Posts by JedMckenna

Quote from SQUAREHEAD

Had two big gigs this weekend ... used a lot of clean tones… and all I could think of, while I was playing, is how nice it would be to have the new verbs!
I’m getting tired of helix users coming up to me after shows and saying, “your amplifier sounds are incredible but you’re fx aren’t so good… “

Hopefully very very soon!

Every once in a while I tweak my effect presets by checking settings/effect presets already present either in factory rigs, other vendor or members of the forum from appropriate threads. If you get those kind of comments maybe think about re-tweaking your effect sections because the effects are incredibly flexible even with just what there is available now. As far as subtle and tasteful use of effect goes, I feel I have 0 problem competing with my bandmates Strymons/Eventides pedalboard, just need to tweak a bit to find the right setting.

As far as reverb goes, there is a lot of delays already presents that can serve as great reverbs. For example, I often use the "Main Station" of the delay section with various level of mix and feedback for some spacey reverbs. Others for cool shimmers. Again I don't feel I'd get much more I could need by adding a Big Sky or some other unit where most of the available sounds I feel are a bit superfluous to most genres.

It's easy and maybe fun to get lost effects/reverbs/delay textures but often I should remind my 2nd guitarist or entire section that what the band needs is often just some raw and uncluttered parts.

I mostly don't use the same rigs for live and for studio. I have about 35 rigs I use for studio (to cover a variety of tones/gain levels) always in the profiler for when I go to a recording session with no laptop. Then I have maybe another 35 included in maybe 10 performances.

I played acoustic early, but then I saw the scene in Back to The Future where Michael J Fox sits in and plays Johnny B Goode at prom night! Everything about that scene was so awesome for my 14 year old self, the little tapping lick and him going nuts and kicking the amp at the end, ha!... I just had to be able to do that.

As far as career goes, during high school I told myself (or was told) that it wasn't a real job so I went on to engineering school but was still spending almost all my time practicing and studying theory, I had 2 teachers simultaneously and was into it 24/7. My marks suffered a little and I realized I was loosing my soul doing science so I decided just for fun to try and switch faculty and do the audition for music school. I didn't have the proper background but I killed the audition surprisingly (for which I had memorized a crazy chord etude in between my calculus exams.) The 20 minute audition felt a bit spiritual in a way I can't explain but that was when things "got real" I guess. Went on to undergrad/masters 7 years and still playing professionally some 10 years later.

Another boring user of Jazz III here. I'm sure there is better stuff out there but no matter what I try I always come back to them. Funny story, I usually have at least one spare in my pockets during gigs (a slip out only happens maybe once a year). There was a gig where I went at the front of the stage and the pick fell into the crowd while I had no extra (total Murphy's Law scenario). At the end of the song, I desperately pointed at the red spot on the floor and some benevolent audience member threw it back to me, the incident probably didn't look very rock & roll but that random person saved me. Since then I've been superstitious and only get the red ones! The older ones felt better, more "rubbery" though, hopefully I'll find a better replacement one day.

For acoustic strumming, I use the slightly larger ones Dunlop makes, in various thicknesses (I usually stick with the orange one mostly) but also looking for one with more grip.

Quote from Gforce guitar

So we disagree again... LOL But I wont start to debate 10 times with you. And I maintain what I said a lot of the problems we read here (feedback etc) are from members using the Kemper as an amp head. A Kemper is not an amp head. using small or capital letters won't change my opinion. And BTW I dont have feedback on stage or any other trouble I sound terrific and super. Why ? because I plug my Kemper in the PA and dont use it as an amp head BYE I'll let other debate with you or say that you are right. Hope they wont say ''He is right!!! I got feedback on stage and I am happy with it. I use it as an amp head and I wont plug it in the PA'' LOL BYE (I wont comment anymore on this... tired to debate with you... got to practice music Sorry

Wow... how old are you?

About using steel acoustic on big pop concerts (arenas / outdoor festivals), I now mostly use 2-3 profiles from the famous pack of the Dutch profiler mentioned above (I found them to be the best out there at the moment but still had to tweak heavily). There are also some decent acoustic profiles on the RE (look up "avalon") I used to use before that. One of my profile is more for heavy rhythm strumming with a soft pick, one is warmer/rounder and louder for fingerstyle; they have different EQ, volume level and a touch of reverb/compression. For those gigs, I use IEM so I never had to worry about feedback. It works wonderfully on it's own with no added stuff (I've been mostly using a big Martin D28 but still always kept the feedback buster for safety.)

