Posts by MKB

  • rock around the clock

    Quote from millstudios

    Hey Spotty ...what a great solo it is to (I learnt it a while back and love playing it in the middle a jump blues song or something...)
    there's a few old gibson and gretsch amps available I think but to be honest I think it's probably the guitar and the actual playing style that make the sound more than the amp ..try a fender or something and pick a little closer to the bridge ?
    Have fun learning :)


    Agreed with the above. The biggest component of the solo tone is a true hollowbody guitar (you can hear it in the thunk in the low notes and the attack on the other notes). If your Gibson type guitars have hot pickups, I don't think you can get really close to that cleanliness in the tone.


    There's also a few Silvertone amp profiles on Rig Exchange that might get close if you can get them clean enough, as well as a bunch of tweed Fender amps. But the big secret is in the hollow body of the guitar.

  • Distortion in Alternative input

    Tonight I tried connecting the MP3 player to the Alt input and the distortion reappeared. I immediately tried switching to the Alt input as a profile input, and heard significant clipping using that input for guitar. The profile sounds normal when using the front panel input. Cycling power on the Kemper did not fix the issue.


    So the problem is back. Any ideas on what I should try next? Thanks for your help.

  • Line 6 Helix - next gen guitarist's wet dream..?

    Quote from magentix

    Ah ok.
    Did the Mk2 pedals get their power over USB or did you have to use a separate power supply?


    That's a very good question. I don't recall the MkII pedals having any sort of power supply input. The FBV interface provides power to the pedal. I suppose the pedal would have to be powered over USB if used for midi over USB.


    We'll find out much more when the manuals are released. I would not be surprised to eventually see some sort of implementation of the Helix pedal with a Kemper (that is if it will do midi over USB and is as programmable as other MkII pedals are).

  • Line 6 Helix - next gen guitarist's wet dream..?

    Quote from magentix


    I cant see MIDI output on the helix remote back, just a RJ45 socket. http://www.thomann.de/de/line6_helix_control.htm
    I suspect they will not use MIDI protocol on there. It would need some kind of converter to use it as a MIDI remote. With their previous remotes, like shortboard etc. they did not provide a converter. (other than the rack unit , which is 1,5k in this case ;)


    Line 6 has implemented midi over USB in the MkII pedals; since the Helix pedal has USB, I'd expect it to have it as well. There are a few class compliant midi over USB to 5 pin midi converters out there, so using it with straight midi might not be a problem.

  • Line 6 Helix - next gen guitarist's wet dream..?

    The quote from Cliff at Fractal is very interesting, and smells a bit to me like he is seeing some potential competition for his upcoming AX8 product. I haven't seen any info about what market he is aiming at, but it might be the buyer that Line 6 is seeking with the Helix at around the same price point. It might be a bit unnerving to see a product you have been working on for awhile and are about to release (and have a lot of NRE invested) upstaged before it is released.


    Concerning Cliff's comment on the pretty color LCD; I know first hand from a previous job that looks matter a LOT. We sold a product that was far more capable and less expensive than a competitor's product, but they sold tons more of their product than we did. There were two reasons for this; one was their better marketing efforts, and another was their unit had a really slick color display where ours had a simple 2 line LCD. Their product would have worked fine without the snazzy display, but all the customers thought theirs was better because it looked better. And trying to explain the differences did very little good in most cases.


    I guarantee that there will be folks that will think the Helix is better than the AX8 just because of the looks and display. They will even think it sounds better. I suspect that the AX8 will massacre the Helix in tone quality and maybe even functionality, but the Helix will sell more because it looks killer and the AX8 appears very plain in comparison. Who would want three plain LEDs per button over LCD scribble strips? All modelers in that price range sound pretty good, good enough for most people, so Line 6 has really stepped up the game in looks and UI alone. How many users would seriously select the UI of the Amplifire over the Helix?

  • Line 6 Helix - next gen guitarist's wet dream..?

