Great video, Kevin. You guys work well together and it was an enjoyable version of a song I've loved for years.
I wasn't familiar with the Acoustasonic but thought it sounded very convincing. In the studio I just mike acoustic guitars, but that looks like a great solution for gigs where actual acoustics are problematic (feedback potential, miking, etc.).
Sooooooo tickled to hear that!
I did a quick once around the block on your YouTube show. Fun stuff, man.
If you've been miking guitars in the past, you're going to love the simplicity of coming straight out of the Kemper into the board. The exact same tone every time you pull up a profile, no more amp knobs off by just a little each time or mics that are never quite the same from gig to gig. I love the consistency and not having to worry about dialing the guitar in each time. There's an old joke in the computer biz that reliable stuff is like a toaster - plug it in and it just works. In my case, well, I guess it really is a toaster. 
Jeff Beck Pickups and a scallop neck so deep you can almost see the truss rod. I love it.
Rapidfire I want to hear you play that gorgeous instrument, it's needs it's own area code.
That neck looks like an amusement park ride!
To follow up on Alan's comments, there are a couple of aspects of the snapshot approach that appealed to me personally, but they also highlight the differences in how people approach amps.
Some people love the sound design aspect of creating and tweaking tones and can spend hours on end happily turning the knobs on amplifiers. That process makes me crazy. I've never enjoyed it, and would rather just find the tone I want quickly and spend those hours playing guitar. Also, I've never been very good a dialing in tones (maybe because I don't enjoy it), so I really benefit from using profiles that others create because, frankly, they're much better at getting a good tone than I am. The Kemper then captures their tone-creating expertise in the form of a profile, and I just select it and play guitar.
This brings to mind another very important thing when you start looking for profiles - genre is everything. If you like 5150s and see a profile made with one, it could be an outstanding and high quality profile. However, I play classic rock, so the sound I'd want from a 5150 is closer to Eddie. That's not going to sound as good to someone who wants it for modern metal, and a metal profile won't sound good to me. So, the trick to finding killer profiles is a) understanding that the amp you're looking for is just a starting point, then b) finding profiles of that amp from people who like the same kind of music as you.
I also liked Alan's comment about most amps having a limited sweet spot. It's true that I can't get every position of every knob on a Marshall like I did when I owned them. But then, I really only used a few different knob settings on the real amps when I had them in front of me. I now have those sounds as individual profiles. And as you mentioned, I have a large collection of "amps." Not the full range of the knobs on them, just the settings that I actually care about.
For what it's worth, I had a collection of Fenders, Marshalls, Voxes, etc. from decades of playing. I owned the Kemper for a week, then sold every one of them. That was a couple of years ago, and I still don't miss them at all (or the maintenance, or the lugging them around, or the inconsistencies of miking them up). This is the single most gratifying piece of gear I've bought since 1973.
Same here, had one with my tube amps and rack gear before buying the Kemper. It's quality gear, nothing but good things to day about it.
The Kemper remote is also built like a tank, and is obviously a great solution since it's designed for the Kemper. It'll leave a bigger hole in your wallet, but the seamless integration and additional functionality was worth it to me.
I used the Levee kit
Well, that explains that!
I know it's probably not what you want people to focus on but I couldn't take my ears off of those drums. Very when the levee break.
I know you guys will be getting fed up with me posting my music
You're joking, right?
Another good tune, man.
What is Q?
For a parametric equalizer, how wide or narrow the band is.
I don't think any acoustic intricacies will help until I get a reference point
I think once you address some of the issues in your mix environment you may see that in a different light.
I know what you're looking for is "increase the bass by 3db at 800k with a Q of .5" but that's not really the help that you need at this point.
If expense is an issue (and isn't it always at some point?) let us know when you have x amount of dollars that you can apply to treating your room and you'll get a lot of useful (and battle tested) suggestions for that amount of money.
Also, did you try whippinpost91850's suggestion about the closet doors?
Everyday is a school day
Yeah, that's certainly how it is in my universe. Always more road in front of me than behind.
I don't know which DAW you use, but in Cubase you can bring up an EQ window for track and there will be a real time graphic display showing you the levels across the frequencies. A lot of plugins also do this, so my first step would be looking at the rhythm guitar, then the wah solo, and make note of the overlapping frequencies. It'll probably be several hundred in width across as they're both chewing a lot of turf in the mids.
One approach for that sort of thing would be to center your EQ band in the middle of that common ground and use a very wide Q. Then, as a starting point, you might try a 3db cut on the rhythm guitar and a 3db boost of the same frequency / Q for the solo. Season to taste, of course, but the idea is for the rhythm to give up some turf and let the solo have it.
You might then do the extremely narrow Q, 10db boost thing on another EQ bandn and sweep across the rhythm guitar above the range you cut until you find a frequency where a little bit of bite comes through. You can then widen the Q a bit (I'd still stay fairly narrow) and get back in the 3db boost range. Again, season to taste. The wah is so dark you probably won't have to cut that frequency in the solo, so this will give more separation between the two and allow the rhythm to still cut through without getting in the way of the solo.
You might take a look at the EQ range of the snare & toms compared to the solo as well, and if they're also in the way cut them, and maybe find a different higher frequency that catches their attack to let the bite come through.
Between the preprocessed and radio ready sound of the ToonTrack stuff and the same qualities in the Kemper profiles, it's easy to just bring up the faders and have something great. This sort of thing is only necessary when someone's on someone else's turf.
