Posts by Chris Duncan

    Thanks, man.


    Sounds like you do most of your auditioning in Rig Manager and then deploy your choices to the Kemper. I can do that, but I find sitting in front of the computer, guitar in lap, mouse in one hand, fooling with software to be an uncomfortable posture. It's more natural to stand in front of the amp, but of course then you're back to scrolling through the stuff you're auditioning.

    the thing with the kemper is that you have so many choices that it can block your creativity..

    Yep, that's exactly the "analysis paralysis" I'm looking to avoid. Very stoked to have so many great tones to choose from, but I need to get a cattle prod and herd them into a small but unruly group.


    Nice problems to have, of course.:)

    The MIDI controller I bought along with the Kemper is very simple - a Tech 21 Mongoose. The buttons speak only program change, which is fine if I'm configuring for a gig. Load the profiles I want, set the PC, ready to rock.


    Most everything else in the MIDI implementation is CC or NRPN. I was wondering if there were any tricks / configurations that would allow me to map some of that to respond instead to PC. As an example, since the pedal only speaks PC, it would be great if I could program the browse next / prev to a couple of PC values.


    This is a long shot I'm sure, and I know the most supported solution is to spend $469 on the foot controller, but that's a bit of overkill for my typical needs, so I thought I'd ask.

    Okay, I've had some time to play around and now I'm trying to learn how best to navigate this beast. There are close to 300 profiles on the unit by default. To get a feel for what commercial packs are like, I went to M. Britt and bought the 800 and Crank n Go packs. So, I now have 400+ loaded. Everything I've heard is excellent, but of course not everything is going to be relevant to the song at hand.


    if I'm setting up for a specific band / gig / song list it's pretty straightforward. I can simply load the guys I'm going to use, save off and then delete the rest, and I'm set. Where it gets a bit more daunting is in the exploratory / inspirational area, and I'm speaking specifically of standing in front of the Kemper and 4x12 rather than sitting in front of a computer in the control room with Rig Manager.


    Maybe I'm looking for a chimey Vox, or a crunchy 800, or Eddie melting glass. I'd naturally like to dial up that chunk of profiles to audition without having to wade through a lot of irrelevant ones in between. In normal computer stuff I'd have those grouped in folders, which is exactly what you can do with folders in the local library of Rig Manager. However, as best I understand, the unit itself has a flat structure regarding the profiles - it's just a 1 to x list. You can sort by a few attributes, but you're still down to scrolling / paging one at a time. There's no grouping or other organizational features that I'm aware of. Obviously, scrolling through hundreds of profiles when I'm really just looking for a batch of 30 or 40 is less than optimal.


    I would imagine you guys have come up with best practices to make it as easy as possible to find and navigate your profiles. How do you organize things on the to make it easy for you to poke around and find the kinds of sounds you're looking for without sitting in front of Rig Manager?

    No offense taken. I don’t code but do hire a lot of developers for my various projects. In defense of companies that do develop on a fast schedule I don’t think it automatically means crappy results. Depends on the developer I guess and the team around them. Regardless, if you don’t mind glacial development schedules then it is one more plus for the Kemper.

    Hiring and managing developers is like herding cats. I don't envy you the experience. :)

    I actually had to look up FRFC. It's an interesting concept to use this sort of speaker in a live situation, something I'd never considered.


    I'm used to wiring a Marshall to a 4x12 and let there be rock, as the limited response of my Vintage 30s are part of the sound. However, the profiles typically already contain a guitar type cabinet's influence, so then it becomes a matter of faithfully reproducing the end result.


    Thus far I've gone back and forth between the toaster into the 4x12 and sitting in the control room listening to the main outs -> SSL pres -> studio monitors. I've certainly been struck in certain cases by the level of detail I'm hearing in the control room. In fairness, I haven't done an A/B between that and the 4x12 but I wouldn't expect the Marshall cab to do what the studio monitors do.


    I also haven't plugged in my IEMs, which happens this evening. I'm currently shopping for a new band so all my time is spent in the studio. When I'm in the live room, that's how I'd worked even pre-Kemper - mic the guitar, hit play on Cubase and work to the mix of the entire song from the comfort of the IEMs. While they're not going to be as full range as studio reference monitors, they certainly give more than a guitar cabinet.


    While I'll probably work IEMs in whatever the next band thing is, with a small 1x12 for thump and pickup interaction, I find the idea of a guitar amp / Kemper into FRFC speakers to be intriguing. Maybe old dogs can learn new tricks.

    the developments cycle to add or change anything is just glacial

    I'm a complete newbie here, so I don't know what the customer experience is like with Kemper as a company. That said, the way I pay for all these fancy toys is by writing software in the corporate world, which I've been doing for 30 years (okay, now I feel old). And the tech business is more in need of adult supervision than any industry on the planet.