    I'm very interested to see how the Helix plays out in the next while, especially when it is in general release. While Line 6 made a big deal about the new HD models when the HD500 was first released, they did not really change the world with their quality. Personally I found their clean tones could be good, but the distorted tones were always lacking and I felt it was a compromise at best. I eventually mothballed the HD500 and started using a X3 as I preferred its distorted and crunch tones to the HD series. Of course all of these are hopelessly obsolete in my rig now that the Kemper has arrived.


    So they now have the HX models? Are they going to be that much better? Will they truly compare with the Fractal models? I hope they are as that will push the modeling industry forward.


    Frankly after I have dived into the Kemper world, I cannot imagine going back to any other modeler, as with everything else you have a fixed number of models that you are forced to work with. Say Line 6 doesn't have a good Dumble model in the Helix; you are just out of luck. But with the Kemper, all you have to do is find an amp and profile it. The Kemper does not limit you to whatever amp models the manufacturer decides to develop, and you don't have to beg the modeler maker to get the amp model you want, hoping they will eventually develop it.


    This weekend I made my first profile; of my Dumble ODS #102 (Robben Ford)/Dumbleator clone. It has a very specific tone and dynamic response that I worked hard to achieve by building the amp and carefully sourcing the components, and the profiles caught 95% of that tone and response. It is such a thrill to finally have that tone and be able to use it live; it has become my #1 profile (and I plan to put it on Rig Exchange when I get a chance). I cannot imagine for a second going back to any other modeler. It would be impossible to get that same result from the Helix and its fixed amp types.

  • Line 6 Helix - next gen guitarist's wet dream..?

    Quote from Raoul23

    Probably made in china as compared to Germany where I would have thought the remote will be of better build quality :)


    In general, the quality of a product made in China is determined by the original design and the processes that the parent company put in place. I have seen lots of Chinese built products, and they can be excellent, as good as anything made in the US or Germany or wherever. If the Line 6 gear is of substandard quality, that is because of the design and processes developed at Line 6's engineering center in California.


    Keep in mind most of the Apple gear is made in China, and all of it is of world class quality. Again, it's all due to the original design and control by the Apple folks in CA.


    BTW, a Line 6 guy at TGP posted that the Helix has two 450mHz SHARC DSP IC's in it, each roughly the same cost as the one in a HD500 (around $30 each). The Axe FX II has two 600mHz TigerSHARC processors that are FAR more capable, and cost around $350 each. As far as sheer hardware number crunching goes, the Helix is probably nowhere near as capable as the Axe FX II is. This may have nothing to do with tone, but might be worth keeping in mind if one is considering one or the other. It also implies that the Axe FX II is giving a lot of value for the money; I am a bit surprised that Fractal can sell it as cheaply as they do (a $2500 final cost product has $700 in just two ICs).

  • Direct profile Behringer DI causing flubbiness?

    Is it possible that the amp volume is causing the Behringer DI to distort? The Behringer has active circuitry in it that could be made to distort under certain circumstances. Might be worth double checking the input attenuation settings (have both attenuators switched on), make sure the clip LED is not lighting, and maybe try a new battery in the Behringer.

  • Any way to use Alternative input with cable plugged into the front input?

    Hello all, is there any way to do this? The manual says no on page 45, maybe it should be requested as a future feature. I have a guitar that has a piezo bridge and magnetic pickups, and it has a TRS jack that will send magnetic on tip and piezo on ring. With my HD500 I could use a splitter cable and plug the magnetic into the main input and the piezo into the aux input, set the models to whatever input I wanted, and it worked very well. I thought the Kemper could do this too but it can't apparently. Thanks.

  • Line 6 Helix - next gen guitarist's wet dream..?

    The Helix is indeed nice looking and promising, and IMHO they are attacking the biggest issue with modelers (the user interface). It does not look like the Helix is less complicated than the HD500 at first glance, if anything it might be more complicated. But hopefully the Helix won't need the eternal tweaking necessary with the HD series to get good tones (I recorded and gigged with a HD500 for over 4 years until it was replaced by a Kemper).


    I don't think the Helix will be too much competition for the Kemper, as the Helix is more like a Fractal product (where the individual parts in an amp are modeled to get the tone). The Kemper is a different concept entirely in that it emulates the response and tone of amps it profiles. This makes the Line 6 and Fractal user somewhat limited to whatever amp models are provided by the manufacturer, where Kemper owners can have an unending number of profiles of an almost infinite number of amps. So I would think the real comparison would be between the Helix and the Axe FX II and perhaps the Amplifire.


