Posts by Snicir

  • Rig Manager 3 is available for testing ?

    This is a really significant upgrade to a not new piece of guitar equipment! Happy customer.


    Recorded a quick loop with the Profiler looper, then just jammed around with some of my favorite rigs, tweaking the parameters in the Rig Manager interface. Enjoyable. Noticed when I handled the EQ that I wanted the familiar 4 knobs next to each other - seems like ear-tuning those familiar EQ parameters is more intuitive with tactile rotation than with mousing/scolling. So I just reached one hand over to the Profiler EQ and kept my eyes at the computer screen. Very intuitive.


    I like the darker theme (File -> Preferences -> Brightness="Black Hole" 8)), and it seems that the browsing aspects (which were a part of old Rig Manager) are more performant now, with less loading times.


    Thanks to those who worked on this, and to the company for prioritizing this, and also thanks to the users who keep uploading to Rig Exchange. It keeps growing with 14600+ rigs at the moment.

    EDIT: I found out about this news because someone told me about it, otherwise I mostly just use the RSS feed for the "announcements from Kemper" subforum. I'm guessing that others will be missing this announcement for the same reason.

  • Today: 12,760 Rigs on RE:

    It would be interesting to know how you guys use Rig Exchange! In general I think it's great that it exists. For me one interesting use case is when I want to get a feel for a new amp which I haven't played. If RE has profiles from many authors it can give a quite good impression of how the amp sounds.


    However I think it's a bit problematic that it feels like a big lake of profiles without much context. Votes are not used much, and you can't check if votes are by people whose taste you appreciate. There are no comments. This makes it hard to weed down the numbers before auditioning. And auditioning can be quite taxing because of ear fatigue and (at least for me) difficulty to keep the tone taste buds fresh and not biased.


    One way to weed down the numbers is to use RE in conjunction with this forum: find threads which discuss the kind of tones I am interested in. And find trusted authors whose profiles seem to fit with my taste.


    Does anyone use RE as their main source of new sounds? As opposed to own profiles / Kemper rig packs / forum posts / commercial profiles?

  • Feedback on rigs

    Quote from dpeters95

    I might be wrong but I think a lot of votes (maybe not the majority) are lost because people who preview them in Rig Manager exit the program by just closing the open window, which will not then send the vote to the RE. You have to use "File" then "Exit" to quit and it will record your ratings.

    Really!? Do you have a link for a thread where this is discussed? If true, this seems like a very damaging unintuitive behaviour of the program. I remember that there were complaints about rating but this seems quite bad - can't imagine even 10% of users are using File -> Exit.


    @Skurjj
    Once in a while someone voices the opinion that they would like more feedback from users regarding the rigs they are posting. I think most users who post their profiles will just have to accept that there won't be much feedback, while their profiles still might be of good use for the "Kemper collective".


    I do think it's nice when people announce here that they uploaded something special. But a lot of the value from a Rig Exchange upload comes from the possibility for future users (years ahead) to search for an amp they are interested in and just trying the profiles.

  • Rig Manager keyboard improvements

    With guitar in one hand I find it practical to use keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse. Here are some things that would improve the experience (in order of importance). Generally it seems like a good idea to emulate keyboard behavior present in more commonly used browsers, such as file managers and web browsers.


    • Add option to confirm deletions. (Sometimes I accidentally hit the delete-button and the selected rig is nowhere to be found. Sometimes I don't even know if I accidentally hit delete or something else, since deleting a rig doesn't tell me that it deleted a rig).
    • Add keyboard shortcuts for the following:

      • backwards (ALT + ←), forwards (ALT + →). Mapping forwards and backwards buttons from the mouse would also be very useful
      • F2 in rig panel to rename the rig
      • home and end to go to first and last rig in rig panel
      • folder navigation (parent folder, child folder, previous sibling, next sibling) is currently available when SHIFT-TAB-ing the keyboard focus to the left panel. Would be nice to have the same functionality from the middle panel when holding down CTRL
      • cut (CTRL + X) in addition to existing copy
    • Fix the behavior of up and down buttons in the rig inspector to the right. Currently they move between fields from all fields except those with a drop-down (rating, instrument): at those points you get stuck and need the mouse to move to another field. (You can use enter to go to next but I can't find a shortcut to go back up. Probably a good idea to use left/right or up/down to move beyond the field.) A small bug is that after moving down to another category (such as from rig to amp), it's impossible to use up-button to go back up unless you first go down at least one more step.



