks.
Power supply absolute crap. Toy quality.
Sound and editing - you know the story here. Pathetic, really.

Variax 700, JTV59, 69, 89 and 89F
I had to buy 6 Variaxes over a period of at least 6 or 7 years to find the two I chose to keep.
All others had serious, irreparable issues.
Of the 2 I chose to keep, 1 had 15 problems out of the box (JTV69). I solved them all in a year by myself.
The other (89F) has a twisted neck, but now that its other issues have been fixed, such as not being able to be switched on(!) out of the box I can live with it.

The Variax experience taught me that there are serious QC issues at L6; there's no escaping this conclusion given that 6 or 7 years of my life was wasted chasing a guitar that wasn't broken in some way and that stayed in tune. Both wholesalers I dealt with (one for 3 or 4 years, followed by the newly-designated one after the original went out of business) had to wait roughly 3+ months for new shipments of guitars and parts. One hooked me up with a local repair man who held onto my guitar (new, unplayed!) for 7 months. When I finally managed to chase him down he said that he'd lost my number. I asked him why he didn't just ring the wholesaler and he said he hadn't thought of it. I asked him if he could fix the guitar, now that he had my number again, and he said he's no longer going to work on 'em; it was time to "give the game away".

I could go on; words barely express what I had to endure. My point is, Kemper is gold from my highly-coloured perspective. L6 effectively sucked the creative energy and enthusiasm out of me. This is partly because there was already a tragic history, spanning decades, of my trying to get a guitar with low action that'd stay in tune (finger weakness meant I couldn't start learning guitar 'til I found one). I endured threats of violence from a luthier (I burned that guitar 'cause after $2500 and a 7-year wait it wasn't worth the wood it was made from), and even lost my future wife (she proposed and I said we should wait) 'cause infidelity from another luthier (my best friend, whilst working on my next failed guitar!) saw her end up getting burned to death in the tragic 2009 Marysville bushfire.

YMMV, and for your sake I hope to God that it varies a whole lot from the dark nightmare I had to endure. Who knows, you may be one of the "lucky" ones, mbenigni. Fingers crossed for you, mate.

PS: Sorry for the serious stuff; I don't talk about it, but I think context is everything when it comes to how a company treats its customers. Now, back to trying to forget my entire past...

When I was a kid the expression was: Easy, peasy, pudding and pie.

I used to say, "Easy, peasy, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry". Shows how mixed up my mind has been, even at that early stage of 5 or 6 years old.

The main thing is that it was easy, peasy. I like peas but am not mad about string beans, so I happen to like your rendition too!

LOL Yeah, it sucked big-time as the unit's performed flawlessly thus far.

No, I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with your profile, mate. Scrolling through a bunch of presets, where each was loaded and then the next immediately "selected" with the Mac keyboard down arrow, cleared the problem, whatever it was. A reboot of the Kemper would've done the same thing, I reckon, but that's just a guess.

I had this problem last night whilst showing the Kemper to a guest. The fact that she happened to be female and the first member of said species to grace my living space in decades didn't help the matter!

Fortunately, scrolling through a couple of dozen rigs quickly in RM solved the issue. No idea what caused it, but it was easily the most horrific high-pitched squeal I've ever heard. The harshness was exacerbated by some of the free rigs too. Thank God it disappeared after that scrolling.

Who knows, maybe quickly scrolling through a bunch of rigs with RM in audition mode (using the up / down arrows of your keyboard) could help?

Elite... yeah!

Welcome to the community, Daimbandai.

... pudding and pie!

If I had a dollar for every time a solid-state and digital hater ate his words after auditioning the Kemper, I'd buy another just for practice in the living room. Even my brother, who's just a young punk but a gun on guitar and has always been a valve man with zero regard for anything else... now wants to ditch his rig and buy one. This fella's practically impossible to please, so this is incredible.

Welcome to the forum and the rest of your life, EmGee76!

Welcome, bread.

I'll tell you what's a hard act to follow...the Kemper!

