I agree I don't like too much scooped mids either. One reason I asked if you judge guitar sound from a well known mix is because so many guitar players ask how do I get this and that sound. I remember I once read an interview with Andy Sneap and so many guitar player have asked how do I get the clayman sound? You can't have it. They way it sounds is because how it was recorded and mixed, he said. Many love Dimebags scooped sound but it's fizzy as hell too. Never liked that sound. I think you have already answered your self. Like you said "Sometimes it can even be a psychological thing." Are you looking for something that doens't exist? Well too little gain is better than too much gain. Have you tried EQ the profiles you like? Post EQ? The latter can make a huge different from a little bit dull to a wow sound.
Exactly, but that's the nice thing with the Kemper, you can actually profile a heavily post processed tone if you have access to a really nice studio with loads of rack gear and stuff. The Boston pack from Top Jimi is not exactly a «Marshall miced up and barely high and lowpass filtered» kind of tone, there is quite a lot going on in that signal chain. Theoretically there are no limits for what you can profile, but obviously you need access to the right gear which can be hard and/or expensive.
Yes, the Kemper EQ is what made the JP-2C usable for me. If there was no such option, I would probably have gotten rid of the entire pack. That was actually the issue for me when I was using the Kemper about one year ago, before I sold it; all the nicely crafted profiles which are essentially plug and play made me super lazy, and it didn't even occur to me that the less-than-perfect profiles could be tweaked to sound better...
Also, I am not chasing a particular tone (anymore), if I would have to use the tones I have in my Kemper right now for the rest of my life only, I would be perfectly happy! It's just that I have a huge selection of rock n' roll low-mid gain tones which all sound great in their own way, but I have only a few metal-oriented profiles I really like. So I'm looking to expand the library essentially