Unpopular opinion here but I'm not into redundancy. I haven't seen Ed Sheeran live but I guarantee his gig being successful doesn't hinge on a looper. Playing a sold out arena versus playing a bar are different things. Usually in the former, there are already several levels of redundancy you might not be aware of (going as far as playing a playback) and there are resources you can call on the spot if you need to replace something faulty, and a huge team to help you sort these things out. It might not be 5 minutes away, but it can usually be had in an hour or so. They usually have plenty of spare stuff on hand - maybe not a guitar with your favorite neck profile, but some odd thing you can survive the gig, an axe from the second guitarist etc, as well as a pit of amps you are not using because you brought your kemper. Then for smaller gigs, if something happen to break down in exactly the 3 hr window the gig is in, then the odds are really against you that day and it will suck but just like for Ed, you will adapt and it won't sink your entire career. There are things that are far more important to focus on to make your gig successful than bringing a pile of useless backup gear all the time to make you feel safe imo. Sometimes it feels like just having all the band in the same room, healthy and on time is a feat. Obviously it's another story if you're into gigging with old and unreliable gear, or leave for a long time on a tour in a place with difficult access but otherwise this total obsession for backup gear is ultimately rooted in insecurity and lack of experience.
Posts by JedMckenna
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Thanks for this video. I struggled with this issue a lot in my life and not that I want to re-enter this debate but saying things like "room sound don't matter" is totally disingenuous. In small venues like your typical bar, part of the sound comes from the stage. In small rehearsal rooms, people will also feel right away if you go direct versus using an amp. There is this one time where I got a gig because the guy before me went direct at rehearsal and I used a shitty, tiny combo amp - the gut instinct of the band was to choose me over the other guy because I "sounded amazing" in comparison - little did they know, his modeller was a better rig than mine for 90% of other situations outside of this particular small room rehearsal. Similarly, I've brought the Kemper to a in-house rehearsal with an artist and we had to have a talk about "my flat sound". While it's tempting to make absolute statements like "room sound don't matter" because it would make life so much easier, the truth is that there are many types of sonic environments and you have to know for yourself when the positives of a modeller are going to outweigh those of a pedalboard + amp or vice-versa.
These days, I use the pedalboard and backline amps more and more for live work, I feel I get better control over variables. My last few rehearsals with the Kemper or the Axe were especially frustrating and I wholeheartedly resent having to deep dive into endless menus while trying to make music at the same time.
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Part of me really likes the idea of that Tone X pedal and would like to give it a try but then again all this blatant Youtube promotion turns me right off: in the end, it's still a glorified Iridium. I also wonder how it could realistically be an improvement over my current Kemper rig... tone-wise probably not in any significant way, I also think the powerhead is a much more convenient and flexible rig for live performance. The software part of this would help my workflow when recording, but then again I'm used to do reamps just fine with the Kemper. Carry less weight maybe? Then I should just hit the gym instead. If I started a new rig from scratch I could think about it and maybe stick it nicely in my pedalboard but at this point, a new product would really need to bring something out of this world for me to justify spending the time/effort to migrate and find my sounds all over again.
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It depends of the situation but personally, I usually put a graphic EQ block post amp with a volume boost and push in the mids (inverted V) and add a bit of delay. Then I morph the base sound to that and with the proper settings, it can turn any rig into a good lead sound. I also have a separate patch for solo sound but it's not as flexible. Depending of the band and volume level of your gig, sometimes adding 2-3 dB is enough but for very big venues/band I sometimes needed over 6 dB to cut through - I usually figure this out at rehearsal when you can get a better feel for the situation.
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I use both. I hear what you're saying about RM and performance mode because in the past there used to be LOTS of bugs while editing - I actually got used to do it front the front panel so that I wouldn't lose my mind - but yesterday I made a performance for the first time in two years or so and it went super smooth so it looks like things have been sorted out in the latest versions. Hope you sort out your issue.
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What's strange to me is how do you let this problem live for 5 years and this thread go for 8 pages long? The problem isn't your 6 guitars. I'd have swiftly done a factory reset and gone to a friend or a music store with another KPA to compare side by side the sound of a factory profile so you know whether or not the problem is your hardware.
I don't mean this personally, there just seems to be so many curious threads here on the theme "Help, my possibly defective guitar processor has been keeping me up at night for 5+ years but since I'm not sure, I need more opinions to know if I should keep putting up with my dissatisfaction or not".
Anyway, hope you sort it out!
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I suggest opening a ticket. I had this problem 3 years in with mine, turned out one output was somewhat defective (maybe it rained on my unit during an outdoor gig or something.) I ran mono for a while but then I stopped by Kemper HQ and they fixed it mid-tour. Awesome customer support!
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"FRFR" is a bit of a buzzword, but yes those monitors will give a fair enough representation of what profiles sound like.
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The sound going out of the XLR and 1/4" mains is exactly the same as the sound going to SPDIF. Unless you have a terrible interface whose preamps color the sound a lot, you won't perceive a difference. Nowadays, even cheap interfaces are quite good. Unless you need the extra features (less latency, more inputs, need for great preamps or high quality headphone output, etc), you'd probably be fine with a low end interface. If a cheap mixer is affecting your sound quality though, keep it out of your recording chain.