Enjoy your new bread, butter-and-all-things-else beastie, mate.

To save confusion, reduce "rig bloat" and ditch the older versions of many presets:

Go into the system menu and scroll right 'til you see the option to "load factory rigs" or whatever it's called. This will wipe the slate clean and plunk the full, updated factory rig set into your beloved beastie.

Dude, how can you handle the intensity of that screen colour? I'd have to wear sunnies, for sure! LOL

Guido, I've watched a bunch of random clips of your playing on PooToob, and I have been meaning to tell you for some time that, unless I'm forgetting someone, you're my current fave lead player. I keep thinking, "Who've I forgotten? There must be someone..", but there isn't for me at this time. Sure, there's a plethora of shredders, neo-classical monsters, fusion freaks and so on out there, but for me your phrasing, execution and note choices are second to none.

As Eltzejupp pointed out, this is very "Lukey", especially that "classic" descending run, but hey, he's always been my fave "rock" guitarist, so I've welcomed his influence in many of the clips I've seen of yours.

I have to laugh 'cause I'm ridiculously crappy on guitar, having spent most of my life trying to get the gear together to record all the (pop) instruments. The guitar thing is only just getting started now and I'm almost 50 (dreamed of playing raunchy lead since 12, staring out the window at school); I can only hope that one day I'll be able to churn out something a fraction as cool as what you're capable of. I'd be happy with that.

You are most certainly the man, for this monkey at least.

If you're going straight out of the Kemper you'll need powered monitors, and at the price you're expecting to pay I suspect eBay is your friend... your only friend.

Just don't expect too much at that price, dare I say.

Agreed - that differentiation would be awesome... and much needed and appreciated by most, IMHO.

To be honest 'though, I'm easily pleased when it comes to this thing. Kemper could release a Clayton's update where absolutely nothing is added barre the incremental OS-version name and I'd still think it was Christmas!

Thank you Gary.

Great effort, mate.

If you're married, brother, don't tell your wife that! LOL

DP seems to be the forgotten DAW in most of these discussions; even SOS has a history of dropping the "Performer Notes" section for extended periods, so, just for balance I'll have to say it:

Digital Performer! Been around since 1984, and is still compatible with projects created back then. It's technically at version 14 (15 soon) 'cause the name changed and it reverted to v1.0 after Performer 6 when audio was added.

I agree with Guenter - please let's not get into a this vs that distraction here; if anyone's keen a thread for "DAW Wars" could easily be created.

Quote from guenterhaas

It's always helpful to read the recent posts..., here's mine:

"I don't want to bash Yamaha (it's been a joke...) and they produce f.e. great pianos and other instruments, but I never liked their guitars and amps."

Thank you for pointing this out, Guenter; I have to agree with you as I've always found their guitars a little cold-sounding and character-less. Their basses are arguably a whole lot better.

The thing is, I was responding to your statement that, "Yamaha should continue to produce motorcycles, that's where they are really good"; in so doing I pointed out, as if it weren't obvious, that there've always been products across its range that I'd consider "really good". In this context it seemed you were being a little hard on good ol' Yammy.

It's all good, mate. Incredibly "versatile" company, and one I'd suspect is matched by few if any in this regard. The guitars 'though, as you suggested? Meh.

Quote from jroobz

cool, thanks guys. I'm buying it!

Woohoo!

90% becomes 100%... Yay!

Well done, mate. Great decision, and I'm betting it'll turn out to be one of the best of your life!

Quote from mbenigni

Sorry if I ruffled any feathers, Monkey_Man. I generally champion smaller, cutting edge companies, too. But I'm kind of in a minority here as one of few who has often been frustrated with the Kemper experience, and perhaps that colors my point of view a bit.

Ha. You're a balanced dude, man. That 3 weeks' delay I mentioned was on top of the month I waited for the unit to reach Australia, so I totally understand where you're coming from, as I suspect you do I. I'm just cutting them some slack 'cause the product's so great and the company's not huge... but I think you've figured that this was what I was getting at anyway. Ah, if only the world was this agreeable. Thank you for showing the sensitivity you did, mate. No feathers ruffled here (impossible, really).

