Kemper for AXE FX II?

JapsidoOdle, as the owner of both the Axe FX 2 and the Kemper, Im pretty sure if you cant achieve a tone that makes you happy with the Kemper, theres a good chance you will have that same experience with the Axe Fx.

Well, GAS is GAS fro sure... but selling the KPA because you can't get a great tome is probably the only wrong reason you could think of

"I'm not blaming my gear": why buying some more then?

My (really serious) advice, although against the tide, is: do sell your Profiler, and buy An Axe-Fx. You need experience in order to be able to evaluate things properly.

HTH

You're mixing up two different things:

1) Playing guitar on an amp or a digital device like KPA/Axe-FX

2) Getting a great guitar-tone in a mix

You can have the best guitar-tone in the world (playing alone), but often it won't work in the mix. Recording and mixing is a very different story, try to improve your knowledge there and your guitar-tone in the mix will improve. In your soundcloud-clip there are a lot of problems with no relation to your guitar-tone: drums are much too compressed and they sound very "tiny and narrow", bass is not existing. In a good mix you can hear every instrument clearly and it needs its space. You have to know how to handle the frequencies of each instrument, otherwise the frequencies will disturb and "kill" each other.

Buying an Axe-FX won't solve these problems, the KPA is an awesome device for recording and session-work.

I had this very offer earlier this year and passed on it.
I have both now, but if I had to get rid of one, it would be the AXE by the slimmest of margins. Love them both

I've provided our young German friend with a new mix of his song - he can share it with you if he wants to.

I hope he stays with the Kemper - I use it for all of my clients in all genres of music ... and they spend lots of money with me!

Rock on.

Amazing! It would be very interesting if he shared both the mixes, to see what can be done in post-production and to what extent

Quote from jamesnorth

I've provided our young German friend with a new mix of his song - he can share it with you if he wants to.

I hope he stays with the Kemper - I use it for all of my clients in all genres of music ... and they spend lots of money with me!

Rock on.

I would be really curious to hear both mixes and compare. I do a little mixing, but I objectively suck

The grass is always greener on the other side. Stick with the Kemper, because it is definitely the better product.

Plus, it seems clear that any tone that can be created on the Axe can be copped, minus the effects. Maybe you could ask one of the dual users on this forum to create a couple of profiles of the kinds of tones you like and run those through your Kemper.

Quote from nightlight

The grass is always greener on the other side. Stick with the Kemper, because it is definitely the better product.

Just wanted to say it all along

Yes some of the stems weren't the right length.

Send me them again if you like - it'll be easy enough to replace them (I think one of the overdub guitars was longer as well?)

It has more power and energy generally without sucking the life out of the drums/guitars.

And yes - track those super heavy guitars with absolutely no compression! Plenty coming from the distortion

Japsido check for the name Justin on the rigexchange
I did a few Misha axe-fx profiles, some nolly ones and an official born of Osiris profile
Maybe these can help

Much better mix, but I'm still missing some bass...

Too much compression can kill everything, its much better to sort the frequencies out. Very often you have to cut the low end of the guitars, otherwise they will be competing with bass and kick.

P.S.: You can get profiles of the Axe-FX II on Armin's website (#02).

Hey,

It would sound much better if you would edit the guitars a bit to compensate for uneven tracking between left and right track (I assume you double tracked this). It's a bit of "cheating", it will help your mix and in long term your playing, because your ears will get used to the sound and feel of nicely tracked guitars - then you will be able to track almost perfectly. You mentioned Misha's video, most of his sound in this video comes from perfect tracking and very well placed accents.

CreativeWorks has a good introductory series about recording guitars, it's called "Recording Guitars WIth Andrew Wade", google it - you will learn a lot of useful things from it.

Quote from guenterhaas

Much better mix, but I'm still missing some bass...

Too much compression can kill everything, its much better to sort the frequencies out. Very often you have to cut the low end of the guitars, otherwise they will be competing with bass and kick.

P.S.: You can get profiles of the Axe-FX II on Armin's website (#02).

Yes, the bass stem was actually out of time so once that's in sync, I think the power that it hits at the same time as the guitars will thicken that bottom end up. Guitars have a good LF cut on them too (pretty much every mix needs this).

Bass is not a bass - it's a virtual bass so dynamics aren't super awesome as well.

But - if we can get those stems in line, I think that mix will sort it self out.

Definitely lacking some accuracy in the playing and also could probably do with a bit more attitude and accents in the right place as mdeeRocks says.

Then the mix mixes itself!

Minor comment from me...I don't own a Kemper yet and only done some minor recording BUT, double tracking the guitars only sound bigger if properly tracked. Otherwise you muddy the sound. Also I would use differnet sounds ( if you haven't already) for each track.

In many cases you can get a massive sound from a single guitar track becuase you can get it tighter is my view...although I'm no expert!!!!