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Hey Bert, I've been using your profiles almost exclusively for a while now; I can barely catch up with the awesome stuff you put out. Kemper wouldn't be the same without your amazing contribution, in fact your profiles are the reason I'm still digging the Kemper so much and I am so grateful. I recorded a few albums this year and end up using your profiles almost all the time. I just recently got into your XTC pack which I love and with the right tweaks and stompboxes, I'm using them to record on many things these days.
However, I sometimes wished you used the matching/original cab more often; for example, the majority of higher gain profiles from the XTC pack seem to have Marshall 2x12 or 4x12 cabs and while it's great to explore this variety of tones, the cab has such a big influence on the voicing of the profile that the signature tone of the XTC amp sometimes gets lost or ends up sounding like something else - same thing with the Friedman amp for example. I often end up locking the matching cab from another profile to try to mitigate this but I'm sure the cab division algorithm from Kemper isn't perfect. I still get great tones regardless, but it is probably not as kosher as if it was profiled with the original cab in the first place and requires a bit more messing around before I find the right profile. Anyway, there is probably a good reason you do this and getting your hands on the matching cab might be difficult sometimes so it is just a thought that you can totally disregard if you disagree!
I used to use a lot of Michael Britt profiles earlier but started to dislike how he used the same cab for every amp (at least on his earlier profiling); I could see the point for live but for recording, it really robs the signature tone from the different amps and entire packs of niche amps profiles ended up sounding almost the same.
Btw, if you ever run out of idea of what to profile, a detailed profiling of your Soldano SLO would probably be a hit! (but I still have to get up to date with your JCM 800 and this new 5150 pack first!) Thanks again for your great work and commitment.
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Necro thread... which I missed originally. All 5 sound pretty terrible and not very realistic imo - but maybe #1 can be salvaged with a lot of messing around? That being said, I used to use Bert Acoustic pack and it's great.
However, my practical take on acoustic now is that if it's a big stage, I feel it's easier to bring a good separate DI so that the FOH can adjust the channel independently from the electric. If it's a small gig, I use a Schlerter acoustic amp that sounds amazing and has an acoustic out. And if it's a recording, I obviously mic it naturally with proper mics. Therefore, no need for acoustic to go through the Kemper anymore.
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你好，那个情况有点儿奇怪。我建议，现保存你的profile，然后在System，第一页，你可以做一个“init global”。加油，祝你好运!
顺便说，那个forum的地方只说英文。你想用中文的话，应该去别的地方。不好意思我的中文不太好！
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Before begging for help here as soon as you get your Kemper, I suggest spending a few hours watching official Kemper tutorial videos and reading the manual. Also, this part of the forum is in English, discussion in other languages are in a different part of the forum. Welcome and good luck.
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what I took from that video is that all 3 options worked brilliantly and sounded so close as to make no difference in the real world. Therefore, choose one that fits your budget and workflow then learn to use it and make music instead of GASing over the next new shiny toy.
Amen. People get obsessively worked up on these minute details every time something new comes out... reminds me how Patrick Bateman in American Psycho would get OCD about the lettering/font/color of his business cards versus the ones from his competitor (while they all look the same for anybody else looking at them). It doesn't matter as much as the internet wants you to believe and when put into perspective, this obsession is almost psychopathic. I'm restlessly busting my ass to find a thousand ways to improve the tracks, parts and tunes I'm working on, but migrating to a different system is not one of them. Mostly using cheap little combo amps these days anyway for some reason.
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People should stop looking at it like a commitment to one thing or the other, both rigs have a purpose. I was on Kemper for the last 6-7 years almost exclusively but the nature of gigs have changed since and for live I am back with two different pedalboards + tube amps rigs most of the time and I'm loving it (still using Kemper for recording though). It really depends on the requirements of the specific situation. Anyway, welcome!
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She is right. Zebra is a no brainer.
My wife voted Zebra first place and Red second place.
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No idea but it's the first time I check out that forum... wow. Some of these trolls would benefit from getting out of their cave and have some exposure to the pro scene to see what's going on. Ignorance is bliss I guess.
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I feel that behind the advertising facade, all brands of nickel-plated strings are more or less the same (except the coated ones, which I'm not a fan of) so I kind of support Ernie ball since the saga with Microsoft a while back. I use GHS on occasion as well. Although my 335 could benefit from a step up, I kind settled on .010-46 because I do many styles and don't like to have gauges size all over the place.
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If you want variety and great tones, get the Bert Meulendijk acoustic pack.
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Another Logic user here. Since they ironed out most of the bugs of the previous versions, I really like this DAW a lot and after recording so much, my workflow with it, the Kemper and a couple of key plugins like Melodyne and Izotope is very efficient. When I track in studios they usually use Pro Tools and it seems to work slightly differently (for the punch-ins for example) and looks visually a bit clunky. On Logic I particularly like the way the comps and the grouping work (especially in the case of the Kemper where you can group your main tracks with your DI track and comp/edit them together), as well as the library of instruments. I used them on several demos and jingles; drummers in particular are so easy to use, take almost no CPU resources compared to separate drumming software and sound great. Apple loops are also very cool to use when creating something, just drag and drop stuff that instantly adjust to the key and tempo and you get ideas quick. I'm no fanboy and hate the business model of Macbooks and Iphones obsolescence but imo they totally knock it out of the park with software like Logic and Final Cut. Also, because they are much more widely used than Reaper and other DAWs, there are tons of youtube tutorials available whenever you are looking for a specific obscure function.