Quote from Ingolf

I don't agree about this statement at all. Yamaha has been building quality instruments since 1887.It's a music company through and through.

Robust, utilitarian as well as fairly cutting-edge mixers too... and instrument modellers such as the VL series modules, and the ground-breaking EX5, the analog-modelling CS6(?) with its aggressive, cutting hard sync, the "silent play" instruments ranging from violin to guitar (nylon) to trumpet, the best bang-for-the-buck and quietest-playing eDrums out there, high-quality saxophones and other brass instruments, pianos, the Clavinova which is legendary... one could go on forever. Few companies have given us so much, IMHO.

Aah... gotcha. Awesome, mate.

Interesting: I play Stingray 5 fretted and fretless, so I definitely won't be needing the extra bottom end!

Good luck uploading them, Steve. Fingers crossed...

Quote from mbenigni

"Proportionate to the scope of the company" has no relevance to me, personally. Either the distribution is adequate for the consumer demand or it isn't. I know there are pros and cons (many cons) to a large parent company, but I can't see any way in which faster, broader distribution is a con.

Perhaps, but Line 6 will, and as this hasn't changed, there's no reason to assume it would change (in our completely fictional scenario) for Kemper.

I get you, but real-world experience has taught me that typically distributional reach and stock availability lag behind demand as sales increase and a company grows. It's a practical reality IMHO. On the plus side, to me at least, it indicates (I reckon) that sales of our beloved Kemper continue to grow. I had to wait an extra 3 weeks for mine 'cause the boys were at Music Messe. That tells me that the people who really count are in there getting their hands dirty; IOW, I doubt there's much fat that could be trimmed.

Obviously, and again, this is just MHO, if the company were, oh I don't know, 4 or 5 times its current size, we'd probably perceive a marked difference in both the "speed and bandwidth" of the distributional channels, as well as more immediate availability of stock as more units are cranked out per day / week or whatever.

Perhaps I'm too forgiving, but I've always been more than prepared to wait for quality, especially where "pioneering" products and companies are concerned. Oh, and of course I agree that "faster, broader" distribution couldn't possibly be a con!

Yes, I agree that the availability of the product/s kinda sucks... for now. I'm willing to bet 'though that everyone who wants one and has the dosh to plunk down for it... will get one.

Lastly, I think you may have forgotten that I was responding to a tongue-in-cheek comment that "Yamaha should buy Kemper"; that's the perspective from / context in which I was musing, so no, of course L6 won't change its modus operandi when it comes to posting. I was implying that if Yammy were to acquire Access / Kemper, we'd not see any of 'em here in the forum, or if we did, the boss would certainly not be one of them.

I'm done. This is beyond our control. S'pose I've been making excuses for the company, which is the default position I take in circumstances where I'm not privy to all the facts - in this case, the inner workings of the organisation.

Quote from meambobbo

And there it is. Line 6 employee saying theyve been working on it for 6 years. Thats before the pod HD launched. The tone in the above video sounds pretty darn good, but again, i have no faith in line 6 supporting a "flagship" product anymore.

Same here, mate. I literally feel as if I was lied to these past 5 years (the previous 15+ years were good), and you know what? I bloody well was!

I'm actually quite stunned by my own level of distain for the whole palava; I'm doing my best to ignore it or at least not look back. It's completely out of character for me to feel this way; I've never been angry in my life. Not once. This, 'though, just leaves a bad feelin' in my gut and sour taste in my mouth every time I think about it.

Take care, Bob-man.

Thank you, welcome, and +1 on the upload thing!

It's nitpicking, but personally I'd not have boosted the bass; this is an area (50-100Hz) that I at least would have much preferred (as an engineer) to be able to make a decision on whilst mixing. The thinking is that if you boost something and then have to cut it later, it's a double-whammy against clarity and faithfulness to the original signal.

Sorry for that. Keen to get my mitts on bass profiles, so I'm truly grateful for your effort. Well done!