    I share your impatience for new stuff, and I'm certainly not poking fun at you, but I live on the other side of the software fence and thus feel compelled to speak on behalf of my brethren, strange creatures though we may be.


    The normal life for me and pretty much any other developer is the same. Marketing staggers in after a three martini lunch and says they've announced this great new feature and promised we'll deliver it in a couple of months so we can preempt the competition. No one asks us how long it will actually take. We just get arbitrary deadlines pulled out of someone's posterior based on what they'd like to have happen rather than any resemblance that timeline might have to reality.


    And so, the death march begins. Nonstop overtime is expected (because yeah, you really want the code I write at 3AM after being sleep deprived for a month). Best of all, almost no shop on the planet invests in even one professionally trained software QA person. If it gets tested at all (and it rarely does), it's by the receptionist at the front desk because she can wiggle a mouse, and hey, how hard can testing be anyway? So, we get incredibly unrealistic deadlines, we're expected to work night and day to hit them, and there's little to no real testing.


    The end result is all too predictable. How much crappy software have you dealt with in your life that crashes, reboots your computer, loses your data, sets fire to your cat or in many other ways just kinda sucks? And yet, nothing ever changes because, you know, the Internet - we can just throw up a patch. Never mind that shoddy releases makes your company look like a drooling batch of complete idiots.


    Don't get me wrong. When it comes to new toys, features in software, etc. I'm every bit as demanding and impatient as the next guy. But I really, really hate dealing with crap software that was rushed out the door in a half baked state just because marketing wants to make a splash. Take the extra time to do it right. And for the love of small furry creatures from here to Alpha Centauri, hire some bloody testers to find the bugs before you release it. Do Quality Work. Just because it's software doesn't mean you get a free pass on that.


    Of course, back when I wrote business books I spoke about this at length, but I could just as well bark at the moon for all the good it does. Very few software companies take quality seriously. And Kemper? While I suppose it's just a stereotype, German engineering has a reputation for attention to detail. If that's truly the case with these guys then I'll take a tranquilizer, tap my little foot, and wait patiently for each new release. Because quality takes time. And yeah, absolutely, when compared to the sloppy practices of most dev shops that will definitely feel like a glacial pace.


    As developers, we're kinda screwed either way. Either people are unhappy because it takes too long to get something new out the door, or they're unhappy that what comes out the door has the distinct odor of methane. If the Kemper devs have chosen to do good work (and from what I've seen thus far that appears to be the case), then I admire them for sticking their necks out in an industry with the attention span of an over caffeinated Chihuahua.


    But, you know, other than that I don't have any strong feelings on the matter. :)

    so what went into everyone's decision on buying either the toaster or the rack unit? Is it because the rack unit is newer and wasn't available at one time? I feel the rack version will be a little better just for portability and to protect it.

    I used to drive a C5 Corvette, and my rig was a Voodu Valve pre with an EV power amp and a couple of other things in a four space rack, so I'd load the rack, a one 12 cab, a couple of guitars and be ready to rock. Quit playing for a while and in the interim got a C7 Vette (about the same color as that great looking classic Camero of yours).


    Decided it was time to get back out there, so before I looked for a band I did a test load of my rig. I could fit the cab. I could fit the rack. What I couldn't do was fit the cab and the rack at the same time. There may have been profanity.


    I bought a Vox AC15 combo and put together a small pedal board and it worked. Then I spent the weekend playing through my Marshall & EVH. When I went back to the Vox, it was less than impressive. About that time some people had mentioned the Fractal III and the Kemper so I listened to demos of both. There was no going back to the Vox rig after that, but I still had the problem of the rack not fitting.


    That's when I discovered that the Kemper head also came in a powered version. I had already decided to get one for the studio at least but quick measurements showed that yes, I could fit the head, and the cab, and the guitars, all at the same time. My credit card tried to quietly slide off into a dark corner. It was unsuccessful.


    All that said, if I didn't have transport constraints I would have gone with a rack version just because it's a more rugged case and stacks better. I did buy the bag for the toaster and I'm sure it will be fine. After all, the knobs are slightly more protected than my Marshall was. I just think it's cool that there's a choice, and both of them are good.

    Thanks, man. I had considered that as well, thinking the zipper tongues could easily scratch stuff up.


    I guess the real question was why there were zippers at all . Normally you use one when you want to open / close something, but in this case if it's just foam there doesn't seem to be a reason to open it in the first place.


    Maybe you're supposed to rotate the foam every 10,000 miles like you do your tires? :)

    Hey, Timo.


    Actually, I appreciate the geek speak (I sling MS code for a living). My default had been to do a controlled shutdown with the chickenhead as I just assumed there was stuff happening in the shutdown process, so I'll slap a UPS on this puppy and continue to use the knob for power up / down.


