Posts by guizmobro

    I got mine since 3 weeks now and I have been playing way past bed time for most nights... I own 3 tube amps but I just couldn't play those anymore. Mainly because of my baby son but also because I just don't want to sit next to a super loud amp anymore.


    Once I realized that, it was just about finding the best possible sounding solution out there. I looked into most of the available products and the Kemper definitely sounded and feeled best. That is to my ears of course ;)


    I don't require a lot of effects. A good reverb, a delay from time to time, some modulation and that's pretty much it. The only exception is Pink Floyd of course. I can say that the Kemper is amazing for Floyd stuff. There are some good commercial Floyd rigs out there.


    So being able to have all of that in one little box convinced me.


    Like you, I also was afraid of buying an "old" piece of gear. But as Chris Duncan mentioned in this post, this thing was overbuilt. I confirm that it feels like an absolutely up to date piece of kit. Plus, you get all the free updates. Think about it... It's been more than 5 years that the company offers free updates. And that's not only bug fixes! It's new delays, new reverbs... I don't know a lot of companies that support a product for that much time!


    Lastly, one of the brilliant things with the Kemper is the fact that the users are actually creating new content. If you have a modeling device, you have to wait for the company to add a new amp. Here, the users are free to do that.


    I can only say that I would buy it again in a heartbeat and that I should have done it much earlier.

    Regarding pricing, I also think that it will be around € 500-700 for the passive and maybe another € 300 on top for the active cab. As mentioned earlier in this post, quality cabs start at € 400-500. It's just unrealistic that a german-built cab that has been developed during 2 years (hello r&d costs) will retail for less than € 300...


    digbob Thanks for sharing your first impressions of the new speaker. Looks promising! I currently use headphones and studio monitors and would like to know how the speaker sounds at reasonable volume. Is this like a stage solution only or is this also usable at home?

    Chris Duncan Thanks. That makes total sense. I bought 7 amps so my target will be to have max 5 profiles to cover each amp in order to fill up 1 performance. That way I should be able to reduce the number of profiles to 35 on the Kemper. I'm gonna delete everything from the box and only chose the winners. I feel like Tom Cruise. Like mission impossible...

    We don't recommend to use the PROFILER as a sound collection machine. This is the domain of Rig Manager.

    As a newbie I'm really struggling with this. I have +600 profiles on the Kemper and these are just the ones I bought. I really have a hard time going through all the profiles and choosing some I want to delete. Even the dull / muddier / darker profiles can be tweaked into a great sound (without me having the feeling of the sound not being authentic anymore). Definitely feels like a rabbit hole and I sit there tweaking and not playing. But I only spent like 10-15 hours with the unit? Maybe I just need to get through everything and select my top 5 for every amp and build a performance for each amp.


    A bit off topic sorry...


    Definitely looking forward to the new preset management though. I was afraid of getting a Kemper just before NAMM in case I would miss out on something new. But this machine seems to be keeping on giving ;)

    keem85 I know that feeling of playing and loosing track of time ;)


    I'm still overwhelmed with how much great rigs are out there. I wanted to build a "base performance" with 5 rigs for my base sound but it's like mission impossible for me right now. I'm just unable to narrow it down to 5 rigs...


    I settled on building a performance for each amp I bought (bassman, tk imperial, fdr super reverb, bella, ac30, plexi and 2 john mayer type amps). It's been 2 weeks and I'm still not done!!!


    And yesterday I tried the Michael Britt Kemper pack and I'm like "I need those amps". I also checked the Bert Meulenddijk pack and there are amazing sounds in there as well.


    I resisted buying additional profile packs for now, but man it's hard not to push the "buy" button ^^


    But I have to face reality... I've only got so much time in a day and going through another several hundred profiles is just not doable.

    Check out Spectrasonics Omnisphere. It is an amazingly capable soft synth. As of version 2.6 it has hardware integration with over 60 synths. From modern synths like the Prophet X to analog classics like the Roland Juno 106, turn a know on the synth and Omnisphere's parameter changes to reflect the parameter change you just made.


    Each of the 60+ synths have a profile that maps the hardware synth's knobs, buttons, etc. to the same parameter in Omnisphere.

    Omnisphere is on my "to buy" list ;)


    Sadly though, my cash level is quite low at the moment because of buying the Kemper. But I hope I'll be able to get it within the next months.


    It really sounds great.

    I kind of like to know what I buy and I try to read every available review before. I also checked out most of the tutorials and read the manual. I guess it’s a generation thing :/


    You’ll just need to spend some time with the unit. It’s really straightforward after a couple of hours.


    And seriously, watch the official tutorials. They helped me a lot in terms of understanding the unit.