For gigs with no KPA or IEM (usually smaller gigs), I used to use the same guitar with a small pedalboard based around a Fishman Aura and an EQ but always had some feedback problems even with the most competent soundguys (that big dreadnough is so much trouble). Recently, one of my bands started playing with a drummer instead of a percussion player; the stage volume went even higher and I gave up my Martin in frustration and got the new Godin Doyle Dykes multiac steel string acoustic. It turns out to be a total game changer; great acoustic tone (different animal but really not in a bad way at all), superb playability and no feedback whatsoever. Miles ahead of the other multiacs imo.

I still think my most "authentic sounding" rig was the D-28/Aura but it was too unpractical and frustrating. However, unless I'd be recording, I'm totally in love with that Godin these days for many reasons, the most important is that I can actually focus on the music again instead of fighting feedback all the time. I think if I sit down and tweak my other KPA rigs with a good FRFR monitoring for that particular guitar, I could probably get results as satisfying tone-wise with this than with the D-28/Aura rig... I might have diverged from the topic a bit but that was in a nutshell my almost career-long battle with live acoustic.

Quote from Symec24

So far I had two gigs with my Kemper (which also were my first and second ever gigs, was awesome). Quite a pleasure to be honest to see all the other guys hauling their stuff in (I helped, of course), while I essentially only had my Kemper to carry. So far, so good. At the first gig, it was the good ol' "oh, a Kemper!" as in "nice!"
Second gig, along with one band and another some 80's-00's rock n metal cover band, that one guy... You know, mid 40's, making off-taste vulgar comments about girls walking by that could easily be his daughter, very rude in general, walks up to me while I set up my Kemper and goes like "a Kemper? You telling me you're playing Rock n Roll and then you use a Kemper?" honestly didn't quite know what to say except for "yeah so what?"
So that was my first encounter with 'Kemper-shaming'! Luckily, the only one so far. Everyone else who commented on it was much more encouraging and positive and shared the excitement. Which is nice.

I get those once in while. From experience, I see it as a defensive mechanism. Ageism aside (being almost that age myself), these comments never comes from actual sound engineers but rather from a certain archetype of other guitarists/musicians.

I read in some self-improvement book that the best role models for your career might not be the idols of your past but rather contemporary successful people in the same age group. When I look at my colleagues, most use digital modelling nowadays (at least live but also in the studio), whether it is because of convenience, consistency, or quality of tone. So when I get comments like this, it says more about someone's ignorance/stubborness than about gear itself. At this point, those complaining not being able to get satisfactory tones out of this new technology either don't want or haven't spent enough time trying.

I use DRs or GHS Boomers 10-46 and change them before important recordings/gigs. On acoustic, I use Elixir Nanoweb 11-?

The KPA changed my life. To follow up on the Japanese gear post above: where I am based, I paid the equivalent of US$4200 for mine and it took 5 months to arrive (I think just recently the wait time and price dropped slightly). People thought I was crazy but I never regretted it one bit; from the 3rd month of tweaking and profile experimentation, I ended up getting gigs mostly based on my tone, the kind of gigs which just one would now pay over a new one. Now I see people here crying over $1500 and I can't believe.

I always lose mines during tours and whatnot so I never get those expensive ones but my pet peeve is when I get an intermittently buzzing cable, soldering inside going wrong etc, therefore I never get the very cheap ones either. Lately I've been hanging on to my George Ls and those Planet Waves "American Stage" for an unusually long period of time. I like them rather short if the gig allows and with 90 degree connectors.

As far as home studio/interface, I take very cheap ones but as short as possible.

Quote from djdyer

I use the kemper remote live and generally set up my rigs for both rythm and lead use. I use the morph feature on the remote to boost the rig volume and add more delay for my solos. I have been morphing the rig volume to get an extra 3db which works well. However this method is not ideal when i want to rebalance all the volumes in a performance as i have 10 rig volumes to adjust. So i have now switched to morphing the amp volumes to get the extra 3db which then gives me just 5 rig volumes to rebalance. Anyone see a problem with this approach? Will boosting the amp volume affect the speaker tone or any of the post amp effects? Anyone have a better approach?

I get what you are saying. Yes, I think in your case it's more convenient to adjust amp volume.

