Posts by Chris Duncan

While I can fiddle with knobs, use my ears, and get "close enough for rock and roll," the geek in me would really like to match signal levels exactly when tracking DI and then sending the signal back to the KPA.

I've been poking around but can't find anything beyond the ambiguous color of the Input LED to indicate the actual level of signal coming into the KPA via the main guitar input. I was hoping to find something a bit more specific so that I could track the DI and send the Reamp In signal at exactly the same level that I originally played it. Thus far, I haven't been able to find any indication of input level received, either on the guitar or reamp in.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

The remote is overkill for my needs (PC only) so it's not worth the significant difference in price for this application. The Mongoose does PC same as the FCB1010, and I don't need controller pedals. While the remote has a built in tuner, I'm not sure how the Behringer brings anything new to the party in that regard, but I may have missed something.

Also, the Mongoose was chosen because it's tiny and the storage capacity of my car is limited.

Often it's not even their fault. In the U.S. at least if you don't actively defend your tradmarks, etc. you can lose them, so it almost forces people to take legal action against you.

Oops. Accidentally quoted instead of editing. How does one delete an errant post?

I owned a 70s Strat in the 80s and I swear the neck must have been made out of balsa wood. If you even looked at it wrong the pitch would shift.

Set up for an indoor gig in NY one winter, tuned up, did sound check, tuned again, went to dinner. Came back, kicked off the first song and the guitar was in perfect tune. Exactly one step sharp. Or flat. I forget, I've slept since then.

Of course, stupid me for not checking ("but geez, I tuned again before I put the guitar down!"), but I don't miss that guitar at all.

Quote from stilltrying5150

It’s on his website it’s called the brown eyed girl pack. And it’s on sale. And there are some great tones on there and yes some of them you have to turn up the game but they are super high quality compared to all the other ones that I’ve purchased

Heading down to the studio to try them now. Thanks!

Quote from endlessnameless

This is my post from this thread a little while ago. I am a lawyer. But this isnt legal advice, deffo get your own advice.

I'm posting my thoughts as a reply to yours just so no one thinks I'm picking on lawyers behind their backs.

Having been a serial entrepreneur in a previous life, always on the small business side of things, I thought I'd offer a perspective to folks regarding copyrights, trademarks, contracts, etc. that's not about right / wrong or legal / illegal, but rather a matter of practicality.

With no disrespect intended to my guitar slinging legal beagle friends, what people need to realize is one very important fact - the moment lawyers get involved, everyone loses. Except the lawyers, who get paid either way. I realize that sounds cynical, and lawyers deserve to get paid just like everyone else, but in the immortal words of Miyagi-san from Karate Kid, "The best way to block a kick is no be there." The moment you become engaged in a legal conflict, whether you were in the right or not, you're going to come out bloody to some degree.

People often think they'll prevail based on justice. In reality, a legal contract or any other such thing has very, very little to do with the outcome of a court case. It's typically down to, "my lawyer can beat up your lawyer" or even more often, "I can afford to pay my lawyer longer than you can afford to pay yours." The latter, in fact, is among the primary weapons of larger corporations with deep pockets, and often lets them get their way whether they were actually in the right or not.

All of which is to say that a well educated and comprehensive reading of the given legal statutes involved may indicate that you should be able to use a brand, trademark, copyrighted material or whatever. And yet, that doesn't keep someone from suing you just the same. And it certainly doesn't shield you from the legal fees you then incur from defending yourself.

So, the smart money is on the people who, as Miyagi-san suggests, avoid the conflict in the first place by not using anyone's brand names. Maybe there are cases where they should, legally, be able to do so. However, people rarely get sued for respecting other people's property.

I find it terribly clumsy to try and figure out which amp is what from these profiles. But I prefer that to seeing well intentioned people having to spend money defending themselves against legal action, spurious or otherwise.

Quote from paults

It seems to me the simplest solution is to plug your guitar into the tuner, and the tuner into the KPA.

I'm also wireless (picture a frantic Chihuahua mummified in an overpowering tangle of guitar cables).

Of course, I could run wireless -> tuner -> input. The upside is that the tuner would then handle the mute functionality, the downside would be another 50 feet or so added to the input signal path. Life is ever the exercise in trade offs.

