Posts by JedMckenna

    The Tone Junkie guy has a workflow that I follow:

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    You have to be careful though, manipulating rigs and performance can get quite buggy though if you mess around too much (still a huge improvement from before though). In my experience, if you start swapping the order of the rig blocks, you're likely to run into trouble at some point. Once the rig is loaded and saved at the right place though, then assigning effects is easy and very stable.

    Hi, looong time Kemper user here. I just bought a Stage (also have a Powerhead for 10 years).


    When I boot it, I sometimes have this problem: the Input and Output lights are full on green and there is apparently no sound getting in or out. The worst part of this problem is that it doesn't happens everytime, so this behavior doesn't happen to be "reproductible" in the eyes of the repair center I dealt with.


    I opened a ticket and it was answered very dismissively by the KPA team in the US, as in "go back where you purchased it", which I did (BTW, the German team is much more cooperative in my experience.) After examining it and doing an USB reboot, they concluded that it was solved after booting it a few times with no issue. Next time (rehearsals for huge gig), I had to fly someone to bring my Powerhead as a backup in an emergency situation, costing me literally the price of a new Stage - I would have just bought a new one but there was no music store nearby). I came close to losing my job and had a panic attack.

    Anyway, now this problem is considered "not reproductible" by my repair center, yet I have several videos of my Stage doing it on startup. Anyone else has had this green light/freeze experience? I don't know what to do as after this last incident, I can't trust this Stage unit ever again on those types of gigs... it happens once in a while and the unit feels cursed. The morning of my panic attack, even re-booting it many times or doing a reset never solved the problem, that entire morning the lights were full on green no matter what.


    Anyway, sorry to vent but I really resent buying this particular unit now, I seem to be the only one that experienced this. What are my options?


    Yes, I'm on the latest OS release 10.2.something... with nothing connected to it, please don't tell me to try changing cables or whatnot. Thanks!

    At this point, those designers are trolling the public with their crap. Thousand dollars audio cables, etc... that "new era of electric guitar culture" seems to be about throwing stuff at the wall and looking what can stick. I'd be ashamed of bringing this monstrosity to a gig, it's like the antithesis of rock & roll. Also, putting 12 mics in front of your speaker cones is not the flex you think it is. From the clip sounds, it doesn't even seems worth profiling, ha!

    Played a gig once with some violinist that had this apparently famous, uber-tacky Swarovski crystal-covered violin or something. The stupid violin was actually the selling point of the show, more than the artist itself, yet it stayed on a rack the entire time with a spotlight towards it until halfway through the show where he or she (see, I can't even remember the artist) finally used it for like one song. It sounded like literally any other electric violin through a DI. The room kind of shrugged their shoulders, and the rest of the show went on with the normal violin. 15 years later I still wonder what the hell that was about.

    "I only play in my room for my enjoyment now" - I'd say you can totally downsize to just the Player then, no need for anything fancy. I have tons of equipment for the different sessions and tours I do but when playing in my music room, I never get fancier than an HX Effects plugged in a cheap, tiny combo amp: in those situations, I play with the volume so low that the sound quality pretty much doesn't matter: as long as I'm in the ballpark... Soundwise, even a Player would kill my practice rig but like I said it doesn't matter at this volume hence why unless I need to tweak or run the material, I usually don't even bother taking the Powerhead out of its bag between gigs. That being said, if you have bigger ambitions like recording etc, keeping the full size KPA is definitely a better choice.

    Whenever I think of a pedalboard idea like this, I come to the conclusion that a Stage is pretty much the same size, has way more options, has no cables prone to fail/have ground buzz and all things considered is probably cheaper... but good luck.

    Maybe your drummer friend doesn't quite get the idea behind it because nowadays there are tons of those small-size modellers filled to the brim with modelled drives and stompboxes but unlike the latter, the Player is meant first and foremost to play profiles.

    Congrats to Kemper for this cool product! Still happy to be rocking my powered head for almost 10 years but if that were available 10 years ago, I might have made a different choice. I already have an old school pedalboard as my 2nd rig, but might still get it. I think bass players will love this as they probably won't be affected as much by the limitations with respect to multiple effects/rigs/performances etc.


    edit. Wow, reading the comments, it's kind of baffling how entitled some people have become nowadays...

    There is a simple rule here in Texas. You pick no more than 3 tones; clean, crunch, high-gain/solo. You play those all night to your heart's delight. I have never been to a small gig or mega concert where I heard more than 3 tones. The more famous had only 1 tone/amp the whole show.

