Posts by Evo

Well, I found myself in a rather unique position after recently returning to kemper.

During my absence, it turns out that I sold an amp to MrMental himself which ended up getting profiled for his Super Kraken profile pack. Now that i've returned, I figured it would be a wasted opportunity not to purchase the pack and see how well ReAmpZone did capturing the feel of my old amp!

So, i've been playing around for a few hours and these are my thoughts.

Firstly, yes, RZ did a very good job of capturing some of my favourite sounds from the Super Kraken. I'm running a power rack into a kemper kabinet, so i've tried both the studio and DI profiles and i'm definitely happy with the results.

However!

I'd go so far as to say the profiles are maybe a little "too extensive". There are absolutely all the tones I remember from when I owned the amp, all the good stuff is right there. But there's also some that I can't for the life of me work out how the amp made those noises (and not always in a good way). I know that everybody likes different settings, uses different guitars, etc etc, and in a way it's better to cover all bases, but be prepared to do some digging to find the gold in this pack.

I also picked up the official victory super kraken profiles, and I imagine some people would want to know how these compare. Honestly, the victory ones are good, and if you just want a collection of profiles that are ready to go then they're well worth a consideration. If you want an in-depth study of the amp, and you're prepared to spend the time hunting through the profiles to find the ones that work best for your needs and rig, go RZ because it'll pay off in the long run.

Just FYI, the only contact i've had with RZ was to confirm that the amp in this pack was my old one.

Consider this a thumbs up from me, RZ captured all the good bits and then some extra as well. Great job!

If you solve each issue individually then it's much easier.

Either correct the original pitch, then use a standard pitch correction tool for your new track. Or correct the pitches of your new track first, then use a pitch shifter to match it to the original.

Personally I'd do the latter, but each to their own

Pretty much as I expected, sounds like some gremlins are getting in somewhere.

Definitely open up a support ticket, the guys up there know what they're talking about and will have more suggestions for you.

In the meantime, it might be worth trying to systematically isolate each possible cause. Work out exactly where the gremlins are getting in, and then we can look at stopping them.

For the example, does turning up the noise gate make it go away? If so, then it's getting in before the output section of the kemper.

Do you have the same issue from the direct outs? Or is it just the headphone out which is noisy?

I'm sure you get the idea, try a few of these sort of questions and see if you can narrow down the search

This could make you feel better....or worse.

It sounds like it could be any one of a hundred things but I'll offer a few suggestions to try before panicking.

Firstly, move and face away from any computer, laptop or tv screens.

Next, check your lights. Does turning them off have any effect?

Thirdly, on to the cables. Try runnng your instrument cables in a different route, try running the power from a different outlet (no extension plugs) and try switching round and replacing all different ways you can think of to see if that helps.

If those fail, we may need some more info to troubleshoot!

Compression is definitely a shredder's best friend. By smoothing out the peaks on your signal, it has the effect of making your quieter notes seem louder and your loud notes seem quieter (that's not what it does, it just makes your loud notes less prominent)

By doing that, it improves the sound of your alternate picked and legato lines because each note has a much more even tone.

Excessive levels of gain cause a natural compression to the sound and is often why guitarists favour high gain levels.

Good old Trev had it exactly right (as usual )

ALTHOUGH!

Just a PSA, cranking compression will cost you in dynamics. Sometimes people equate this to a loss of "feel" or "tone". So if you like to dig in with the pick every now and then, use compression with a sprinkle rather than a pour!

A cornford profile would be a good place to start. The MK50 will definitely get you into those players ballparks.

For the Guthrie sort of sound, anything Marshall flavoured will also be a safe bet (including marshalls themselves of course!) you'd probably enjoy a good Friedman HBE which will sit you nicely in that gain area. A big part of Guthrie's tone comes from riding his volume knob/pedal to adjust the gain to his liking, so experiment with some good mid-gain profiles and roll the volume back for a clean tone. I think currently the man himself is rocking a Victory but bear in mind that the erotic cakes and early aristocrats stuff was all cornford.

The common thing with all the players you mention is that they all use a lot less gain than a lot of people think. That's how they get that definition and tightness in the low end, they don't have the level of saturation in the gain that guys like Vai and Satch use for their creamy, lush, singing lead tones. Back it down to something mid-gain and everything will tighten up, giving you the punch and bark you hear in those guys tones.

