Posts by pauljoy

Quote from Monkey_Man

Please let us know how you go at rehearsal, Paul, and good luck mate!

Well, first KPA rehearsal complete and overall I think it went well. Sound wise things were good, I stuck mostly to some free Mesa MK3 profiles I found on the Rig Exchange which just sounded the most like my Mesa. The only negative thing really was that somehow while there was plenty of volume using the powerhead in to a Marshall 1960 cab the sound didn't seem to punch through quite as much as my normal amp. I'm sure it's just going to require some tweakage.

Another issue that I had was with feedback, My master volume was around 65 - 70% and with a mid distortion drive rig my guitar was howling whenever I let it go. I don't normally have feedback issues like that with my normal amp even at much higher volume levels so I need to experiment and see what was happening there.

All in all though, very pleased... looking forward to the next one!

Oh, and one other impressive feature... one trip from the car!

[Blocked Image: http://www.pauljoy.com/images/kpa_carry.jpg]

Yes that's likely Raoul, although I think the bigger issue for me at the moment is just having too many options! I'm finding myself reverting to what I know and comparing sounds to my trusty Mesa Roadster so that I'm starting from familiar place.

My Kemper came bundled with the TAF Bundle 1 and I really like the Recto (vintage), JCM800 and TSL profiles in it. Yesterday I added Andy's Bundle 10 in to the mix after reading great things about it being improved over the older bundle however compared to Bundle 1 the same amps sounded more flubby and not as dynamic to my ear, although as you say that could just be fatigue. As you say, its very difficult to keep track of what a good sound is, especially coming from an amp with 6 knobs per channel to something with endless amp options and tweakability.

Quote from Niall182

I might take you up on that offer, (Fakenham just up the road from me) if you don't mind (is that a Dave Grohl Trinnie Lopez in your pic..lovely!)

Hi Niall. You're welcome to have a go anytime, let me know if you're heading over this way. Yes it's a DG-335, had it around year now. I got it as an investment as the previous batch made silly money after a few years but I tried it once and loved it so now it's mine to keep and enjoy

I have a feeling that the road ahead is going to be quite tricky with the Kemper. I've been spending a lot of time and some cash trying out rigs looking for a few basic tones that I like. I'm not looking to have loads, I tend to use three or four basic sounds and then a few speciality sounds for distinctive covers. Having worked my way through two TAF bundles I'm now totally confused lol. It's a funny thing, I'll find a sound that I really like and spend hours enjoying it, but then next time I switch it on it doesn't sound as good and the magic is gone. I'm sure it's all in my head but it will be interesting to see how it fares with bandmates joining the mix.

Regards

Paul

I really like the way performances are handled in the Kemper but one thing that would make it even more useful would be the ability to define locks at a performance level. I like to lock certain effects and slots globally, for instance I have a boost which remains constant in all my performances and I also lock the reverb so that it can be set once per venue.

Most of the time I like things like delay and modulation to reset to off when changing slots so I don't lock those, however there are times when I would like a specific performance to behave like a traditional pedalboard, allowing me to add effects to taste and not have these change when selecting different slots within the performance. I think global locks should always override any performance locks, but the ability to lock effects within a performance would be extremely useful.

Paul

Good luck with getting it sorted, I got mine from Andertons as well. It's funny that you mention starting with what you know, that was my plan as well but once you get the Kemper up and running with some good rigs you'll be spoilt for choice. I purchased the TAF bundle 1 as a deal with the Kemper and I too have favoured a couple of the Marshall rigs for heavier sounds, the JCM800 and TSL are good and seem a lot more open than many of the others. My favourite clean tone is from Fender Bassman. That's all with testing at home so far, maybe that will all change after rehearsal in Norwich this week, we will see!

What I've done is to create a performance for each amp with a range of sounds from clean to lead as well as a selection of effects and boosts (accessible from the remote) that remain constant across all performances, I'm hoping that will allow me to audition all the amps and see what works best in a live setup.

Add me to the Norfolk Kemper owners club please! Based in Fakenham I'm currently in the process of transitioning from a huge Mesa Rectifier rig to a powered Kemper head. First rehearsal due this week with it, fingers crossed I will like it as much as I do using it at home.

OP, you'd be more than welcome to come over and have a go with the Kemper if you're in the area.

Paul

Quote from Karl

I'm sure the little asterix "*" shows that rig is a favourtite.

Yup!

Here you go, it literally appears and disappears in the blink of an eye, hard to photograph!

[Blocked Image: http://www.pauljoy.com/images/kpa-fav.jpg]

Thanks for all the tips, I think I've found the solution now. While 'Limit Volume' was turned off on the iPhone there is another option called 'sound check' which was turned on, disabling that allowed the iPhone volume to compete with the rig sounds.

