New Kemper, very impressed!

    Hey all,


    I'm from Salisbury, Wiltshire and I literally got my new Kemper Powerhead yesterday and have had no more than 2 hours with it, fitting it around kids etc. I can thank people on this forum for convincing me to take the plunge! :thumbup:


    I got the powerhead and mixed it with an Atomic Reactor passive wedge, playing with a PRS 20th anniversary standard 24 and a Les Paul Classic 60. I play in a funk band and also a rock band, in which I use mainly mid-gain settings, nothing too thrashy.


    So far I am very impressed and was actually very surprised that my favourite sounds so far are the clean amps. I've only been through the presets after updating to the latest OS and factory pack and not tried any commercial rigs. The VAB clean 2 sounds beautiful on this set up and there were a few useable metal tones. However, I couldn't really find any nice slightly overdriven sounds - they tended to sound very 'grainy' when diggin in to get breakup, quite unnatural sounding and some of the high gain tones sound quite hissy/harsh. The best are either clean or lots of gain. Remember when saying this I know I need more time with it and need to be able to experiment with settings and even guitar volume pots etc to roll back on some of the higher gain rigs to achieve different sounds. Can anyone suggest any rigs they like for a good overdriven blues tone please and feel free to suggest any others too:)


    In general, I am very impressed and know that with more tweaking, research, finding rigs and help from this community I will become even more impressed with this piece of kit!

    Welcome and enjoy your new Kemper!


    Yes, Kemper can do great clean tones as well as slightly overdriven sounds - you'll find plenty of profiles out here.

    (All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with soundside.de)


    Great Profiles --> soundside.de

    Thanks a lot both;) I gotta say the number of profiles is slightly daunting. I could play around with just one, messing with the amp parameters etc for a day or two quite easily!

    I loved the cleans for my Strat and Tele and was initially looking for a great crunch, which I found within the week no problems.


    But with an LP these days, I'm totally loving distortion a bit more, even though I tend to use cleaner sounds when recording.


    You will always find different things to love in profile-land, and the KPA abilities grow with each new OS update.


    Enjoy, man! And Welcome!

    I'm just counting the minutes till the kids are in bed and I can break out the KPA again;) Gonna spend a good couple of weeks or more with it till I even consider taking it to a rehearsal though and still too much to try out and learn before I'd be happy to do gig it! Just downloaded a couple of the free ones from Amp Factory, looking forward to trying out the Maz....

    Greetings Netheravon,
    Welcome to Kemperland! You're in Tone City. You're gonna love it.


    Super clean, spanky clean, warm clean, clean with a hair of distortion, clean with light crunch, etc are readily available. I'm mostly a Strat, Tele and Gretsch guy so clean and lightly overdriven sounds and all the in-between variants are important to me. You'll find tons of these kinds of profiles plus it's fairly easy to modify your fave sounds to "sprout a little hair".


    Just remember, if you're going to play live, to crank up your playback volume when you're tweaking.

    There is a delicious Bassman just put up on the Free Exchange, you can get it off the Rig Manager if you have a PC. These profilers get better every month and raise the bar on free user profile making quality.

    Thanks for the recommendation db9091. I'll check it out asap;) Gotta say the more profiles I check out and play with, including the OD modules, the more impressed I am. Spent a good few hours last night with a 2 Rock profile, awesome:)



    Just had a quick look, is that the TL bassman profiles?

    Quote from Netheravon

    Thanks for the recommendation db9091. I'll check it out asap;) Gotta say the more profiles I check out and play with, including the OD modules, the more impressed I am. Spent a good few hours last night with a 2 Rock profile, awesome:)



    Just had a quick look, is that the TL bassman profiles?


    The Bassman is LERNOULD.


    Also, the profiles by Deadmanstudio are really great Marshalls. As good as Pete's Profiles, who is now a commercial profiler. Although IMO his Marshall profiles are still worth it if you have Humbuckers and love Marshalls.

    Thx for the welcomes;)


    dB, do you mean Deadlightstudio for the marshalls? I found those if that's right and they sound awesome on my kit. Will check out that bassman as I really want some nice Fender cleans too.



    Think I am now starting to get my head around the Kemper a bit better. Some profiles are sounding just great: the marshall ones mentioned above, Tills Orange amps, the Morgan Ac20, a couple of 2 Rocks. But many still sound incredibly boxy and not really useable. All the Amp Factory ones from the factory bundle, and the free Redplate and Dr Z ones, and also I got a Soundside one, a ToneKing, to see if it was much better, and a couple of them are decent but most again sound like they have a blanket over them. I've played with eq, amp and cab parameters and can't get them working for me. But when I listen to their sound clips on the sites they sound great, not muffled at all. Anyone else had this experience and found a way to make it all sound clearer? I am using 2.4 FW btw.


    Oh, btw I'd better say I am seriously not saying the commercial profiles aren't good, just at the moment they aren't working for me. I'll make it clear right now, I am still learning how to get the best sounds out of the kemper. And I know people will say: 'You're just not used to a mic'd sound' etc and this may be true. :wacko:


    Over all, still very impressed and I know there are gonna be even better sounds coming out of that little box of tricks in the future!