Posts by JedMckenna

    Man, I'm playing stadiums with my Kemper. From rehearsal to performance to recording, it's literally at the center of my professional life. So much for your "consumer product"... if you'd be the least bit involved in the professional touring circuit, you'd see how popular it is among us. My colleagues have all sorts of gear and our common goal is just to kill the next gig with the least hassle possible, period. I just can't understand where some of those complaints are even coming from, it's so disconnected from actual musician things. If you are one and your goal is making music, drop the "THD, DSPs and generic codecs" because I assure you your focus is at the wrong place!

    These are the times where I still use my pedalboard and leave the Kemper home. Especially if it's a combo (those Voxs are good). If the venue is small, the results for me are usually much better than with the Kemper.


    I should add that I tried to go in the effect loop return of a Twin and a JC-120 before and it never worked: maybe I did something wrong or was in a hurry but I always ended up plugging in the input and the results were pretty bad. If the venue is small and the amp provided is a combo, I'd rather go old school.

    Do Your folders and sub folders in rig manager match what is on your pc and how did you get there ? Do we have to recreate every folder in rig manager ? Any easier way ?

    No, I've probably got a ton of commercial/free rigs on my PC that will never make it to RM. I think it's a better approach to start by ordering what you are already using rather than trying to put everything you have in RM all at once.


    Also, I'd much rather save by profiler's name than by amp name because the same amp profiled by 2 people will sound totally different and when I make a selection, it's much better to compare apples with apples with respect to eq or style.

    Once it started pouring rain at an open air festival. Techs were running on stage trying to wrap plastic bags over my stuff. Lots of water on the KPA and the remote, and everything else. I let it air out when I came back, everything was fine. I still carry a see through plastic bag in a pocket just in case but don't overthink it, the remote is pretty damn robust.

    Hi,


    Can anybody point me to some wiring schematics with regular SSS 5 way switch + 2 way toggle switch which engages bridge pickup? I had this once in Mexican Deluxe Strat and besides regular 5 positions I had bridge-neck tele like setting and all 3 pickups. I've seen wiring with one push-pull pot, but I prefer toggle switch.


    Thanks.

    Hi, you can also check out the strat "blender knob" wiring. It does the neck + bridge (and way more) and doesn't need toggle switch. You basically just have one master tone and the other knob is to blend one pickup into the other pickup selected.

    The KPA has become basically the core of my little workstation/studio. Any playback music/tracks I ever use or listen to goes in the "aux in" on the back; I record, practice and compose (use the looper for ideas) with it almost exclusively and it's basically turned on all day. I use either headphone or Rockit style small studio monitors.


    I just have to unplug everything whenever I have a gig and that becomes a drag in busy season so I might just get another one at some point.

    Good things had been said above. In my case I mostly care who it is coming from: some dude with spare mics and a few amps (no offense to anyone here) or someone with some professional sound experience or making the profiles for their own (professional) use. If they fit the latter and we have some stylistic similarities, I might consider. However, I'm pretty happy with what I have at the moment and above all I value simplicity these days so I avoid clogging up my workflow with new profiles I wouldn't be familiar with.


    Once in while I try something new that I feel I'm lacking (like a merged version of a specific amp) but don't like mixing tones of several different profilers together, so unlikely to bring it in my pool of go-tos.

    With all the new great commercial profilers, people seem to be intimidated of doing their own profiles thinking theirs can't possibly compete with MBritt or all those who use the best mics etc, but you've got to try it for yourself. Many of those who do their own profiling (even if it's just with basic miking techniques) end up doing their favorite profiles because they fit their gear/taste better. MBritt, Bert and co. all started doing profiles for their own use first. In other words, if you have an amp you like, give a shot at profiling it.


    The other element of your post is about stage sound. I'm not familiar with that Xitone cab but to me it's getting a bit pointless to try to chase that perfect stage sound. As long I know the FOH gets my genuine sound, then I just try to approximate this on stage depending of what is available on the gig (either an in-ear gig, or use the cabs on the backline (with monitor cab off) or the stage monitors). Just moving a couple of feet on either side of the monitor/cab throws off the eq/mix/balance so if I really need that perfectly balanced sound, I will stand at this one spot, otherwise I just focus on not letting the sonic situation affect my playing. Listening to your performance (if it was recorded) afterwards gives feedback on how it actually sounds out there and I feel it gives me confidence for the times where I'm there playing while thinking the mix is awful.