Thanks for the tip about the Friedman. Went to his site and found it, as well as perusing others.

Since Black Friday is going on and I'm a bit flush with cash from selling a small herd of amps, I decided to throw some business his way with the Friedman and also one of the dual amp packs. The Friedman sounds great, and they do the clean / mildly crunch stuff very well.

I admire your honesty. That being the case, not sharing it would be the most noble path, since someone else is trying to make a living.

What would be helpful, however, is a link to the Tone Junkie one that you're using. I listened to some of his stuff and he seems to be more oriented towards really nice, clean / Fender-y type sounds. If he's doing rock-ish stuff, too, it would be worth hearing.

That's an immensely practical solution!

Given that I tend to jump, kick and spin like a Chihuahua on meth, I suspect TC would bill me for hazardous duty pay.

I'm using some of the Friedman profiles from Michael Britt and yeah, it's an awesome sounding amp. I would think you'd want to put it on Rig Exchange so it's available to everyone using Rig Manager. Easier than burning disk space on your Dropbox account.

Speakers color sound, whether it's guitar cabs, expensive studio reference monitors, or the tiny speakers in your headphones or earbuds. What I've come to recognize in the studio is that, assuming a general baseline of quality, knowing your speakers is more important than spending a gazillion dollars on the most expensive Genelecs you can find. I think the same can be said of headphones.

If you play through headphones out of volumetric necessity, then you'd want cans that enhance your listening / playing experience. If it sounds good, it is good, and that's all that matters. If you're mixing, you're looking for "truth." There are lots of products out there that serve that need, and if you get to know how they sound versus reality, you're usually in good shape.

When I'm performing, my role is typically lead singer / front man / guitarist. Because of this, I don't have the luxury of turning my back to the crowd between songs to use the tuner on the Kemper. I'm sure this isn't uncommon.

The thought that comes to mind is running a cable from the alt out to the Boss TU-3 tuner at my feet, which I could just leave engaged in tuning mode. That normally mutes the guitar but since it's not in the input signal chain (I won't be using pedals) that wouldn't matter. I'd just need to select a muted profile when I need to tune. I have a very simple Tech 21 Mongoose MIDI pedal with five buttons, which match the five in a performance. Unless I really needed five distinct sounds in a song, I could make the fifth slot in each a muted profile for consistency - far right hand button is always "mute."

That's a workable approach, but I'm always interested in hearing other solutions. How do you guys configure your tuners for gigs? Especially if you're the guy up front who has to dodge the occasional tequila bottle.

While I offer a hearty welcome as well, it might be a bit pretentious on my part since I've been here for all of five minutes (got my Kemper last weekend).

I looked at the AxeFX III when considering which to buy, and it sounded absolutely awesome. However, a big part of my choice was the fact that sadly, I don't possess your talent in dialing in tones so spending hours tweaking parameters in a modeler isn't how I want to spend my time. I might feel differently about it if I had some skill in that area, but it is what it is.

With the Kemper I can just load profiles created by those who are far better at it than I am. What I didn't realize until I got it was that loading a profile isn't just employing someone's skills at accurately capturing the stack. They first dial in a killer tone, that thing which has always eluded me, and then profile it. This means I don't have to load a profile, aka amp model, and then spend a lot of time turning it into the sound I want. I just find what feels right and then play. My guitar has never sounded this good. Of course, that doesn't make my playing any better but hey, one crisis at a time.

Quote from sampleaccurate

I've seen people who just shelled out over $2,000 get told to "RTFM" by the company's owner

As highly regarded as they are by major touring acts, I'm in the U.S. and Fractal doesn't have the presence with retailers here that other amp manufacturers have. That was a concern for me, as I figured if they don't have a high profile with the people who stand to make money selling them, what are the implications for support?

As I poked around, I bumped into some posts on people's personal websites describing this kind of response from the company's owner. I took that with a grain of salt because unless you're part of the community you never know if the person complaining was just a troll who brought it on himself. Even so, after seeing enough of these incidences, coupled with the lack of a strong U.S. retail presence, I ruled out Fractal even before I decided on the Kemper. I actually like supporting Mom & Pop companies over huge corporations when possible, but only when they conduct themselves professionally.