    Is there really a market for a $1500 modeler pedal from Line 6? Will the price of the upcoming Fractal AX8 be less than that? Can Line 6 really make a product that sounds better than the Fractal units, and will anyone even give it a chance? IMHO the Helix has a very steep hill to climb.


    I expect that eventually the folks at Kemper will develop a unit that will only play back profiles, not perform actual amp profiling. I would think that many users of Kempers would be happy to just download and use existing profiles and not make their own. If they could put the Kemper tone quality and profile playback capability in a less expensive foot pedal unit, the competition would be decimated.

  • How to get the looper working with any Midi Device


    If I may make a suggestion, if you haven't done this already, obtain a midi computer interface and download the free program midiox. You can then use midiox to analyze the midi output commands from your project and get an idea of what it is sending to your Kemper. I used midiox to verify and troubleshoot the output of my looper project while developing the code, and everything then worked correctly first time with the Kemper. IMHO midiox is essential for developing any midi applications with a microcontroller.


    http://www.midiox.com/


    EDIT: Forgot to mention, you can log midi data from your project with midiox and send it via IM or post, and we can take a look at it and try to help with the issues.

  • ART ZDirect DI for Profiling ....... *really, really* dumb question about hooking it up to the Kemper :) :(

    Quote from shooby


    And what does that mean according to my question?


    Sorry, that wasn't really an answer to your previous question, just an observation.


    Concerning the question whether your amp will blow or not.. If you are using a tube amp, you must have a speaker connected to the Input/Thru jack or your amp will certainly have major issues. All tube amps must have a speaker load of the proper impedance on their output transformers or big problems will happen quickly. Some very small amps might have internal loads but those are not in the majority.


    If your amp is solid state, most of them will work without loads, but some will not. So in any case you should use a speaker load unless you are 100% certain that the amp is fine without a load.


    The direct box only reads the voltage the amp is sending to the load as well as the return voltage from the speaker. The attenuator in the direct box reduces that voltage to one the direct box and downstream electronics can handle (a 100W amp can put out around 40VAC into a 16 ohm load, many equipment signal inputs can only handle 2VAC or so, hence the need for an attenuator). This attenuation does nothing to absorb the power the amp is trying to send to a speaker.


    Hope this helps.

  • How do I test a used FCB1010 to make sure its in good condition?

    I bought a used one from Guitar Center, and a few of its switches were intermittent. The switches have switch elements on a PCB much like in a computer keyboard, and these can become faulty but can be replaced by a tech. So be sure and check every switch to be sure they all make consistent contact when pressed.


    It would also be wise to check the midi input jack for correct operation if you plan to use a Uno4Kemper chip, as both the midi in and out have to work properly. I'm not sure off the top of my head of how to test it's midi input without a computer or other midi device.


    Fortunately the FCB is a rugged and reliable piece of gear, and indeed $50 is a good price.

  • Distortion in Alternative input

    Quote from hjscheffler

    What happens when you connect your guitar to the Alternative input and select it as the input source in the input menu?


    Thanks for the reply. I did not try this last night. I just tried it with a clean profile, and with a guitar it sounded just like the main input, no distortion. I then plugged a mp3 player in its place (so the mp3 played through the profile from the Alt input), and the distortion was not present as before. I then tried the standard mp3 connection where it was distorting last night, and it sounds perfect now. The distortion is gone, even at high signal input levels.


    I understand that some of the signal inputs have gain switching, is this perhaps what the problem was? Maybe the alternative input has to be used as the profile/instrument input before it gets its gain settings correct? I also noticed last night that the cable from the aux input was very microphonic (lots of handling noise), but was not nearly as sensitive today.


    Thanks again for your help.

