And just to make it clear I wish Thomas Blug the best of luck with his new product.
Posts by Nikos
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I disagree with the majority of your categorizations. It’s stereotyping by another name.
Every category of overdrive pedal has been done…repeatedly. Yet new ones show up, people buy them and are happy.
So yes, we’re serious.It is my experience. You can call this "stereotyping" and I can call this disrespectful.
So..
I have great respect for Thomas Blug as a guitar player and ofcourse as developer.
It is just a little bit strange that we had all these myriads of "blind tests" in which we all could not hear (and feel)the difference between the "real thing" and the modeler xyz and every few months we discover the next "realer thing"..
I know that I am not the only one who got tired and bored by all this.
Peace.
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The fear of the "Non-tube" is gone. It is history. Plug ins,500$/€ modelers and pedal size analogue amps..all sound good enough. Some even great.
In a few years the digital/analogue competition will be forgotten completely because..it does not matter anymore..
It will be all about the question of what will fit to each needs and tastes.
The tweaker will continued to play fractal.
The tube freak will play synergy.
Working musicians will continue to use the KPA.
People who are ok with "sounds good enough" and the need for the helix UI will continue to use this modeler..
Kids at home will use plug ins.
Blues guys their high end combos.
Pedal guys just love their pedal board.
Expensive heads & heavy cabinets ..nice to stare at in our men caves..also Slash will continue to use them together with Yngwie and some other freaks..
And so on..
The amp x no doubt will take its % of the high end floorboard modeler share. But it is expensive. And its concept does not really fit into this decade. I mean one more modeler which is supposed to sounds more real than all the really real stuff;
Are we serious;
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There is no doubt this amp x will be great.
'Problem I see..to late..to expensive..
Kids go for plug ins and cheap but great little "floor amps".We,the "elders" of rock guitar already have 1-2-3 modelers plus all the other stuff and "I see tired guitar folks" exhausted with all the gear they gathered during the last years and all the money spent.
But for sure some of us will trade one or two of their modelers/tube amps to get this product too. But it is not for tweakers,it is not for people who dont like floor pedals (like me) nor is it for all the guys which already have everything they need for every possible situation and now have to spend their money left to pay the rent/fuel/electricity and all this stuff right now.
Also if the KPA 2 appears (or at least the rumor of it coming) everything will be put on "hold" because we all hope (I guess) it will be as revolutionary as the current one and will bring also stuff "beyond the usual amp sounds".
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Biggest contender for the KPA in the near future.Until the KPA2 appears.
Don't shoot..me just my opinion..
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I am split on this.
I think it depends on the type of guitarist/person you are.
For example I see guitarists are split into 2 types ( MASSIVE generalisation I know) when it comes to playing:
1) Theoretical approach - wants to know music theory, modes and techniques
2) Plays from Tabs, patterns etc.
My other analogy is wine - some people take time to really take in flavours to concentrate on the taste...others just drink it.
I think its the same for sound production. Some people want to understand the mechanics and hence many people take about frequencies ( low pass filter at 7k) and have a good grasp of all things sound wise to ultimately become a tone king. Others go by feel.
In all of those examples, I'm the latter. That could make me lazy or just its not what interests me in playing guitar/drinking wine. I don't think either is right or wrong, just different.
To follow on from the wine example, me and my wife actually went on a wine tasting to learn more about wine. After about 9 glasses, my wife turned to me and said " you know when I think about it, and I mean I really think about it, I don't really like the taste of wine"...
Well I have a very strange personal view on all of that.
For me there is no "music theory".
I always thought that only the idea of "theory" in connection with arts is very ...funny?
How can it be "theory" when we hear,feel and play it?
Steve Vai or Zappa for example use a lot of "theory" when in fact they always create certain feels which are not a really deniable in my ears. They just knew/know what they do. They don't like to be in a "dark room" hoping that "somehow" they will find the right way to express themselves.Some people say music is "the mathematics of our feelings" and if this is true(I like this idea) the modes/scales are just some variables. Like "minor=sad/major=happy"..and in most cases this is true. The modes have their own "feel" in between what we call "major/minor/". So nothing special really. No theory. It is very practical. If you know what you are doing in a split second. It has to he a natural thing.