    For those interested, these are the keyboard shortcuts I have already found (in addition to the ones visible when right-clicking somewhere):

    • TAB to move focus between search, directory panel, rig panel, inspector panel.
    • Up/down/left/right/page up/page down/home/end in directory panel does expected movements. Backspace jumps to parent.
    • Up/down in rig panel does expected movement. Hold SHIFT to select a range (holding CTRL and going up down and selecting with space doesn't work.). Space toggles auto-preview.

  • GRS All Pack!!!

    Great to see this here! I have been looking forward to whatever was to be your next step after you removed rigs from rig exchange and you mentioned that you planned to do some organizing (or something akin to that). I have invested a lot of hours into playing with your profiles, especially the 5150 II and the Mark Five:25. It will be nice to go through this collection. Thanks for sharing your work!

  • Wizard MTL Free Profile

    Very nice profile! A "natural dist" sound of the kind that I like. It encourages hard hitting on the strings. Will return to it in the future with fresh ears.


    Thanks for the upload.

  • Cililab profiles

    Quote from tijlcarrein

    which I merged with an

    If you're using the merging feature like this formulation suggests (and I might be wrong), you probably get sub-par results. The merge feature is not supposed to be used for merging just any cabinet with any direct profile, but only for merging a studio profile and a direct profile of the exact same physical rig (profiled in succession). The purpose is to improve the accuracy of the amp-part and the cabinet-part of the studio profile, the result is then called a merged profile. If the direct profile and the studio profile come from the exact same physical rig, it makes sense that the KPA could find some finer details in the direct profile which it then implements also in the studio profile etc. If the direct and studio profiles are from two different physical rigs, the merging process will still operate on the assumption that they are from the same physical rig, meaning that any changes by the merging process are likely to decrease the accuracy of the sound.


    Luckily, making a profile from separate amp- and cab-parts is encouraged and is even easier: just replace the cabinet-part of the profile by another cabinet preset, or replace the amplifier-part by another amplifier preset (such as a direct profile). I guess you could experiment with unorthodox merging and hope that it accidentally produces something good-sounding, but it's not in the spirit of the product (accurately replicating sounds of real amps).


    Hope that helps.. :)


    PS. I agree there are many high quality sounds in the Cililab Mk5:25 pack!

  • Do You Find the Kemper Favors Certain Guitars Over Others?

    Quote from Tramp1

    Some of this may be explainable by the fact that, having liked the Nowcaster with the KPA from the start, I've tended to tweak profiles to suit it.

    I started with EMG's and found some great sounds. When I started using other guitars, even looking for similar sounds, I had to retweak significantly and/or look for other profiles. Making guitar specific presets for distortion sense also made it easier to use multiple guitars.

  • Free 6505 to recto cab profile

    Quote from mickrich

    37 downloads. 3 likes and 3 comments

    Hi Mickrich! Just to try to shed some light on this phenomenon. For me these things are required for me to try a new rig from the forum: notice the post, download the rig, import into rig manager, preview it with guitar in hand. I don't usually browse with guitar in hand, and the best way for me is to simply download the rigs that seem interesting to my download folder when I see the post, then when I'm hungry for new sounds I extract the zips and import it all to rig manager and preview all the new ones at the same time. I strongly suspect that there are others who do the same, not to mention the "silent majority" who read threads but don't respond in them.


    Thanks for keeping on sharing rigs! I have benefited a lot from the benefactors of this community, including your previous uploads. ^^

  • What do you think the new update will be

    I think the KPA is very close to the product that it aims to be. At launch it was not, but managed to sell and start becoming respected because of the core profiling feature. At the same time as it gained popularity much low-hanging fruit was picked:

    • performance mode
    • new effects and such things
    • rig exchange and rig manager
    • merged profiles
    • adding a remote
    • morphing (really only "external control of any parameter" but packaged in a very user friendly way)

    This was low-hanging because the improvements were quite significant and important to becoming the product it should be. Now I think there is not so much left.


    I think that better computer control (a good editor) would add value, but it's not as central for the KPA as it is for competing products like the Helix and AxeFx. The reason I say this is because the KPA seems designed towards a guitarist with the guitar in one hand and the other hand on the dedicated KPA knobs: it doesn't behave as a "menu system on a small screen" but more like a "digital amp front panel". This goes hand-in-hand with the fact that KPA's soundcreating methodology relies on physical presence in a rehearsal room/studio rather than excessive fine-tuning of parameters.


    Try to imagine what an editor for the KPA should look like. A "menu system on a small screen" obviously benefits from a larger screen and a mouse: rather than clicking up-right-right-select-plus-plus to increase treble by two steps you now do it with a simple mouse gesture. And the "pages" on the small screen can intuitively correspond to tabs in the large screen interface. But for the KPA UI there is no obvious large-screen correspondence.