    That said, with the power amp connected to my Marshall 4x12 and master out on about -18, I consistently experience a couple of moderate clicks / pops when doing a normal shutdown. It doesn't sound speaker threatening, and it's not like my tube amps don't behave this way, but I thought I'd ask - is that normal behavior?


    Thanks for filling me in on this stuff. And if I ever happen to be on your side of the pond maybe I can buy your devs a beer or two - very nicely done, man.

    Hope this is the right forum for a question like this...


    I purchased the Kemper bag for my toaster. I was looking at it tonight, and the four inner lining walls all have zippers. Except...


    All four zippers are backwards, i.e. the tongue that you'd pull is hidden inside.


    Is this a defective bag or is this by design? if the latter, could someone let me know what purpose it serves to hide the zipper tongues? Perhaps I just need more coffee but I'm not getting it.


    Picture of one of the rogue zippers attached.

    I'm a couple of days into my powered toaster. After drooling over tones this weekend, tonight's adventure was getting reamping set up.


    Wow.


    Incredibly painless configuration. Did a quick DI track, pointed it back at the amp, brought up Rig Manager with auto preview on and pressed play on Cubase. Profiles load extremely fast, making auditioning tones almost effortless as I scroll up and down the list, sorted by gain to the appropriate region.


    I know people have been doing reamping with VST plugins for ages, but I could never warm up to those tones. However, scrolling around in RM feels exactly like you're just scrolling through patches in a plugin, other than the sound coming out of the speakers.


    I'm so used to the hassles of patching cables around, screwing with mic placement, tweaking amp knobs, running back and forth between the live room and the control room, etc. that this almost feels like cheating. Don't tell the real engineers what I"m up to. I wouldn't want to get excommunicated.

    Just got my powered head and was going to profile my amps (Marshall, Fender, Vox, etc.). After auditioning a lot of tones, I decided to just sell them without profiling them first.


    My criteria may be different than yours. In my case, I'm not trying to reproduce authentic tones of a specific era or amp. I have a Fender Blues Deluxe that I do clean and slight breakup stuff on. If I find sounds in Rig Manager that give me those types of sounds (and there are tons), I'm happy - even if the amp and speakers used have nothing to do with Fender Blues Deluxe. I'm essentially auditioning with my eyes closed.


    If you have particular sounds you get out of your amp, and you can't find them anywhere else, the profiling process seems very straightforward. If there are already lots of profiles that get what you're looking for, then it just comes down to whether or not you enjoy fiddling around with things like profiling.


    And of course, you can never have too many 57s. :)

    I just got my powered head this weekend. I had been listening to demos of the new Fractal III, which sounds outstanding, and the equally impressive Kemper demos. Honestly, in terms of quality, at least for the demos I heard, you could hold your head high with either. I'm a small time bar guy and sometimes I have to do it old school with a head and cab, no PA feed, so the powered head was a useful option. However, main outs in the studio sound every bit as good.


    For me, Kemper versus Fractal was to an extent about not enjoying the modeling process. While it's embarrassing to admit amongst my six-stringed brethren, I have never been talented with dialing in tones. I can twist knobs all day and certainly get workable stuff. Then I listen to someone else's tone and just want to sell all my gear. The endless rabbit hole of wiggling mice and twiddling knobs just isn't that much fun for me. Some guys dig it. I'm not that guy. I just want to play guitar.


    And this is the cool part about the Kemper that I didn't see coming. I planned on selling my Marshall, Fender, a couple of Voxes, etc. after buying the Kemper, but I was going to wait until I could model them. Then I looked at Rig Exchange. 13,000 profiles. Thirteen. Thousand. Not counting the few hundred that ship with the amp, which already scream. All of my amps are garden variety, e.g. JCM 900, Fender Blues Deluxe, etc. People who are really into tones have profiled this sort of thing all over the place, and doubtless better than I would have done. After listening to a lot of them, I just plugged into the Kemper and put the amps on Craigslist.


    It's not just the wealth of different amp profiles available that made me think. Unlike building a tone from scratch through modeling (which I find tedious), each profile is a snapshot of a killer tone that someone better than me has dialed into their killer amp - before pressing the profile button. Sure, I'll occasionally season to taste, but there are lots of guys here who have poured blood, sweat and tubes into some outstanding sounds, getting exactly the end result that I wanted in the first place. That did it for me.


    And the high gain sounds? Power amp out into a Marshal 4x12 or studio monitors from the main outs, either way it sounds like tubes melting on your speaker cabinet. I'd been partial to the 5150 stuff and had never played Engls, Diezels, etc. It's like being a kid in a candy store. The hardest part is picking the ones I like the most.