    In my case, I much prefer turning physical knobs and pushing buttons to playing with a mouse. Therefore, the editor isn't actually of much interest to me in the conventional sense. However, the genius of the current demo version is that you can turn the physical knobs on the KPA and have them instantly change values on the editor. That sounds like something useable to me! Effectively the editor just becomes a massive screen for seeing the impact of any knob movements in context of the bigger Rig picture.

    +1


    I also play synths: lots of software synths and some hardware analog synths. I ALWAYS prefer working with the hardware synths, not only because of their analog sound, but mainly because I like the immediate interaction with the instrument. Turning the cutoff of the filter with my mouse just doesn't give me that feeling of connection with the instrument.


    This "connection / interaction" was actually why I got the Kemper. Sound wise, I was pretty much happy with using Scuffham S-Gear. But I just couldn't feel this interaction, it somehow always felt fake. Dunno if that makes any sense...


    The only added value I see in using an editor rather than the actual hardware (for synths that is), is the visual representation of the parameters I'm changing (ie Cutoff, Resonance, the way the LFO's affect the other parameters). This can be quite nice, but it's not really something that is comparable to a guitar amp.


    Personally, the only reason I would start using the editor is if there's an added value in terms of graphical representation. But I honestly don't know how you can do that for a guitar amp and effects... If you look at the most well known guitar plugins out there, it's just a physical representation of an amp. Turning software knobs instead of hardware knobs? No thank you! I have an awesome piece of hardware with quality knobs and buttons. I'll choose my green box every time!


    I'm much more interested in the preset management system on the Kemper itself ;)

    By the way, I just got my amp. I am unpacking it now as we speak! I'm so hyped!

    Keep calm and take your time! The first night I had it, I just unpacked but didn't try it, because I knew I wouldn't be able to stop and I had to take care of my kid. The 2nd evening, I played 4 hours straight which hadn't had happened in a long time ;)


    Enjoy!

    I got mine 2 weeks ago and I couldn't be happier. I should have pulled the trigger much earlier. I really like the fact that it's not too fiddly and that it sounds great right out of the box (with the right profiles of course).


    After 2 weeks of use, my feeling is that it's an extremely well thought through product. You can dive deep if you want to, but overall it's very straightforward and the parameters actually make sense to me. Amazing how you can get great results by tweaking a profile to your liking.


    I'm impressed with this little greenie ;)

    Yes you can. As I don’t record at the moment, I wanted the simplest possible solution. I go from the headphone out of my Mac to my Kemper aux in. You need a y-splitter to do that, which cost me 10€ on the big t. You can find a video tutorial on the « aux in » on the kemper website.


    Once connected, you can mix the aux in signal within your kemper. Works like a charm.

    There's also a compression parameter in the amplifier section, which is unique and super useful in that it only affects the clean side of the sound. So if you're playing with the gain on the edge of breakup, where playing hard will distort the amp but playing softly (or rolling back the volume knob on the guitar) will come through clean, you can compress just those clean sounds so their volume doesn't drop compared to the distorted notes.

    Extremely useful to know. Thanks!

    -Now that my toaster and remote is on it's way, should I spend time learning them both, or should I learn all the basics on the toaster itself f?


    -Usually one tends to use bridge pickups for solo and neck for rhythm.. But with the diversity of Kemper, do you still switch pickups even now that you have "performance" mode on the toaster?


    -Your opinion: If Kemper really is this good (as all the reviews obviously says it is), why do you guys think normal pedals are still so popular in the market? I just sold my pedal board with polytune, compressor, delay and looper.. Hoping the Kemper will replace it just as good.. That the tuner mutes output signal, that the compressor is as good as my dynacomp was, if the delay is as good as the Flashback I had etc etc.

    Using the remote with the profiler is super easy! Just hold the button you want and hit the footswitch to assign (or the other way around). Even though I only play at home, I don't regret getting the remote at all. I play a lot with backing tracks and the remote allows me to have a full sound selection without needing to touch the kemper.


    As mentioned by Chris Duncan, a guitar is still a guitar. If you use a neck pickup on a strat, you'll never be able to achieve exactly that sound with the bridge pickup only by messing with the amp's settings. I do however set up certain profiles for specific pickups (I have a Fender Super Reverb profile which I only play with the neck pickup). And that's easy to do with the Kemper, as you can use the same amp to have your desired sound with one pickup and then just switch to another profile in order to adapt the profiler to better fit another pickup. Instead of switching profiles entirely, it's even easier to use the morph function.


    Personally, I don't use any pedals because the quality and quantity of what the Kemper offers is largely sufficient for my needs. I can however understand people who dig pedals. There are some great ones out there ;)