    So not only is an editor less needed (because of less reliance on tweaking and the "digital amp front panel" UI) but would also likely correspond less intuitively to the hardware. I think these points demonstrate why Kemper have been correct in their past priorities of not focusing on an editor.


    Off-handedly speculating about future strategy I could even imagine that rather than simply "making an editor", it could make more business sense to go "all in" on catering to the fans of "accessible UI". This would mean hardware with a bigger color screen and apps for smartphones, tablets and desktops (this could even enable lower-cost incarnations of the Kemper algorithms, such as in a plugin or small smartphone-controlled stompbox). This would be a step away from the Kemper tactic of focusing on raw functionality for musicians, but perhaps the KPA now has a high enough status and a big enough ecosystem of rigs that it could take a reasonable share of the more mainstream market. The less drastic strategy would be to keep focusing on being the first choice for tube amp users contemplating going digital.

  • Your Strategies for Dealing with Transition from Headphones to FRFR to Recording?

    The sounds I have got from the KPA through three different kinds of studio monitors in different rooms (Yamaha HS7, Event ASP8, JBL LSR308) have been much more similar than the sounds I have got from Sennheiser Momentum (over ear) headphones (I think they sound great for music but awful for the KPA). I don't know if I should expect more pleasing results from other headphones. Others seem to be happy with using headphones so there's still some hope for me.

  • Member avatar / username decrypted:

    I tried to pick a name which sounds beautiful but has no specific meaning. The 'c' is pronounced like an 's', both 'i's like the 'i' in 'in', and the 'r' like a Swedish 'r'.


    The photo I took of a berry and chose also because I find it beautiful. I like nature.


    It's a nice thread and I enjoy your explanations! :)

  • FCB1010 mods: "phantom power", remove built-in expression pedals, change EPROM

    Hi, I made some mods to my FCB1010 foot controller, here is a verbose walkthrough for those interested. Note that it requires some fiddling with mains-current which can become dangerous if you do it incorrectly, so only do this if you are sure that you can do it well (some jurisdictions might require you to have a license to work with mains-current).



    This is the end result:
    <pics 1,2 of box>
    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/TQa49tv.jpg][Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/yv8XwUv.jpg]This box sits behind the KPA. It has midi in and out for KPA, a power input jack, and provides power and midi to the floorboard via a network cable (RJ45 / Cat5, like the Kemper Remote uses).
    <pics 3,4 of floorboard>
    [Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/I5uWV8q.jpg]


    [Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/Krp4iNM.jpg]The floorboard is much more compact than the bulky original. No mains power at the feet feels safer. Only one cable means that I can quite easily push the unit around on the floor with my feet. I use EurekaPROM 3.0 which has all the normal stuff and also lets me use the Kemper looper (unsupported by Kemper and I can't get undo/halfspeed/reverse to work but jamming with myself is fun and a good tool for composing). I think the midi looper functions used to work in an older firmware, I believe it stopped working around when new delays or morphing was introduced. I have only tried it with the latest beta 5.4.0.13150B.
    http://www.eurekasound.com/eurekaprom/pa




    You might want to buy all needed parts and tools first, so that you don't have to wait for delivery and be without your floor controller for too long. I bought almost everything online, from aliexpress or thomann.



    Parts used:



    Tools needed:

    • metal saw
    • metal drill https://www.aliexpress.com/ite…Drilling/32759082236.html (I have 4-32 mm)
    • drilling machine
    • normal drill bits for the plastic box
    • soldering station (or soldering iron but when I used an iron it was very difficult)

    • screwdriver, I think a standard "phillips head" (shaped like a +) is enough for the FCB parts. if you mount the jacks with screws you will also need a smaller screwdriver (such as these which I have https://www.aliexpress.com/ite…e-Laptop/32489598823.html).
    • multimeter/Ohmmeter (only for checking which wire inside the midi cable goes to which connector: you could do it with a battery and a LED or similar if you don't want to buy a meter)
    • wire cutter and wire stripper




    First remove the bottom plate by unscrewing all screws on the underside.



    <pic 5 of eprom>
    [Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/Nn2qmKJ.jpg]
    Changing the EPROM is very easy. The direction is important - check that the little half-circle-shaped dent in the black plastic is in the same direction as the EPROM that you remove. First loosen any glue which holds the old EPROM in place. Then lift it up carefully with a flat head screwdriver. Before pushing the new EPROM in place you might have to bend the metal connectors (legs) so that they fit.



