Posts by metalhorse442

So I got bored and decided to compare some tones, just double tracked the same riff with 3 different profile sets (excuse the sloppy double tracking here and there....) Anyways, here's the links:

Premier Profiles Rectifier:

Profile of my Bogner Uberschall with a SinMix cab:

Premier Profiles Einstein:

All 6 tracks at once because why not?

Let me know what you all think. I tend to prefer darker tones than most metal players, but to my ears these all sound pretty good, especially all of them together.

Sounds good through my Mackie Monitors. I agree with Paults' sentiment about wanting a bit more of the snare crack. The snare feels a little buried. The snare could seem to use a bit more space (maybe some more verb and more high freqs). Overall though, I like the song and the mix, and whatever profiles you're using here sound great!

So I've had this fun tango of getting IEMs and the Kemper to play nice. Some tips I picked up along the way that made the IEM experience awesome!:

• Unlink the main out from the master volume (this way you can keep it locked somewhere around -15 or -20 which gives the FOH plenty of volume without too much.
• My personal setup is to set both main outs to mono and send one to FOH and one into the IEM mixer. Volume can be dialed from the IEM mixer. If this is't a good option using the headphone out or monitor out.
• Use Performance mode, setup slots with your clean, rhythm, lead and other sounds. Switch between them and adjust the "volume" (not master) to taste and save.
• High gain through IEMs was terrible for me, I got around this by doing some HP and LP EQs after the stack as well as some notching.

All in all the IEM solution is much better for me with the Kemper than it was before the Kemper. It took about 3 frustrating weeks of tweaking things to exactly what I wanted. The above bullet points are the highlights of what I did to get my setup sounding good to my ears. Of course your mileage may vary and you may want something a bit different, but having gone through that pain myself I wanted to throw out my gotchas in hope of helping save the same hassles I had.

I'm not sure what headphone amp our drummer is using, but the rest of us are using galaxy audio as-900s. I've got my Kemper setup as follows (signal path wise)

-Main Outs both set to mono
-Main Out volume set to -15.4 unlinked
-Main Out Left to in ear mixer rack (presonus)
-Main Out Right to FOH
-Monitor out with cab sim off into ISP Stealth into Mesa Vertical 2x12
-MIDI in from mix computer or for the other band a Behringer FCB1010 into the MIDI in

I found that the main XLR outputs are hotter than hell on the Kemper and I get much better results taming that down with the volume levels unlinked at -15.4. Also another note is that to get my Kemper to not sound like a chainsaw on gain channels in the in ears I spent probably 10 hours with it plugged into Logic with a graphic EQ and analyzer open and dialed a mix ready tone with HP and LP and several notches. Once I got the sound I liked I recreated this in the graphic EQ and saved it as a preset on the Kemper. All of my live and studio patches use this so I can run pretty much flat into anything and it sounds good. When I was working on this EQ I used my IEMs off the headphone out with no space and checked it against a pair of Mackie CR5s. The first 2 weeks I owned the Kemper I was beyond frustrated trying to get "my sound" right, but patience paid off and this thing sounds amazing. So amazing I'm going to buy a 2nd one...and maybe even sell my Uberschall.

Thanks guys,

For the roots rock band I like using a guitar cab with the poweramp (monitor out cab sim off). This works great, that said I just bought an X Air 18 for a PA head solution and I'm finding that gigging with no cab in this scenario is actually just fine. For my symphonic metal band my bassist and I are going to go cabless and just use our IEMs, although we're going to snag a couple inexpensive PA speakers for jamming at practice (mostly for songwriting scenarios where we aren't using IEMs). Despite being a lifelong tube amp fanatic I really can't say I miss the reliability issues, volume, or weight of a tube amp since moving to the Kemper. If anything it's made so many more tonal options possible and helped to dramatically control stage volumes.

So I've had my Kemper since February and a bit of background, I play in 2 bands, one is a roots rock band and the other is a Symphonic Metal Band. I've done a few shows now with the roots rock band and the Kemper has worked quite nicely, however they were all gigs with a questionable PA and guitars were not mic'd. My other guitarist runs a Marshall Jubilee 1x12 live and I run a 2x12 cab with an ISP stealth. That's all worked great. My symphonic metal band did our first gig since I got the KPA and I ran in FOH and it was monstrous! We all use IEMs and one of my main outputs (both set to mono) feeds the in ear mixer. I should also note this band doesn't gig anywhere that doesn't have a legit PA setup for the reasons of running keys and symphonic arrangements via backing tracks with click. I didn't really even notice I had a cab on stage and none of my other bandmates noticed either because we all have sound isolating IEMs. This has prompted an interesting discussion about consolidating our mix/IEM rack with a Kemper and the bass rig. Anyone have any experiences doing something like this? I should also add I have nothing on the floor as our laptop that runs our clicks and backing tracks has all patch changes and effect changes programmed via MIDI. The only downside I see going this route is feedback, but that can be had via a PA wedge or an Alto TS212. Thoughts from the KPA community?

