High gain troubles - PLEASE HELP!!!!!

    Hi guys, i'm new to the forum and new to kemper. Firstly, i love it. amazing tone, great feel and built solid!


    My problem is my high gain profiles (the ones i make) sound awful. For some reason the reference sounds awesome then after profiling and even after refining i get a tone reminiscent of the first POD! Totally unusable flabby, muddy, overly distorted and quite fizzy sounding. Like when a cheap modeller just adds fuzz instead of gain. think gain on 10....on the neck pickup...on a bass....under water....


    Now, i know its sh*t in - sh*t out, but the reference tone sounds great. I'm used to micing cabs all the time and I've also made several crunch tones where i couldn't even tell which was the amp and which was the profile! But for some reason, as soon as i crank the gain for a more "metal" tone, the profile comes out sounding like crap.


    Its driving me insane after watching videos of other guys take 2 minutes to create a great profile og a higher gain tone than i'm trying. Ive tried 6 different amps, 3 cabs, 2 mics and even a palmer pdi-03. Ive also tried the mic out of the kemper, and out of a mic pre.


    So is there some setting i should be using or a level i should be checking? The input level seems OK but i spoke to the guy in the shop and he said a customer with the same problem found he was using line level instead?? Or even just some general tips that you guys have for creating awesome high gain tone.


    Im sure its something stupidly obvious that I've overlooked but i'm pulling my hair out over this :cursing: Any help you guys can give would be great.


    Thanks,


    James

    Hi James.


    Firstly, How are you monitoring the real amp? - I trust you are in a different room, and your not hearing the "Awesome sound of the room+amp" and then comparing with a miced version?


    If its in the "live" room and your monitoring via the MIC into studio monitors, then what is the chain involved?


    Gain staging might be the only rule of thumb here.. make sure your Recording level is close to 0DB as possible. (middle) -turn down your mic pre's to compensate, and if your input is TRS then be aware of the difference that makes over XLR inputs.


    When you Profile, or should I say it _has_ profiled, before you refine, does it sound similar to the amp at this stage? or is this simply after you have refined?


    And lastly, what FW are you running.


    Ok lets start with the basics and take it from there.


    Best
    A

    Hi, thanks for the quick reply!


    Yes i'm in a different room. Im monitoring through NS10's. The signal chain is: guitar > KPA > amp > cab > mic > pre > KPA. Im routing it through my DAW to go back into the KPA so that i can use my pre with it. For the sake of trial and error i also tried doing the profile in the same room (with drummer headphones to hear the mic, not the room) and using the mic pre inside the KPA. so it was just the KPA and amp. In both instances i'm using a single 57 and running XLR connections.


    I dont see anything clipping in either the input or output of the KPA and im keeping the return level at 0db and using the pre and amp volume for volume matching. No where near driving the power amp either.


    Once i profile it sounds rubbish. After refining theres very little change. Its exactly the same process i've used to get a collection of fantastic lower gain crunch and clean profiles. only when i do those, it sounds pretty good after profiling, then spot on after refining.


    I have also once or twice had a system message telling me i have a noise gate on, but there are no FX of any kind in my signal chain and the profile has no gate or stomps etc on.


    The firmware is 2.2.1. I have been talking to kemper regarding the problem and they arent sure what it is, when i asked if i should update to the BETA they told me not to because they have just discovered a bug in it.


    Thanks again for any help you can offer. Im sure i'm missing something stupidly obvious. Ive always been more of a simple Mic and cab guy rather than any digital amp stuff.


    James

    Quote from DonPetersen

    very good advice from andy.


    another thing I want you to try is to connect a short patch cable from send to return and profile this.
    the result should be a neutral, DI profile, obviously.

    Hi, thanks. I tried this earlier after being advised to do so by the kemper guys (fantastic customer service by the way!). The signal was totally clean and neutral sounding.

    Quote from DonPetersen

    one more thing I can think of:


    make sure that no stomps are active, although that wouldn't affect the profiling prcess as you describe, but still...

    Nope, no stomps active. Ive even gone as far as to make the profile totally blank, no stomps, not even an amp. I really have no idea what could be causing this. The only way i could describe it is if i were massively overloading the pre so the mic was just getting a facefull of dirt.

    Silly suggestion, look on the back of the Kemper, at the Earth switches. - the In/Out should not be the same, so 1 pushed in and the other not. (not sure if Im making sence here), not suggesting this is the cause, just trying to problem solve.


    Second, is the amp you have modded per chance (especially with bright caps?) - and does it have a Hi, lo Inputs?


    Lets start simple again..


    Connect just the 57 to the KPA, dont run through the DAW.


    You can do this next to the amp for this test as we are not looking for accuracy just yet.


    The way you mic the amp, hopefully is close enough, and your not trying to "room" mic it as this doesn't work with the profiler.


    Do a single profile of the amp on clean, then on crunch and confirm them that there OK.


    Then fire up the gain some more until it gets to the point where it fails.


    When it does save this rig, then go back to browser mode. and low the definition to zero.. and play.
    then raise the definition until you hear the amp as it should sound.


    This is not ideal, and is simply for testing.


    Let us know how you get on.


