Posts by munkienl

Just tested my Kemper toaster via Monitor Out with "everything on" to an old Roland Cube 60 keyboard amp. Sounds good to me. The Roland has a tweeter so it's full range.

Too late this reply, sorry, i should check in here more often. I have an unpowered Kemper Toaster. I use it mainly for recording in my home studio. Straight into the USB interface to the old Mac Pro. Works great, no direct sound, you hear what you record through the studio monitors. The sound depends on the profiles though, IMHO you have to pay for the good ones. I have all the Bert Meulendijks profiles.

Recently i bought a B-stock Boss Katana mk1 head, just for fun. I had to get used to the sound but after a while i started liking it. It's surprisingly dynamic even on channel 3, Lead. Tons of effects possible. You have to use the PC and the free editor though. Only 8 presets. The FX configuration is not ideal IMHO. The 0.5 watt setting is ideal for noodling at home. If you do just that i would have said Boss Katana. I use it on a Marshall 2X12 cab with Celestion G12T75's. The Katana is a cheap power amp for the Kemper as well. Monitor output to effect return.

Just got myself a Boss Katana mk1 head. Not that i needed an amp but hey, i love a new toy every once in a while. It was cheap, B-stock. 5 basic channels, power switch 100/50/0,5/0 watt, lots of effects, USB, free Boss editor. What's not to like. Lo and behold, hidden somewhere in the effects section in the editor there's the Roland GR300 GS sound made famous by Pat Metheny. Perfect tracking, a little delay and reverb and off you go.

The devil is in the details: on stage you'll need the GA-FC footswitch (100 euro), an EV5 expression pedal(68 euro), 5 meter stereo jack cable (3 meter is supplied but not long enough IMHO), amp cover, speaker cable, a speaker cab of course.

I skipped the beta but i just downloaded and installed the latest firmware and RM. Ok i've got an editor now. But in Cabinet i don't see my preset cabs let alone the cabs in my rigs? I still have to browse through them manually.

Mmm waiting for the Kemper Kone? They announced it at NAMM 2019 already right? Could be a long wait.

I just bought the entire catalog of rigs from my fellow Dutchman Bert Meulendijk. Highly recommended. Paid him via Paypal. A few mouse clicks and you have 2 little zips on your HD. Unpack them. Import them into Rig Manager. And the fun can begin. Brave new world.

Anyway i wanted ALL these rigs into my Toaster because i record on an old Mac Pro running OS X 10.7. Not compatible with RM. Doing so manually would cost me a week if not a month of my life. So i RTFM. And hey you can put the rigs on a USB stick, stick it into the Toaster and import all those rigs. Well almost, my Toaster maxed out at 999 rigs...

This is an amazing piece of kit. Not cheap but worth the money.

Yesterday i updated my Rig Manager and got the message that my firmware was outdated. So i updated my Toaster to OS7. Alas it wasn't possible to do that via the RM so i had to sacrifice a USB stick. So i spent 1,5 hours of my life updating and backupping a preamp. I felt like a keyboard player...

OTOH. Kemper reads this forum! I complained about having to browse through a long list of effects to go to the effect i wanted. Now there are three colums, main category, effect, and presets. Hooray!

I switched off my Kemper...by accident. I was going to tune my guitar but turned the rotary switch too far left. So the Kemper had to log out. Then switch it on again and wait for another minute or so to boot it up. I'm getting old. And having the tuner in the rotary switch may not be such a good idea...

I must admit the 700 euro Kemper ads were "fake news" to quote the president of the USA

1500 for a powered Kemper without footswitch comes closer. I have been looking at the used market for the last few weeks but they are either too expensive or it's a fake ad.

I have to learn to work this thing and i'll probably order some rig packs from Mike Britt etc.

But now it's over 30 degrees Celsius here in Holland, phew, way too hot to play my guitar!

I know, i'm critical but i have the right to be. I paid 1700 euro for a new unpowered Kemper, that's 90% pure write-off. I saw a used powered Kemper for 750 euro within a week after purchase!

I just profiled my Blackstar HT5 top and my Marshall 1922 cab with an SM57. It's so simple even I can do it. The result is a usable sound, dry, no effects, on my KRK monitors. Mind blowing. That's what sets the Kemper apart.

Quote

Dig those flip top bottles...

Hehe back then we used to use the rubber grommet in the bottle cap as a cheap strap lock. Bonamassa stole this idea and even tries to make a few bucks out of it!

Amazing cover. I'm Dutch, i used to live in Enschede where Adrian and his drummer could be seen "in the wild" regularly. Saw Vandenberg live a couple of times, and Adrian doing pub jams. Brings back memories of Grolsch beer and live music!

