Hi all
Pretty new to kemper, I've owned it for 2 weeks now, nice unit all in all.
However, today I did my first rehearsal with it. The Blue Amps 212 FR-A I bought with it is a pretty big dissappointment volume-wise. Just couldn't get through the mix. We play metal, 2 guitars, bass, drummer, nothing too crazy, and I never even came close to the volume the other guitar player had. He's running a pod xt live into a marshall poweramp, and I got completely drowned out. Then tried to go to the pa with the main out xlr. Another problem: it clipped immediately, tried to put that volume down to -30db, still shit. It distorted immediately, clipped as hell, unusable.
I'm selling my current amp (engl invader) to use the kemper as my main amp from now on, and was hoping to be able to go full frfr. At home, at "normal" volumes, it all sounds great and all of that, but at rehearsals, I think I'll have to go with a poweramp. Been thinking about a Matrix GT1600fx for that. Any experiences with that unit, anyone? At gigs with a decent PA system, the route to go to the FOH will still be my prefered option of course, since I want to benefit fully from the KPA. For own monitoring though, the frfr solution that I have doesn't seem to be hacking it, so a poweramp behind it looks to be the best option right now. I tried to run the kemper through the Marshall poweramp the other guitar player had and disabled the cab for that. Immediately sounded nice. Not great, but still pretty good. I'm still trying to find the time to get the most out of the KPA, didn't have that much time lately because of a busy work schedule, but I'll definitly make more time before we go on tour in Feb. By then, I'd like to have the entire rig figured out.
So, in short, after a rehearsal I can say the Blue Amps 212 FR-A doesn't cut it volume-wise, unless (I hope so) I'm doing something way wrong. It's a nice cab, at home it shines, but in a live-setting, I doubt the useability. Any tips?
Grts
Tom