    What I meant in my previous post is that it's possible to have just the same amp profile throughout the entire performance with different effects or settings on each individual slot. If you are a steady member of an original band that always play the same repertoire of 10-20 songs over and over in concerts or festivals, it's worth investing time in programming 1 performance/song instead of tap dancing to trigger effects on and off of every rig etc. Anyway, feel free to find out what works best for yourself but I'm saying this with a long history of both disasters happening by mismanaging rigs and smooth sessions with perfect sounds just at the click of a switch. 5 slots/song doesn't necessarily mean "too many sounds" nor is "overkill"; it could be the same exact sound with just a slight volume difference - having it in a different slot can sometimes make management more straightforward and less confusing.

    It depends on the gig and it's actually a serious matter as having the wrong approach can get you in trouble at the gig.


    Some gigs require more flexibility than others. For example, if it's a top40 cover band with large repertoire or a showband that plays lots of different stuff; for those, my performances have 5 different amp profiles usually in incremental levels of gain and effects in each that can be activated on the fly. With this approach, sometimes I can't quite get the optimal sound a part needs but what I lose there, I gain in flexibility as I can use the same patch in many situation.


    For gigs with bands that have a limited songlist that is set in concrete (ie an original band on a 40 minute festival set), I use the 5 slots per song as "Slot 1: intro, Slot 2: verse, Slot 3: chorus, etc" as you describe and it works very well but is not flexible at all... I only use this approach if there is no doubt about the material being played; if the band adds or changes songs at the last minute you may be in trouble. Also in those cases I sometimes find more helpful to label the slots as something more specific like "Trem part", "Swells", "Slide part", "Chug part" because in the heat of the moment, that's usually what my brain thinks about first rather than a generic "verse" which you might not immediately recall how it's supposed to sounds. That approach can also take a LONG time to program because (every part of a song) x (number of songs) = a LOT of slots to fill in but also allows you to dial in the precise sound you need in every part of every song.


    You can combine both approaches if your volumes and EQs are sufficiently well balanced across all your slots and performances.

    I use Kemper as much as I can get away with but still find there are several situations where amp + pedalboard gets you there faster and is the better choice. But yes these Rig Rundowns are often totally ridiculous and the host must often be rolling his eyes internally.

    I think Fractal has a similar idea on their pedalboard, some switch that can increase or decrease the volume of the preset incrementally by 2dB or something like that. I would find such a feature super useful on the Kemper: there is always a moment at rehearsal where you realize a certain patch is just a little too quiet/loud within the mix. I usually have a +3dB booster on every patch and can reduce volume with the volume pedal on the fly but being able to adjust the rig volume permanently mid-song with the foot would be so helpful... might just be me though; maybe it isn't a problem for people sticking to a limited number of songs/presets but when you play many different bands and rigs and types of gigs, I find it very hard to adjust everything perfectly volume-wise (and eq-wise) ahead of time when it's outside the band mix. I've had several fiascos on 1st rehearsals sessions with digital rigs due to this and that's part of the reason I'm still often partial to the trusty pedalboard + amp solution.

    Bro, those thread titles kind of come across as trollish and that might be the reason why your thread was closed or not answered satisfactorily. From what I remember your last thread kind of mocked the Kemper for not offering stereo chorus (which it does, as the entire comment section pointed out in the replies):


    page 224 "Vintage Chorus - When you place the Vintage Chorus before the stack, you will achieve

    the well-known mono modulation effect. When placed in one of the effect modules after the stack, the Vintage

    Chorus will sound lusher with less modulation, since it works in stereo"

    Kemper trem isn't very sophisticated and doesn't do square wave but if you set the depth at max and crossover at minimum, no one in the audience will point at you saying you don't have a real square wave.

    If that is the issue, then unlinking main out from Master volume would prevent the issue (as a temporary workaround)

    Perhaps, I haven't tried. But as far as I know these "knobs" are not actual "knobs" but encoders so not sure it's a mechanical issue and a shot of deoxit/wd-40 certainly isn't going to cut it.


    I remember many other people discussing this issue when I looked it up. Maybe this behavior has been reported to Kemper HQ already. Anyway, just speculating about the OP's problem here since I also sometimes experience unwanted volume changes.

    Like I said in another thread, there is a reoccurring issue with the value from the front encoders sometimes turning by themselves (toasters/rack) on older machines. Your problem sounds like this. Go on the Output menu, turn up or down the main and monitor volumes and release (many times) and check carefully if the value keeps going up or down when you don't touch the encoder. Mine started doing this in the last year (7-8 year old machine) and I seem to have to wiggle those knobs a lot before a gig/rehearsal to make sure they don't start turning on their own. It happens all the time at home but luckily not often at rehearsal/gigs so far (because of my pre-gig wiggle routine maybe). I know I should get on with support but it would be difficult to part with my machine for too long these days.