Hi all! I’m new to this forum. I’m an old dude who’s been playing in bands for decades, now semi-retired. I write songs nowadays which i record in my little home studio. I have a few “real” amps and an SM57 but recording the electric guitar isn’t that simple and the direct sound annoys me. So I’ve been using an Avid 11Rack preamp for the last few years straight into the interface. I bought the 11rack used for 350 euro. This review of the Kemper are first impressions compared to the 11rack.

– No USB interface. The 11rack is a complete USB audio interface.

– No MIDI/USB interface unlike the 11rack. Just program change and a few controllers.

– No microphone preamp like the 11rack has, on the front, with 48 V phantom power.

– i bought the toaster version because the rack version wasn’t available. The 11rack is more convenient. The toaster takes up valuable space on my desk. Those rotating lights around the soft knobs are cool though!

– No paper manual. Come on! A 1700 euro device! The quick start guide will get you started but you have to go through the entire manual to understand this device. I know i can download the manual, and i did, but call me old fashioned, i like reading from paper.

– I tested the powered version and noticed it got hot after a while. Don’t like that. I’m not planning to use the Kemper live so i got the unpowered version. It has a big hole in the back which will collect dust. Why didn’t they cover it up with 50 cents worth of sheet metal?

– When you buy the unpowered Kemper you cannot install the original Kemper power amp afterwards. Strange. There is a third party power amp, Camplifier, which you can install yourself easily.

– It takes longer to boot. My 11rack starts up in 15 seconds. The Kemper is like a computer, it takes 45 seconds to boot with just the factory presets inside.

– The power plug “wiggles”a bit, it’s not secure in the socket. After a bit of wiggling the Kemper crashed and i had to start it up again! Mmm you don’t want that live on stage.

+ The Kemper has many outputs which are very flexible to configure. I connected the monitor out to the effects return of my Blackstar HT5 amp into a Marshall 2X12 with Celestion G12T-75s. Cab sim off. Amp in the room sound! It rocked! Stereo out to a Roland AC-90 amp for acoustic guitar, stereo aux inputs. Cab sim on. Excellent sound! Stereo out to a mixer to my KRK studio monitors. Sounds fine to me. 2nd day opinion. Sound on the tube amp/guitar 2X12 is awesome but different from the line out to KRK’s sound. You want the sound your hear on stage to be identical to the sound the PA guy is getting in. May get myself a solid state power amp.

+ Excellent headphone amp. Plus a trick called Space to make the headphone experience more comfortable. I have a Beyer DT770 Pro with closed earbuds which can be claustrophobic.

+ The Kemper is an open platform which is still being updated. (Until V2 comes along?) My 11rack has the extra amps pack but that’s it. Dead end product. Way back in 1998 i bought a Line 6 Pod new, updated it once, that was it. Now worth zip. Axe FX have gone through I, II and now III.

+ I registered on the internet, downloaded and installed the Rig Manager and updated the Kemper from 5.5 to 6.0. On a bog standard W10 PC. Easy peasy!

+ The Rig manager downloaded some 15.000 Rigs made by the Kemper World Community, for free! I downloaded a ZIP file once with a few hundred presets for the 11rack but this is almost too much of a good thing! One click and the PC sends the Rig to my Kemper so i can hear it. I found an excellent jazz sound just by searching for “jazz” and clicking around.

– After 7 years Kemper finally presents a PC/Mac editor…

+ Excellent Noise Gate with a simple knob in front. Indispensable in the studio with single coil guitars. Another NG after stomp boxes like fuzz pedals. Also very handy.

+ The soft knobs on the front react immediately, the knobs on the 11rack have a visual delay which is annoying. Cool LED rings!

+ Good tuner. The tuner on the 11rack is somewhat “nervous”.

+ Good effects. The Leslie is very convincing. I could use a few more parameters though like startup/decay time. With the combined delay/pitch shift effects you can get wild sounds. Good compressor, indispensable for clean sounds and bass rigs.

– When i want to fill an empty slot with an effect i have to scroll through the entire long list. Why can’t you jump more directly to the type of effect you want, e.g. Chorus?

+ This device makes me play the guitar more. I’m not getting tired listening to it after an hour or so. I got listening fatigue from every regular modeling device so far.

+/- You hear the difference between a cheap guitar and a more expensive one. An Epiphone MIC with Gibson pickups compared to a Jap Tokai with SD’s. Now i have to play my expensive guitars more...

– I couldn’t get reamping working with the SP/DIF ports. Recording worked but no playback. Probably my fault.

Conclusion. IMHO this is a game changing, and life saving device for the bedroom/home studio player like me. OTOH the price makes it a pro device for people who can afford to record in a real studio. I don't see myself using this expensive device live for the kind of gigs i've done all my life. I've taken too many beer showers in pubs!