There's loads of great profiles on the rig exchange, so try a few out and see what you like the sound of.

On last word of advice, what works for them may not work for you. I absolutely love Vai's tone from his legacy, but it just doesn't work for me. Far too much gain, and I lose a lot of attack which it turns out is a big part of my playing style. So while it's great to experiment with amps (hey, that's why we have kempers right?) you will end up much happier if you choose the amp which matches YOU best. Took me a long time and a lot of profile tweaking before I just gave up and tried some new approaches. Turns out I didn't like what I thought I liked

All the best buddy!

It is simple really

It's the difference between tone and music.

Profile - A OK!
Sample - Whole lotta nope.

If you didn't play/sing/create the notes, then you need permission from whoever did.

Vocal chords are creating the music as well as the tone. That's where the problem lies with your analogy. If somebody created some software that allowed you to take your vocal track and EQ it into an identical tonal match to Robert Plant, then that would absolutely be legally tickety boo.

Taking his original track is a no no.

Drawing a picture of a sunflower is absolutely fine, but printing off your own copy of Van Gogh's is sketchy.

The problem lies with the equation of a person to an object. An amplifier will be performing its function as long as it is powered on, it doesn't require any external input to perform.

Vocals on the other hand require the singer to exert themselves and provide the function. Therefore they require compensation.

The guitarist playing through the amplifier exerts himself to set the amplifier how he likes and provide the guitar playing. Had the guitarist not been there, then the amplifier would still be working providing it was switched on.

You need to ask "what is making the noise?"

The amplifier is just making the noise louder. Quite often in a pleasing way, but the noise originates at the guitarist.

Not exactly a view on the whole topic, just a point of view over your analogy of vocals vs amplifiers

Yes, best way to think of morphing is as two versions of the same rig. You set your original rig and you set your altered rig (which is your "morphed" rig)

Then the morphing itself is just the change from one version of a rig to another.

In a way, yes.

The features are there, you just approach them in a different way with the kemper. You use delay as an example, and you can have multiple delay settings for each rig. Switching between them can be done either using the dedicated effects switches or, slightly more sophisticatedly with the morphing feature.

I often find myself in the same situation as you, not knowing which tune is coming up next. I set up a performance with 5 rigs going from cleanest to filthiest, each with various effects settings I know I'm likely to need. That gets me through pretty much every night. The only thing I use differently is a separate performance loaded with "song specific" rigs which are only really used for one song (talkbox for Bon Jovi, harmonies for Lizzy etc).

You can turn any of the effects on or off from the remote already, and if you want a different setting entirely then set up another rig (in the same way you would set up another preset in the H9 or timeline)

You say you don't want different rigs and performances, and yet you want different tones available to you. It's a simple fact that the more tones you want at your feet, the more setting up you have to do. It's the same for anything (including the timeline and the h9).

There's nothing stopping you from setting up five identical rigs in a performance and just varying the effects in each of them but to me, that misses the greatest thing about the kemper. Pick out the very best amp and cab for each individual tone!

Quote from deadpan

if the generated tones cased a different reaction from the amp that itself would be a huge problem.

My point was that amps will potentially react differently whenever ANY signal is run through them. It's just not practical to expect a valve amp to deliver a consistent frequency response every time.

The Kemper on the other hand can deliver that consistency. However, the part I don't understand is when people do A/B comparisons and seem shocked that the two sounds aren't absolutely identical.

As I said, I wouldn't expect two valve amps of the same make and model to sound identical, so I just expect around that level of similarity from the Kemper.

Mic up five Marshall super lead heads, using the same model of cab, mic and mic technique.

You'll hear all of these differences and more. One will have a tighter low end, one will have a more open clean tone, one will have a fizziness in the gain...hell, you'll probably find the same with five takes from the same amp!

I've never understood why people can't embrace this behaviour in the kemper in the same way they embrace it in real amps. The real question is, does it sound like the amp it's modelling?

A difference in low end between two recordings doesn't reflect on the overall accuracy of the kemper tone at all in my opinion. Maybe when the kemper profiled the amp, the valves gave a slightly different eq response to when you played through it to compare? A profile will accurately capture a snapshot of how an amp performs, it may not behave identically to the amp in every way, but that one snapshot will be incredibly accurate and sound like the original amp did when that signal was run through it.