    IMHO, having the FOH in stereo is an absolute mistake. About half the audience will miss about half of the mix, or at least some instruments! It's as simple as that... Who would want half the audience to miss one of the guitars and the other half miss the other one, for example??


    I never understand when musicians (and even worst: sound engineers) come with this ideas...

    I heard that a couple of times here already. Not sure if I understand well what you mean or if we're talking about the same thing but guitars going stereo to FOH doesn't mean each guitar is panned 100% on either side or that "only one side will get your delay". Engineers on big festivals/arenas/stadiums always ask me to go stereo to FOH if I can.

    Since the words "supply & demand" have fallen often in this thread..
    In our case the producer never made the "supply".It is ofcourse okay to make a "demand"(in this case a request) after the supply(an offer) but obviously the producer has (better siad still has untill the editor appears) a special product philosophy which never included an offer for the thing here in demand.


    This is what I dont understand anymore with this thread.

    Exactly. The profiler's raison d'etre was originally to profile amps. People are trying to steer this purpose towards one of a glorified modeler for live use and they get impatient in the process, requesting better effects, an editor, a floorboard version and all sorts or things that the KPA never signed up to be or even provide in the first place. Seems like some of you got the wrong product. ?(

    Jed, you're livin' the dream, brother.
    Oh how I hope I can get RM into a state similar to yours one day. I've created so much work in the meantime that I'll probably not live long enough to get there even if I started today. :D

    Yeah, my life is a mess but at least the KPA is somewhat in order :D . Trying new profiles is fun and addictive, especially with all the new vendors and cool amps but I figured at some point, one's gotta stop toying around and get work done!

    In RM I've got two mains folders "Live" and "Studio" of 30 rigs or so each which consist of all my favorites mostly already tweaked and sorted by gain, 90% of what I use at any given time is somewhere in there.


    For the rest, since I mostly use the profiles of two commercial profilers these days, I've got a folder Vendor 1, Vendor 2, "Others" (mostly from rig exchange and other vendors), and one "Effects" (which are rigs where just a specific effect have been worked out like a cool shimmer or whatnot) Then a sub folder for every amp within each vendor.


    Inside the profiler, I just keep the content of those two folders "live" and "studio", so 60 rigs or so and the 10 or so performances I use most of the time.

    Your issue seems weird but on a gig I have the habit of going up a performance and down when I boot the profiler to "reset" anything to what it should be. There is funny stuff happening sometimes when setting performances, there was a known issue and it got better with most recent firmware updates but I think it still acts weird sometimes if you don't have the correct "flow" of making a performance in RM. My advice is once you think you've set everything right as it should and saved etc, reboot the profiler one last time before your gig (with the remote) and test drive quickly to make sure it's still what you think it is.


    Once in a festival, I messed with the order of rigs and tweaked my performance in the hotel room right before the gig and it did look fine in rig manager. When I booted up on stage, 2 of my rigs were swapped (but they still had each other's name, probably from me messing around earlier), ended up using a backup performance.

    If I get your idea correctly, it sounds cool in theory, probably not so cool in practice. I feel in most musical situation, distortion is either there or not rather than "swelled in" (and the volume knob is smoother for that.) If the idea is that you really like your JCM800, you can profile it and use morphing with an expression pedal to go from very clean to dirty within the same profile. If the intend is achieving more definition in your dirty sound, there are two parameters (definition, clarity) you can play with in the KPA.


    Your idea could be a cool thing to experiment with in rehearsal to see if it works but my guess is that it complicate things a lot for little in return (inconsistent monitoring, volume balance between one amp being miked and one not, having to be surgically precise the volume pedal) and doesn't really use the Kemper to it's potential either.

    I use my previous performances as reference for volume level. When I set up a new rig and think I'm in the ballpark (usually solo is about +3db), I set up a Pure booster of -2db and one of +2db on the stomps for the first gig or so, if I have a surprise at the gig when switching to a patch (too loud/too quiet), I activate the respective stomp. When I get back home, I re-adjust the rig volume, rinse and repeat at the next gig until they are perfectly balanced, then that becomes my new reference performance. This saved my ass more often than my volume pedal.