Also sidenote, my Bogner Uberschall hasn't left its road case since I profiled it in March

-Epica
-Mayan
-After Forever
-Nightwish
-In Flames
-Eluveitie
-Omnium Gatherum
-Semblant
-Boston
-Scorpions
-Strunz and Farah
-Robert Cray
-Kenny Wayne Shepherd
-Cellar Darling (Ivo uses a Kemper btw!)

Nicely done. I was fortunate enough to grow up with a mom who blasted the Scorpions while cleaning the house complete with air guitar solos on the broom lol. They were one of my biggest influences in picking up electric guitar. Nice choices tonally, and of course its impossible to go wrong with a Gibson V!

So I got my Kemper rack (unpowered) in February primarily to use with my roots rock band as we cover a number of genres from funk and R&B to hard rock and everything in between (blues and classic rock). It's worked out so well that I profiled my Bogner Uberschall and started using the Kemper for my symphonic metal band as well (the uber hasn't been turned on in literally 3 months now). Now that I'm so dependent on the Kemper for both bands I'm looking into buying a 2nd one this summer and I'm considering a PowerRack. I know the wattage won't be an issue as my 180 watt ISP stealth has been plenty even for smaller gigs where guitars aren't mic'd (roots rock band only for those types of gigs), but I am wondering given that the poweramp is class D if its safe to run a PowerRack without a cab or load box. Generally speaking I'll usually be running into a Mesa vertical 2x12 or a pair of custom 1x12s, but I can forsee gigs at certain venues where I don't want to bother with a cab...there's one in particular in Portland where you have to haul gear up 3 flights of stairs with no elevator. Can anyone speak to whether or not you can safely run this way?

TL;DR and follow-on questions:
-Can I run a PowerRack with no cab or load box safely given that it's class D?
-How reliable are the poweramps in these?
-If I unlink the master volume (which I have to anyways because holy crap are they hot!!) can I turn the volume all the way down and have no cab volume (this is important for tracking pre-production demos in my symphonic band as we all run IEMs).

I saw Arkona and Sirenia on their US tour last week in Portland. Looks like Arkona's guitarist and Sirenia's lead guitarist were playing through a profiler rack, didn't see any cabs. Sirenia's rhythm guitarist (Morten Veland) appeared to be playing through a Line 6 Pod XT Live floorboard, but their lead guitarist (Jan Erik Soltvedt) was definitely using the KPA. Sounded pretty awesome!

I'm using a FCB1010 with the stock eprom and firmware. I set my kemper to a specific MIDI channel (8 in my case) and set the FCB1010 the same way. This works as a way to go between presets in perform mode, and the volume pedal works just fine as well. I haven't had any luck getting the wah to work, but it should just be a matter of switching the cc number on the FCB to match what the wah on the kemper uses. If you want to be able to do the stomp box on off thing you'll need the aftermarket eprom for kemper, I've seen a few of them out there. For me the stock FCB1010 works just fine for my needs, especially since I only use it for one band, the other has all the cc and pc MIDI messages sent to it by our laptop that does our backing string tracks. There's also a youtube video I saw (multipart) that shows how to do this, but it looks like you have to set this on a per perform slot basis

Top Jimi has a Sansamp bass pack as well that's pretty good if you're after a bass sansamp.

You can backup your performances to rig manager and copy them elsewhere. I've done this when I factory reset my Kemper. If you drag and drop the performances from your Kemper in rig manager you should be able to move them to another Kemper amp. I remember last time I did this it was greyed out as well, but I just clicked back to my profiles and clicked back to performances in rig manager and it wasn't greyed out anymore. I'm looking at buying a 2nd Kemper in the next 3-6 months so I'll be doing this at that point as well.

For recording about 20, for live 10ish

Live (Symphonic Metal)
-SinMix Uberschall Clean
-Profile of my Uberschall dry
-Profile of my Uberschall with Delay
-Profile of my Uberschall with phone eq (upper mids only)
-MBritt Soldano

Live (Roots Rock)
-Morgan SW22 Clean (taken from Andertons blind test video)
-Morgan SW22 driven clean with auto wah
-TAF BluesJNR Growl
-Bogner Helios-HG (Robert Wedewer Rig Exchange Profile)
-Top Jimi PBall with Delay

Recording:
-SinMix Uberschall Clean
-Profile of my Uberschall dry
-Profile of my Uberschall with Delay
-Profile of my Uberschall with phone eq (upper mids only)
-MBritt Soldano
-Morgan SW22 Clean (taken from Andertons blind test video)
-Morgan SW22 driven clean with auto wah
-TAF BluesJNR Growl
-Bogner Helios-HG (Robert Wedewer Rig Exchange Profile)
-Top Jimi PBall with Delay
-Top Jimi Jubilee profiles
-SinMix Uberschall Pack
-MBritt Marshalls (various)
-TAF Fender and Vox amps
-Mesa TA30 profiles from Rig Exchange

My bass player uses a Mesa M6 Carbine rig live and at rehearsal. When we did his DI tracking I intended to reamp through his bass rig and for the hell of it I looked around to see if I could find any profiles of his amp and I found them here and was pretty impressed by the result. It sounded dead on like his amp.