The same thing about our guitar sounds or our work flow.
Some people try to create sound purely by gear. If the feel of the song is not "right" they will try to rectify this by changing the amp,putting more fx on the sound etc until their ears get tired and they give up.
I would try to change other things. If I have a song which has a major feel but something is not "quite right" ..yes I would try the MIXOLYDIAN mode. Just one note different. Just one note away from.the major feel,one note more minor feel. Just an example. The older we get things start to exhaust us. We want more melody instead of energy,we want more harmony instead of rage. Gear will not help with that. Gear is not the right way to "re-fresh" our ears to revitalize them. At least I think so. This is my experience. Anyway..
Humans are complicated creatures. And musicians even more so. There us no "rule" for anything in arts/music.
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I can't see clearly the conclusion...
Is it a bad or a good thing for you ?
There are drawbacks and advantages in each cases...
Thats a good question.
I don't know. As you say there are always pros and cons...Different forms and levels of concentration.
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I think you are so right that many people are now going beyond being guitarists into sound production.
Whilst many people already do that and in fact I suspect many people on here identify more as sound engineers first and guitarists second...and many famous guitarists are part of the production team or self produce, it forces you to understand the "wider" picture.
The KPa definitely makes you think more even as a live guitarist, at the very least because you can control FOH sound separte to monitor sound. Back in the day when it was a cranked Plexi and it was the sound man's "job" to translate that FOH through careful mike placement etc, we ( guitarists) didn't care - someone else sorted that.
Personally I still believe I am the centre of the universe and all music sand sound should revolve around me
Was about time,no;
We guitar players believed to long we are the centre of the universe without working hard for anything else than doing the guitar hero stuff..
Time to wake up. The KPA is a great tool to push us beyond our comfort zones.
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Nice name for a band.
You are right man..go for it!
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psycho acoustics..
We are evolving as human beings with our experiences and tastes. Our ears get "old",our way we perceive our stand alone guitar sound within the band changes a lot and so on..I can tell you another 1000x things.
The most interesting thing for me is how I perceived highly distorted,"trebly" sounds I loved for decades doing recordings. Today I hate them. Cant use them anymore. I don't play my beloved rev f anymore for that reason and so on.
In the end I realized that doing only recordings over a long period of time while doing no live work changes EVERYTHING. And I mean EVERYTHING. The "balance" get lost and we as guitar player in the recording studio or alone at home doing our parts on the DAW evolve right away from the casual rock guitar player into a different sort of musicians more in the direction of being also our own "producers" (working on the drum sound,bass,keys etc).
First the kemper for the biggest part did that. And in a way covid/lock downs did the rest.
This happened to a lot of guitar players. Believe me.
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Dont get too comfortable, Allison Russell is getting more popular by the day...was just on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert
She is beautiful..and a really great musician.
And since I already reached my limit today of immature and childish comments about this really nice instrument and the clarinet in my country is also the synonym for even more immature and childish jokes ..I will just leave it there..peace..
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me either, but you never know. ?
You mean some indy-balkan-gypsy version of Kenny G;
That sounds interesting..
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I am so happy that I was never in a cover/top40 band which had a song with clarinet..ugh..
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it is not about "playing another instrument ".
It never was.
It is about creating new sounds. You can mix several instruments where "on top" still your usual lead sound is clearly the main sound but "with another vibe".
If I want to play clarinet I ask a clarinet player who does that all his life.
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Tube rigs will always be seen as "vintage" and "the heart of rocknroll" and this was and maybe will remain the biggest "attitude problem" of the digital guitar modeler. Sorry for stating the obvious.
It is just not enough for digital tools to have become "as good as the originals" even if they offer "easier handling" and all that great things we KPA users enjoy so much. I have met so many guitar players which were obviously extremely impressed by the KPA but ...no way they would use it. Just no.
Still many many players will tell us that "ok..sounds great,easy to use but still I feel better with my small boutique tube rig and my fav 5 boutique pedals.."
The good ol' "rocknroll vibe" most don't get with a digital tool. You can't change that. For many folks sitting all week long in their office behind the desk with their laptop the tube rig still remains the last line of defence for their hidden rocknroll dreams.