Above and beyond the sound and ability to tap into the talent of the tone gurus around here, the other thing Kemper has a reputation for is the unusually positive and helpful vibe of the community. Spend any time at all on the Internet and you know that forums are almost always overrun by those with a negative and snarky attitude. I've only been here a week, and while I'm sure there must be the occasional troll that slips in, I haven't seen it. They even seem tolerant of my rather verbose tendencies. Turns out there really is a different vibe here, which is very refreshing.

I think you're going to enjoy the community as much as the Kemper.

Quote from sambrox

In my logic, recording DIs (with the exception of bass guitar) is for when you don’t know where you want to go with a track. If you have a clear idea of where you’re headed, you don’t need DIs, which is something that comes with experience. For me, I don’t have the time to spend trying out different guitar sounds after the fact. I’d rather find the sound and get the performance with that sound and move on, all with the “mixing as you go” mindset. When I first got the KPA, I dabbled with recording DIs simultaneously, but just found that I never used them, if I’d spent the time to find a suitable sound in the first place, which I always do anyway, otherwise I’m not inspired to play .

Ultimately, when I've lived with the Kemper for a while, I'll probably get to the point where I just grab a profile and track it (though even then I'll keep a DI just in case). However, being only a week into the experience I'm not yet familiar with the sonic palette. So, this is in part an exercise to get familiar with the wealth of profiles I have at my disposal.

I started out auditioning sounds sitting in front of the computer, guitar in lap, keyboard in hand, doing the scroll / play / scroll thing. That's fine for a handful of selections and is my preferred approach when narrowing things down as I want to see how it actually feels when playing. For listening to a large volume of profiles, however, this gets tedious in a hurry.

What I found useful was to pick a song that wanted a certain gain level, find a profile that felt right, and track the DI. I could then put the guitar down and navigate through the Rig Manager, sorted by gain, with playback on a loop. In this way I could get the general sense of a profile in just bar or two, tap the down arrow, and be on to the next one.

I took advantage of Black Friday to grab a lot of the Michael Britt and Top Jimi packs, and there were already hundreds in the factory profiles. That's a lot of sounds. So, I'm now evaluating the best way to organize things so that I can quickly and easily find the type of sound I'm looking for when inspiration strikes.

Thus far auditioning from a looped DI seems to be an efficient way of auditioning everything, but it's just the first thing that came to mind. I'd love to hear how you guys go about evaluating and organizing your profiles. I'm sure there must be a few tips and tricks you've picked up with experience.

Quote from nightlight

Why I would always suggest recording the stack as well as the DI is simple: you can't tell from a DI track sometimes whether a distorted section has been recorded the right way. In that sense, you are flying blind while doing the recording itself.

Better is to record the stack or master mono/stereo as well. That way, when you listen back, you will have an idea of whether you played a part accurately. Sometimes a DI track won't be suitable for that, for example during fast playing or palm muting or complex melodies.

Some good points. And tracks are cheap these days.

I'm actually shocked the tech world didn't show up on their doorstep with torches and pitchforks. Apparently most people have a higher tolerance for such things.

Quote from 808illest

I just bought EZ Dummer2 and The Metal Foundry SDX for a grand total of $30 bucks cheaper off of PluginBoutique, rather than over at Toontrack's official site!!!

Awesome! I think you'll find it very easy to work with and the sounds are solid.

Once you get a feel for the wheel, don't be afraid to go into the built in mixer and play with the parallel compression, room mics, levels, etc. to find the feel you're looking for. I also find it useful to tweak things like the kick & snare when looking at the kit to bump by 1 or so, or pick a different version of the drum. Lots of fun!

Just picked up his high gain pack. I already had a batch of Micheal Britt, including his Crank n Go, and have enjoyed all of them. I added the TJ pack to extend the cranking and go to 11. Between the two it should be a good rock collection.

Have been auditioning through the pack and really enjoying what I hear.

Quote from Nemo13

Yeah man, that was actually pretty useful. I couldn't see the parameter that could change your clothes though, is that something I missed in a recent update?! Somebody jump in with some clarification!

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