Here's an unorthodox method I've been using lately for large concerts. I had an Atomic Amplifire laying around. I connect it in the loop in the x slot. On the Amplifire 3 buttons, I set +3Db boost , -3Db Cut , and Room Reverb. I leave that subtle room reverb always on on it which frees up the KPA's reverb slot for proper ambience/wash effect (using mostly delay algorithms for now). Then this +3Db boost and -3Db Cut, I use for solo boost or for cut during quiet passages or things that need to be quieter in the mix yet still aggressive (funk strumming, etc). This frees up the morph features for something else like just tone shaping. It now feels intuitive to have that little box on the side just dedicated to volume control and frees up those precious KPA post effects blocks and morph feature.

Also, another main reason for implementing this is because the Amplifire serves as a back up in case something happens with the KPA, a quick reorganization of the buttons and it would get me through the gig with a couple of sounds.

Quote from ChopTones

Hi Jed, please could you tell which products have you tried to put us near the bottom of your preferences?

You are not allowed to post here. I'll be happy to do it in private.

After maybe 250$ of trial and error, I found my favorite vendors and stick to this only. Now I rarely buy anything new except non essential stuff, when it's my birthday or something.

Glad to hear you found good sounds. As far as commercial vendors go, Choptone is near the bottom of my spectrum of preference. That's a totally personal opinion though, they might work great for you. Just a slight disclaimer, when I first got the profiler I went through the same experiences and sometimes "love at first sight" phase with some vendors and bought many packs very quickly only to find out a few weeks after that they didn't compare favorably at all with others in some situations (often even free ones). A better investment for me has been to try pack of various vendors until I found my favorite ones.

Although it's overkill for most projects, SPDIF also gives you 2 more recording outputs like in the Kemper recording demos where you can have up to 8 outputs simultaneously (separate tracks for mods/delays/reverbs in stereo, stack only, dry DI, etc.)

To the original poster. Was looking for a good and reasonably cheap interface earlier this year. I got an Audient ID14 and it's awesome for it's price. It has SPDIF capability but needs some optical adapter that costs a few bucks. I usually record master stereo via SPDIF and a dry analog DI track with the direct out but I'd have no problem recording with the mains out.

I understand Burkhard's approach of one performance = one song but it's very hard to build a long gig this way and just takes forever with no editor. I never complained about the lack of an editor before but I have this big gig and the guy next to me is choosing his rigs with his Axe FX editor during every song during rehearsals. There is no way I can keep up with that on the Kemper, so my sounds are less precise. The gig is a one off, so the time investment to make 25+ songs is not worth it and the volume levels would probably be all over the place since there is little time to double check that at rehearsal.

Therefore, I usually have 2-3 performances of different flavors (one vintage, one more modern, one that is only Vox, one that is only 4x12 stacks) set in order of gain, only the last one is for lead in each performance. I have one performance that is only acoustic/nylon and one that is for weird non-reusable sounds. But then I have to remember which performance I used for each song.

Get a 1tb SSD. That mac will have a new life.

You can use an 1/8" to 1/4" cord (or one 1/8" to two 1/4") to connect from the computer or phone headphone output to the Kemper (in "Return input" (and "auxiliary input" if you have two 1/4")). This has nothing to do with the power amp so there shouldn't be anything to worry about. You can adjust the volume of the auxiliary input in the output menu.

The concept is kind of similar ("image" for the Aura vs profile for the Kemper). To create a profile like this I guess one must either profile an Aura or some similar preamp or an acoustic amp directly (many available on RE). I use Kemper often with nylon string/acoustic and it works quite well: my go-to nylon profile comes from an Aura and my main acoustic one is from some Avalon acoustic preamp, both from the exchange. I actually have a proper Aura that I use on acoustic-only gigs and it's quite good, I should actually look into profiling it so I'd have the same presets baked into a profile.

Quote from flyingheelhook

Do you understand my complaints or are you just making sweeping generalizations? I would be happy to discuss and have you prove me wrong.

I don't know what your specific complaints are and I won't look through the 17 pages to find out but it probably has to do with something I see all the time on this forum. I don't think these complaints are necessarily wrong, just that in the grand scheme of things, they are probably irrelevant. There are so much other more important things to focus on and have together as a musician. But don't take my word for it, if this device is holding you back from becoming the musician you want to be, there are plenty of other very capable ones you can use so I'd advise you to sell this "consumer product" and move on asap instead of hoping for a future update to accommodate you; much faster to get to your goal that way.