But give them new sounds,new vibes,new crazy experiences with sounds and things will change.It is very long ago that guitar players had that "jimi does his feedback orgies"-shock and all that "real electrification of the electric guitar" revolution.
This was a very big thing in the late 60s. Maybe the biggest.This was the moment that whole distortion/overdrive/feedback thing started. That was the moment we still live today.Think about it.Its true.And this happened over half of a century ago.
That's a long time.And it still is what it is until someone comes along and makes good use of modern technology to change that.
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It's not about more delays and reverbs as much as it's about all the rest of them and more of them at the same time. Some people are a front noise gate and a good dirty amp profile kind of person, some are more like, an input eq, another gate, boost comp and dirt stomp or 2 or 3, another gate, another eq, amp stack, post eq kind of people. This doesn't leave a lot of room for pitch, wah( which are many in wonderful uniqueness), wham, maybe some modulation in the front or multiple modulation in the back plus or minus potentially. Some also like delay and reverb in front too.
Very fine. Obviously some folks need a KPA XXL. Many others wanted the stage. Let's give them what they need. Dual amps and 100x noise gates & OD pedals..go ahead!I hope the KPA XXL will come and I wish all these people a lots of fun and a good time with it. As I do with all the guys who wanted (and got) the stage..
Where is the problem;
All I say is that I (!!) hope for a real,revolutionary step ahead. New sounds,new abilities of using them with a stand alone tool which I can bring into a studio or on stage and use it as comfortable as I do already with the toaster/remote/EV pedals.Playing "vibes" I never could achieve before.Adding new colours.
If@CK one day comes along and says "sorry folks..synth not possible"..that's fine too.I have the triple play and will continue to fight with it and the whole laptop mess on stage if I have to and at least this laptop does not weigh a ton like the tube rigs I used years ago..so I am already fine.More or less.
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I agree 100%. I love synths. My point was synths in the 80s were a lot like guitar solos in the 80s.
Guitar solos went as far as they could go in a musical manner. So by the late 80s-early 90s grunge and nu-metal took over. No solos anywhere to be found. There was not much new to say with a crazy solo that was not a gimmick.
Synths suffered the same thing. By the 90s most of the possible synth sounds had been created. It took something like EDM/dub step/whatever to bring a fresh sound/approach. And then synth stuff took off again.
And once people knew more about synths, it became obvious that a complete novice could make great music. And people respond to watching Yngwie or Flea tear into their instrument more than a guy pressing a key.
As for the Kemper discussion, I tend to agree adding a synth to the Kemper would make the profiler/amp part a bit too complicated for most users. I would rather see a separate unit dedicated to MIDI creation, etc. But I would not turn it down either if the price was right.
100% correct.
Talking about guitar we have right now a very talented generation of kids like Mancuso and many others being influenced by Holdsworth and all the other fusion/jazz legends.
Fusion players will seek for fusion sounds.One does not need to be a smartass to foresee this.
And personally I have tons of fun and inspiration to mix (just as an example) 60%-40% a fat Dumble style mid gain sound from the kpa with a very realistic saxophone sim from my triple play system doing my fusion leads..
As you said. The rock guitar hero shred sound of the 80s has come so far,same as all the drop tune stuff of the 90s and today young musicians are free to ignore all that cliches and stereotypes and can do their very own thing just like the musicians in the 60s and 70s..only with more modern technology.This is good news.
Now please..someone give these kids the tools which weren't available in the 60s and 70s.
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I think those peeps' requests have been more about distortion pedals and chorus / other mod FX since the new delays and 'verbs dropped, Nikos.
Ok.
Let's drop the idea with the synth.
Let's continue with the next modeler and the next 1000x versions of the 5150 with a lots more of od pedals then..
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and one more thing about the "more fx" stuff ..
Why would anyone need so many more delays and reverbs than the ones already available if not for making the guitar sound more like a synth;
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No.
I don t believe that "more people have asked for a synth"..
For sure most people here and other blogs want more fx etc.
I said that many players I know would love to have a synth in their guitar modeler.. And that's a fact.
Other than that I use the triple play and it is perfect for my needs. It is just that I have it on one guitar and have to change between this guitar and other ones as well as I need to have a laptop and all that stuff.
