Posts by SpinnerDeluxe

Welcome home. I double your experience with the Helix.

Thanx to all for the warm welcome!

Last night was THE night. I made my first steps with the KPA in my living room with headphones and once in a while checked the sound on my tiny home surround system. It was just more comfortable to learn the basics and in addition I could have a glimpse at it - once in a while But now it was time to move the Kemper into my basement - my active JBL EONs were waiting - including this EON 18 inch sub, which can move some serious air.

WOW!

* All my sounds translated nicely - they kept their character and tone
* The EONs can sound very brutal and harsh and reveal any problem with the signal, almost like studio monitors. But the Kemper just sounded warm and creamy (I used mostly AC30 amps so far, I quickly tested a high-gain Peavey and this WAS brutal )
* Feedback characteristics at high levels seem just like with 4x12 inch cabinet. No such high freq stuff so many digi amps suffer from played through FRFR. I do play a semi hollow guitar, but made for higher gain sounds. Compared to my other digital amps the Kemper allowed some nice bit of higher levels before the feedback became hopeless!
* At really high levels the Kemper showed its extremly high dynamic range. Sustain for ever and its noise gates do their job almost magically. You can pull back volume on the guitar unbelievabley low and it still does sound nice with low noise
* This PURE CABINET parameter is great! If you turn it up you get the feal of a real stack for your rehearsal pleasure. Turn it down and the sound sits unobstrusive in the mix. With the settings inbetween you can seemlessly bring the guitar just to the right level of cutting through the mix. This parameter alone almost forces me to go the reamping road for mixdown (I guess I will always record three channels, stereo master + direct out, just in case)
* Integrating my Yamaha FC-7 pedal for wah-wah purpose was a breeze. No manual needed

I couldn't be happier.

One minor issue: as soon as I connected my laptop with USB to try the rig manager, the Kemper had some cheeping chirping noise, high freq like a cheapo synth's tone. Laptop and Kemper where on the same mains lead. Ground lift did not help. The noise gates helped a lot, but not perfectly. The good news is, that the Kemper does not need this connection for fine-tuning sounds. Its user own interface is more than enough.

God bless
SD

Quote from Sharry

Zitat von LiamThompson: „Must admit Sharry I'd love one of those Marshall fridges in my music room but at three times the price of a standard fridge of equal size I just can't justify it haha.“
I was not talking for the rehearsal room <img src="https://www.kemper-amps.com/forum/wcf/images/smilies/wink.png" alt=";)" /> (There we have a…

Oh boy, imagine the Kemper toaster on top of the Marshal fridge on stage. And once in a while you open the Marshall to grab a cold beer

... because mine had problems at volumes lower than 10. They either sounded too cold..

...or too hollow ...

...or sometimes thin...

This was back in the late 70s and 80s. There was no digital amp at that time. As long as we had a regular rehearsal room, the tough volume level was not a problem, more fun. But later without a band and room, I tried to keep good relations to my neighbours and was searching for something softer. My journey began with Tom Scholz's Rockman distortion generator. Well, well. Funny thing, but it only had ONE sound, somehow tubeish. Finally the original bean pod arrived and I loved it! Actually I still own it and once in a while I play it at home. When the POD HD500 showed up I found this to be another step into the right direction. It reacted quite nicely to the volume pot of the guitar. Overall it was possible to achieve quite nice sounds, but I found it took a long time and fine tuning to bring it there.

Now the other day I checked YT for the new helix. And could not find one single example being better than my tweaked HD. Being sad I finally stumbled about this strange Kemper profiler thingie... and found not one single video with a truely bad guitar tone, but many I loved! The signature tones from old heroes like Eddie and Nile and David (thanx Gundy!) made me press the order button.

For one week now I am the proud owner of the toaster + remote in wehrmachts-green (which they seem to call black). I firstly tried to receive troop radio signals from the years 1944/45 - but no success. So I continued to adjust these input levels to fit my guitar, browsed for the Nashville AC30 and loved it. Using only that profile I had fantastic cleans, crunchies like Petty and with some delay + clarity / pick / definition changes I came close The Edge.This amp is true fun!

Summary: while its tough to make "the other products" sound good, I find it tough to make the Kemper sound BAD (some succeeded with pitch FX, though ). I mean, most of the presets are not for me, but they still sound like some real tube amp.

This might well be my last amp.

Cheers to all, glad to be here.

#1 would be a show stopper for me.

Workaraound: If the looper ist post FX/amp then just record the track with less amp level. Set level back for your overdub. Result: first recording is softer.