    A

    Thank you all for all your replys.
    Ok, no I have the ground lifts different. So that's not an issue, the amps aren't modded, but some of the ones have tried do have a high and low gain input. Also, most either have a boost function or the ability to add another gain stage (think peavey rockmaster pre with the gain pull switch or engl 530 pre with the high/low gain button) I had wondered if this was hard to profile like a rig with a TS in, but leaving the boosts off and just cranking the gain still gets me the same results.
    The mic is very close because I didn't want any kind of reflections adding to the problems. Clean and crunch tones with the same amps work a treat, but I'll try you idea later today of doing lots of profiles slowly increasing the gain and let you know how I get on.
    No, I pulled the noise gate know down to zero just incase. To be fair I haven't had that message in a while.

    Well Im not sure what amp you are profiling, I guess we should know that info as we can research it and find a solution.
    Some high gain amps have a switch on the rear for Noise-gate operation. - and some have a noise gate that you cant disable. this is why your getting the error message.
    by profiling in increments as I advised will be beneficial as it will let you find its peak point before the noise-gate kicks in and wrecks the profile.


    you can then cheat, (assuming all is good with the profile) if you profile it with say 50% gain. but you want 70%.. get a good profile that your capable of getting then use the gain on the kemper to fill in the holes. - not ideal, but its better than not having a profile at all..


    Everynow and then you get some complications, but most things are workable, Ive even had to take out 2 tubes a few times, so I can run amp at max, but not exceed what the kemper can do...


    I wish you good luck!


    No problem, Im trying to profile (mainly) a peavey rockmaster preamp. Its more or less the preamp that the 5150 was built on as far as i'm aware. It has a high and low gain input, its a 3 channel amp with pull pull gain controls on the crunch and ultra channels, this activates another gain stage and has a tighter, chunkier tonality. Im running this through the FX return of a Marshall jcm2000 DSL 50watt head into the cab. Ive also had the same problem profiling an ENGL e530 preamp in the same way. This amp only has one input and it a 2 channel (clean and lead) but has a hi/low gain switch which makes it more like a 4 channel amp. Lastly i've had the same problem profiling the ultra channel of my peavey ultra plus 120 watt head. This is very similar to the peavey pre in that its 3 channel, hi and low gain input and although it doesnt have a push pull on the gain, it doesnt have a boost button which does the sae sort of thing. Theyre both from the same era, mid 80's i think so its basically the head version of the rockmaster pre. non of these amps have any kind of gate, hidden or otherwise. The only thing that may work like one is the resonance control on the ultra plus, although its more of a speaker dampening control than a gate.


    Ive successfully gotten clean and crunch profiles of all these amps, as well as a fairly high gain profile of a blackstar ht5, the marshall JCM2000, a laney ironheart and a Jet city 333 20 watt. Although i'd still not put these high gain profiles in "metal territory" Now, just to be clear my idea of a good high gain tone is not cranking up the gain to 10, more often than not i dont like the gain above 5 or 6 on a high gain amp, (sometimes lower) but ill crank the gain to around 7 or 8 something like the ht5 that doesn't have huge amounts of gain on tap.


    Ill try the upping the gain idea as soon as i have some free time, but ideally i'd rather not profile a lower gain tone because the natural gain of the amp is nice and chunky. But i understand the workaround, thanks!


    The kemper guys did say that very rarely the "architecture" of an amp is not compatible with the profiling process. Is it possible that these 3 amps happen to be some of these rare amps? one of them i could understand, but surely not all 3?


    Again, thanks for everyones input, if anyone else has any ideas that would be great.


    It might help me if someone who has successfully done a profile of a good heavy tone that was easy and problem free, could just put a quick step by step of how they made the profile. Just an idiot guide for me to check against.


    Thanks guys!

    Quote from sessiondrummerjames


    peavey rockmaster preamp


    ENGL e530 preamp


    peavey ultra plus 120 watt head



    the Peavey Rockmaster preamp has been discussed before, beause it didn't play nice ;)
    I think it has a hard-wired noisegate that affects the profiling process. (the Peavey Ultra Plus is most likely very similar/the same)


    Peavey Rockmaster


    Johnson Du and Jevo successfully made profiles of the e530 (RigExchange) maybe they can chime in


    now we're getting somewhere :)

    Thanks for that! Ive looked around on the net and as far as i can tell the noise gate for the rockmaster is a mod. However, i did get it used a few years back so guess theres no reason why mine couldnt have had it done as well. But that would explain allot, just not why my engl profiles arent working! Im going to try a HnK coreblade later to see how that does.


    On a side note, And44, your profiles are INSANELY good! just listening to samples on amp factory, i can see myself spending allot of money there haha.

    OK guys, quick update....


    Thanks for all your help, it seems to main problem was the peaveys. Obviously they share the same internal noise gate, which is why i was able to capture crunch tones but not high gain ones. Ive tried loads of my amps since and its all been very successful. Some of the real high gain tones still need some tweaking, but thats all there is to it. And lets be honest, the KPA costs around half the price of some of these heads, so the fact it can get the tone in the first place is impressive enough.


    Ive put a couple of ENGL E530 preamp and JMP-1 Preamp profiles on the rig exchange is you wanna see how its going now. Oddly enough, i've found that the KPA is totally capable of capturing the tube screamer as long as its running as a clean boost (gain at 0) regardless of the comments in the manual saying otherwise.


    Ill be putting up some profiles of some HnK amps soon because I'm seeing a shortage of the on the rig exchange.


    Thanks again for all the help,


    James


    good to hear! :)


    looking forward to try the profiles you made!