So, if anyone wants to do an accurate comparison video, they'll need to run the kemper's profiling tones through their amplifier rather than a DI guitar track, as that was how the response was initially measured when the profile was created!

I won't be doing it though, I'm happy with my kemper tones and don't see any reason to worry about what tones other people like

It's a perfect lesson in why the pro guys are the pro guys. Most players will listen to that guitar part and go "meh", but I guarantee that anything you think might be better would have occurred to Lukather as well. He played what he did, not because it was the coolest part, or the flashiest part, or his favourite part, but because it was the RIGHT part.

Listen to those clean triad voicings and the subtle trem vibrato, not to mention that groove he's got going picking out those octaves! He's listened for the spaces in the tracks and doesn't play over anyone else's parts, it's brilliantly done.

I was lucky enough to spend some time with a true temperament guitar earlier this year, and I came to a few conclusions

1) Yes, it makes a noticeable difference to your tuning. Chords sound clearer, more even and simply better, right up the neck. Everything resonates much better as the tuning of each note is potentially perfect
2) It doesn't play that differently to a regular, even temperament, neck. Couple of minutes and you're away.
3) It's frustrating to go back to a regular neck as you notice the subtle differences in tuning
4) After a while, you adjust back, and the slight "out of tune" irritation goes away from your regular neck
5) It's a noticeable difference, but not a big difference. The fact of the matter is that you can negate any good the system is doing if your strings are even a few cents out. Which in my live gigging environments, they generally get a bit wobbly due to either heat, humidity or a combination of the two anyway. Personally I have filed it under "I'd love it, but can't justify it"

I bought the whole pack.
The amp I used before the kemper was a Brunetti XL and I loved that thing, so when I saw this I couldn't help myself.

A lot of work has gone into this. It's not just about the profiles (which are damn good on their own, I feel like I've got my XL head back!) but it's the way the profiles all have appropriate effects loaded and work really well with each other when they're loaded into performances.

Pietro mentions that the Mercury profiles are his favourites and I can see why, but I think he's playing down just how good the other profiles are. That XL sound is bang on, even down to the way it thickens out on the neck pickup when the gain gets cranked.

Anyway, stop reading this and buy it already!

Well hello there fellow Kemperians!

I'm not sure how useful this thread will be, but I couldn't hold it in. I plugged in my newest purchase today, a matrix q12 passive cab for my power rack, and it has completely blown me away.

I was running into my regular 1x12 with the cab sims off and was very happy with my tone before, but this thing transformed everything! That's no exaggeration! It's like suddenly taking out ear plugs and you can hear every little nuance you had no idea was hiding there. If you are considering one of these then I really cannot recommend it more. plenty of punch, nice and lightweight, and incredibly compact

Best £36 I ever spent! (No, that's not a typo, that's eBay )

Apologies for the last sentence but I had to get it in there somewhere, I still can't believe it!

Just to illustrate that action...
[Blocked Image: http://i377.photobucket.com/albums/oo219/Evo_23/Caparison/BF88A3FC-CB19-4ECC-9336-8A8A7C77B061_zpsvhwkrzda.jpg]

I can't say for certain what was used on that particular track, but it pre-dates the IRT series so the VH100 would be a good bet as he certainly had one in his studio. The cab could be a 4x12 but personally I'd lean towards it being a 2x12 or oversized 1x12, although that's just based on the setup he had while I was there and it'd definitely be a laney. Likewise with the mic technique, I can't say for sure but I would guess a regular close mic technique. Mattias' philosophy is definitely not heavy on the gear or effects, the core of his tone is a Laney amp with caparison applehorn and a very high action (don't ignore the action! It's ridiculously high!). Then just plug and play!

Demo finally up and running!

Hi guys!

New guy on the block here, so I shall be entirely upfront and honest. I thought some people might get a kick out of these profiles so I figured I would see if I could help cover the cost of my DI box!

These "Direct Amp" profiles are attempting to recreate the tones of Mattias "IA" Eklundh's Laney IRT Studio.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Mattias (and his amplifier!) at his studio in Sweden earlier this year and these profiles are the result of profiling my identical amp with his settings on each channel (plus boost). They might not be to everybody's taste, but if you like Mattias' tone then I think you'll be very pleased!

7 "Direct Amp" profiles in total for £4

https://dgsessions.wordpress.com/profiles/

You should be taken to the download page immediately after checkout but if anybody has any issues then let me know.

Many thanks and all the best,

David