  • Distortion in Alternative input

    Hello all, I am attempting to connect a MP3 player to my Kemper using a 1/8" TRS to 2X 1/4" TS cable. It works, and I can change the volume in the headphones using the Aux In/Headphones level control in Main, but the channel coming through the Alternative Input has significant distortion on it. Lowering the source input volume does not seem to help very much. Power cycling the Kemper did not help. The distortion happens with different sources as well. The side going through the Return input seems to be OK. Is this normal? And is there a input level control in the UI anywhere? Thanks for your help.

  • ART ZDirect DI for Profiling ....... *really, really* dumb question about hooking it up to the Kemper :) :(

    Quote from benifin

    Many thanks Drapes - sometimes my brain goes weird :) - just found the schematic too:-


    [Blocked Image: http://i1152.photobucket.com/albums/p482/gtrotunno/art%20zdirect%20schematic_zpswkq27ci1-1.jpg]


    Ben


    Not meaning to be too picky here, but there is no way this schematic can work, as the primary winding is shorted by the connection between the Input and Thru jack. The lower pin of the primary (to the Thru jack) should be connected to the common ring terminals of the input/thru jacks.

  • DIY Midi-Footcontroller .. With Tuner AND Looper

    From a brief look at the code, this section:



    ...appears to send the Undo command 0x62, 0x5D, then send the Rec/Play command 0x62, 0x58 1mS later. Since the value of the last message is 0x01, the Kemper will think both the Undo and Rec/Play are pressed and held down at the same time. I did not see where the Release values for the Undo was sent later in the code, so maybe the Kemper is getting a bit confused, thinking the Undo button is still held down while the Rec/Play is being toggled.


    Here is an example of what I did in my code. It is simple and assumes that only one button is pressed at a time, and a pressed button will be released before another is pressed. It has worked well so far.



    Hope all this helps!

  • DIY Midi-Footcontroller .. With Tuner AND Looper


    What gear are you using to send the commands? Are you programming an existing device or writing your own code in an arduino?

  • Strange flashing of delay button while using a remote switch

    Hi all, an hour or so ago on a gig I had a strange issue with the delay button on my toaster (connected to a Uno4Kemper equipped FCB1010). I have the delay and tap functions controlled by an external dual footswitch (actually from a Behringer V-Amp), and the TRS plug from the footswitch goes to a stereo to dual mono adapter cable, and this into footswitch input 1 and 2. This has worked perfectly for several gigs.


    This evening during the gig I looked at the Kemper, and the delay LED in the Effects block was flashing on and off very quickly. If I pressed the Delay button, the button would then stay on constantly. Pressing it again caused the rapid flashing to start again. I unplugged the footswitch and the flashing continued. Since I was at the gig I power cycled the Kemper and it then started working correctly.


    Anyone else seen anything like this? I know it might be the footswitch, but wanted to check and see if any of you have seen yours act like this. Thanks.

  • Remote the looper with standard midi controller

    Quote from tntent

    What do you mean when you say the looper functions are added to 1010 control ? Did you get it into a pedal ? How much did you spend ? I like the idea of having the looper available via a addon to fcb rather than a seperate looper pedal via the loop and two ts cables.. Of course one midi controller to do anything and everything I want would be great but I'm not rich...


    The pedal is organized like this: FCB1010 Midi Out > Looper pedal midi in, looper pedal midi out > Kemper midi in, Kemper midi out > FCB1010 midi in. The looper pedal passes the FCB1010 commands through from In to Out and merges in the looper commands the pedal generates. The FCB1010 works exactly as it did before the looper pedal was added.


    Right now the pedal is still in prototype form and hasn't been placed in an enclosure. The hardware so far is of course an Arduino Uno, and a Seeed Prototype shield with the midi IO and prototype pushbuttons added. The pushbuttons will be replaced with the footswitches when it gets placed in an enclosure. Unfortunately there is not a PCB that contains all of the electronics to interface the outside world to the Uno, it takes a bit of building to make a proper shield. Maybe the closest board is the Sparkfun midi shield, but you will need to solder the wires from the switches directly to the connector pins on the shield going to the Uno.


    As far as costs go, maybe it will cost $125 or so US (rough estimate), with most of that going to the enclosure. This cost could be cut a lot if the builder is clever with sourcing parts. I haven't gotten far enough into the project to have a clear idea what it will cost. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will have more to report.