Thanks for the tips and steering me in the right direction.

It was happening with every rig but I think I may have fixed it now. After reading a few more posts on here I backed everything up and tried the initflash procedure in the maintenance menu. Once everything was restored marking favourites then took around two seconds which it sounds like is normal. I'm now also getting an on screen prompt about a favourite being set which I wasn't seeing before.

I'm not sure if it's my imagination or not but the rigs seem to sound slightly better as well, I can't put my finger on it but they sound as though they are higher fidelity than before with more headroom. Hard to say but thanks for all the input.

Paul

Thanks, I'll get in touch with support in the morning then. I was quite surprised that people were happy with the speed of the UI, I guess mine isn't typical. I'm running the latest OS and the KPA is less than 2 weeks old.

Many thanks

I wondered if somebody could confirm for me whether it's normal that the KPA User Interface is really slow to respond? Today I decided to mark some rigs as favourites and the process was painfully slow. In Browser mode if I hit the Rig button and then select the corresponding button for 'Add Favourite' it would take around 12 seconds for the tick to appear. I also tried holding the rig button in to mark as a favourite and that also took around 10 seconds before an * appeared showing the rig was a favourite.

Is this normal?

Thanks

Thanks for the suggestions. I've checked the volume limit isn't enabled on my 6+ so it's not that unfortunately. The headphone amp sounds like a good option, I'll bare that in mind.

Thanks I guess thats the only way then. I realise that I'm not driving the input as hard as I could with a mixer attached etc but for simple rehearsals without breaking loads of gear out it seems like a nice option just to connect a music player. A rig output level option on the same page as the aux input levels would be really useful, but I guess thats for another forum.

Thanks loads.

One thing I find very useful with my new KPA is the ability to connect my iPhone to the aux inputs for sound matching and learning songs. One problem however is that even with the aux output level at maximum and the iPhone output level maxed out the volume of the signal from the iPhone is around half that of most of the standard rigs in the Kemper. I don't really want to mess with the output volume of each rig so is there another way to match these levels globally?

Many thanks

Paul

Just to update this...

Kemper support tested my config and couldn't replicate the problem so they suggested it was likely to be an issue with either my FV500-H or the cable. I tried a different cable which made no difference and was about to try and find another pedal when I noticed the small volume knob on the side of the FV500-H. This small knob allows you to set the Minimum volume when the pedal is used as an inline volume pedal. I hadn't really paid any attention to it because I assumed it didn't have any effect when using the Expression pedal output but it appears it does and when the KPA is calibrated with the knob at it's minimum setting the problem was solved.

The strange thing is that even with the knob set higher the Kemper will still calibrate to it, Wah and Volume both work fine but for some reason the pitch shifter can't handle it and stops working.

Anyway, long story short, if you have a similar problem with the FV500-H make sure that Min Vol knob is at it's lowest setting and you should be good to go.

Paul

Thanks, I've done exactly that this afternoon. I got a very speedy reply from support asking me to send in a backup file to see if the problem can be replicated. Will keep you posted.

I don't know if this helps at all but another thing I've just noticed is that when I reboot the Kemper and the last rig used was the one with the pitch shifter it loads without the pedal working. If I then go to the PPTC settings, disable 'Wah to Pitch' and then re-enable it the pedal starts to work.

If I then save the rig in it's current state and jump to the next rig which uses a WahWah in the same slot 'A' the pedal controls the Wah as expected. All good until I change back to the previous rig and then the Pitch control is no longer working, even if I try enabling and disabling the 'Wah to Pitch' option again it still doesn't work.

Could this be a bug or am I misunderstanding something? it seems very eratic!

By the way, I have the latest firmware installed.

Hi all

So I've had my kemper for a week now and in general I'm getting on really well with it. There is however one issue that I can't seem to solve so I wondered if you could help.

I have an expression pedal (BOSS FV500-H) plugged in to one of the KPA's pedal inputs and defined as type 1 with a wah wah function. This works great when I add a wah stomp to a rig. For one of my rigs I need to add a whammy type effect using the pitch shifter so I've been trying to use the feature that allows Wah input to control pitch but for some reason it doesn't work.

The rig I'm using has no other stomps or effects, other than the pitch shift. I've tried enabling the 'Wah to Pitch' in the PPTC settings and that doesn't have any effect. Whats a little confusing is that if I then connect my exp pedal to the second pedal input, go to the system menu and change that input to control wah the pitch control will then begin working... great... almost!

If I then go to another rig with wah that continues to work fine and the pedal now controls wah but when I switch back to the rig with the pitch shifter the pedal no longer has any effect.

Any clues would be very much appreciated.

Regards

Paul