In Cubase, there's this great feature where you can bring up the EQ for one track and then choose as second track. It displays the real time EQ as an overlay so you can see the frequencies of one track in relation to another. I think they got that from the Fab Filter plugin. I absolutely love that feature for exactly this sort of thing.
This is another one that rises to the top of the favorites list for me. Really enjoy all your upbeat stuff.
Your mixes are consistently excellent. It's among the things that I admire about your music. That said, in this particular case the cocked wah solo gets completely lost. It's the first time I've ever noticed something amiss, so I thought I should mention it.
I listened to it a couple of times and the most useful observation I can offer is that the frequency range of the rhythm guitar and drums seems to be pretty much the same as the solo, so it all just merges into an indistinct blur. Maybe scooping the shared frequencies out of the rhythm / drums and perhaps giving them a bit of a bump in some higher frequencies during that section would give the solo it's own space to stand out and keep the backing band from also getting lost in the blur.
I mean, you know, if you don't mind the back seat driving.
Until you're able to put some effort into the acoustical problems with your mixing space you're going to struggle with the low end. I've been there myself, and I put it off for far too long before I did anything about it, thinking it couldn't possibly be all that important, even though I knew better.
I know it's not sexy or nearly as fun as buying a new guitar / amp / profile / etc., but if you make it a priority, the time and money you spend now will pay off every day in satisfaction. Remember, room acoustics always get a vote. And at the moment, you're being outvoted.
Or, to put it another way...
I fought the low and the
low won
I fought the low and the
low won
My method of avoiding PAS was to find a commercial profiler whose work perfectly matched my needs. Bought all his stuff and a choice selection from a couple of others, and I now have a fully loaded collection that covers my needs.
To supplement that, I created a folder / amp organization structure to make it easier for me to find the tone I want for a given song, which could have been a time suck of its own.
I think the key for me was the realization that what I have covers all my needs, so I don't feel compelled to keep looking for "the next cool profile." If I'm doing a song and what I need isn't in my collection I guess I could go on a tone hunt them, but honestly what I play isn't that complicated so it's a very unlikely scenario.
There have been times in my life when no matter what I had or how completely it fulfilled my needs, I always wanted more. At the risk of sounding philosophical (I am, after all, just a hippie from the 70s), I think part of avoiding PAS is simply allowing yourself to be happy with what you have.
Yes, I know. Blasphemy.
This one goes on my list of Bunny favorites.
No new gear for me since the last guitar.
I find myself strangely contented with what I have. Enough guitars to cover all the bases, a Kemper that covers all the amps, all the studio hardware / software that I want and a keyboard that can do far more than I can. Every time I look at a magazine's gear reviews, all that goes through my head is, "Got that. Don't need that. Oh, mine's way better than that. Yep, got that, too..."
It's a life without GAS. Honestly, I just don't know what to do with myself.
That's some great stuff!
I know. I first went to try the amps out at Grammatico's place at the request of a mutual friend and when I left I was haunted by the amp. It really felt like after 40 years of playing guitar I finally heard and felt the tone I've always had in my head. It's not a high gain amp but for everything else, this amp just feels right.
So how do we get our hands on the M Britt t-shirt you're wearing?
I sent an email on your contact form months ago but never heard anything back from you. Can't find any store links on your site.
That'll be the acid test.
I didn't realize you played in a Grateful Dead tribute band.
I think the quality of what's out there overall is outstanding. I listened to Line 6, Fractal and Kemper before making my purchase and found Kemper and Fractal equal in tone with Line 6 coming in behind them, but only slightly. Great tones all around.
For me, the biggest selling point of the Kemper (before I actually got one and saw the constant free OS and other software updates) was the difference in approach. Modelers try to emulate an actual amp, with a goal of letting you do everything with a model that you could do with an actual amp. A profile, on the other hand, is a snapshot of a single tone. While plenty of room to tweak it, those are two very different things.
I've never enjoyed dialing in tones as I'm constantly dissatisfied with my results, so using profiles from other people who are better at it than I am was appealing. If I was a guy who really loved sound design, Fractal probably would have been the choice.
The Quad is doing the profile approach, and there's no shortage of other modelers out there, both physical and software. And as nightlight pointed out, there are lots of great guitar builders these days, not to mention it being something of a golden age for stomp box pedals.
When I first started out in the 70s, there was Gibson and Fender, and with few exceptions pretty much everything else was crap. Same with amps, you had Fenders and Marshalls and Voxes (oh, my!), and then, well, mostly crap. These days there's just a staggering array of choices out there for musical gear and while I'm sure some of it is still crap, the overwhelming majority of it is pro quality stuff. And much of it is absolutely stellar.
Fortunately, it's not a zero sum game. I don't think brand X has to suck in order for me to like brand Y, or even Z. I like the profile approach versus modelers. Others prefer exactly the opposite. The PRS is the first non Gibson / Fender electric I've owned since my first Strat in the 70s, but probably out of habit and tradition more than anything else. I have no doubt all those other guitars rock just as hard.
Quad is taking a swing at Kemper's approach, and others may do the same. There may also be future mashups of modelers / profilers (if there aren't already). That said, I'm very happy with my Kemper and the reduced level of GAS in my life just because of what it does. However, having been a Kemper customer and a part of this community for a couple of years, I think the way they do business and support their products, along with an unusually positive and helpful group of guys here (you all know you're oddities in the Internet Animal Kingdom, right?), creates a significant market advantage. Others could replicate that level of support, to be sure, but I haven't seen it so far.
And yet, I still enjoy watching videos of other guitars, other pedals, and other amps / sims / models / profilers / etc. It's kinda like going to the race track and just betting on paper without actually spending any money.