    <pic 6 before cutting>
    [Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/juPkNNg.jpg]
    On to the other mod. Remove the power transformer and the power jack by removing additional screws. Also remove the power button. Cut the cables needed to get the parts loose. Pull off the cables from the light sensors that measure the expression pedal position. I didn't cut them off but just taped them to the chassis so they don't bounce around too much inside the FCB. (Later on I plan to connect them to new TRS-jacks so that I can connect external expression pedals and have the FCB treat them like the internal ones. The FCB expression pedal calibration will hopefully be able to tune to the potentiometers in my expression pedals. Others have done it so it should be possible with at least some expression pedals.)



    Remove the black plastic end of the floorboard by unscrewing screws.



    Now the expression pedal-side of the floorboard is exposed - cut it off, and also cut off the bottom plate. I used a metal hand saw, which took a while, but it worked. (I just measured the left-over part of the bottom plate, it's 19.6 cm.)



    See if the plastic end fits on your newly sawed edge. You might need to do a small extra cut so that the parts fit, I don't remember exactly (probably not, but in any case it's not difficult). Glue it back. (This isn't as stable as using screws like in the original design, but for me it's stable enough.)



    Drill a hole for the RJ45-connector in the backside of the metal chassis. If you plan on mounting it with screws: drill small holes for the screws as well. In the order you prefer: mount the connector and solder the appropriate cables onto it.



    The important part of the wiring is that the second and fourth midi pins are connected in the same way on both sides of the RJ45-cable. You can look at photos of my notes for the wiring if that helps.
    <pic 7 wiring fcb>
    [Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/sIMg3YM.jpg]


    Remember to apply heat shrink tubing before soldering. You will solder the two yellow 10V AC-cables (which you cut off from the transformer) directly to the appropriate position of the jack. You will also solder 4 midi wires to the jack, then the other ends to the midi connectors on the inside of the FCB (this allows you to keep using the old midi jacks of the FCB, though you need to get power through the RJ45 anyway). Shrink it over the finished solder joints using heat from the soldering iron. Tape the wires to the chassis so they don't bounce around (this could loosen your soldered joints). For mounting the RJ45-connector, I used both screws and glue.



    If I remember correctly the floorboard should now be finished. On to the box.



    Cut the midi cable in half.



    Drill holes in the plastic box for the following things:
    power jack (and mounting screw holes) (I drilled some holes and then carved with a knife)
    2 midi cables (small holes for just the cut off cable ends)
    RJ45 jack (and mounting screw holes)



    Check that all parts fit. Mount them either now or after soldering. I used screws and glue for the connectors, only glue for the transformer (I had to bend one of the legs first so it fit). The midi cables required neither: make a knot on the inside (I'm not sure if also adding glue makes it better or worse).



    <pics 8,9,10 of box wiring and box>
    [Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/GQoOXa6.jpg]


    [Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/Di4SMBW.jpg][Blocked Image: https://imgur.com/tNEwW5d.jpg]Solder all connections, look at the attached picture if that helps you. Power jack to transformer, transformer to RJ45-jack (only the thinner wires that previously went to the midi board, yellow in my case), wires inside midi cable to RJ-45 jack (check which wires correspond to which connector pins with the multimeter). Remember to add heat shrink tubing before soldering. Shrink it over the finished solder joints using heat from the soldering iron. Isolate the mains-current connections carefully with electrical tape. Note that it will be very dangerous if you fail to do these parts safely, in some jurisdictions you may need to be an electrician to work on mains-current. Don't proceed if you are not sure that you can do it correctly.



    Close the box and the floorboard, connect everything, see if it works! Hope this is useful or entertaining for someone! :)

  • How do you organise your Rigs?

    I have folders for "rig batches", a batch being for example a collection of profiles from the same session from a user who uploads to this forum. If one user has many such sets, that user gets subfolders. Kemper official rig packs are also batches, and commercial profiles.


    Then I also have a few folders with favorites for specific guitars.


    I have not really deleted any rigs from rig manager, so it contains also stuff that I imported but didn't love. I rely on memory to use the quality stuff. It would be a nice addition if rig manager supported moving folders, that would make it quite easy to move much stuff to an archive. Deciding to delete profiles is a bigger thought process - it makes more sense to me to keep those profiles as "plan B"-profiles, considering that I already invested the time to judge the profiles and save a memory of them into my brain.


    On the KPA I try to keep a versatile collection that I'm familiar with so that when I am jamming without rig manager I can find a sound for whatever ideas are generated. My favorite rigs in the unit are prefixed with #0. Then they appear first in the list. I have other "tags" such as #1 or #d for secondary rigs or specific distortion rigs.


    I have made in total about 18 performances. I try to keep them versatile as well and the goal is to have a varied but compact performance collection that I'm familiar with, so that I can quickly summon any relevant sound with my feet while playing. Right now though, many performances simply function as an "archive" of sets of sounds I liked years or months ago.