If your Kemper Powered amp isn't loud enough....try this!!

    I don't know if this will help anyone, but I just wanted to share my findings. So after about a year of owning the kemper power rack i had been a bit underwhelmed. Just because of the massive amount of hype, BUT I have found a major improvement to my tone. I have stock seymour duncan pickups in my guitar and i had always ran my clean and distortion sens pretty low or even negative, but i was being blown out of the water by my other guitarists tube half stack when i was running my amp on like 9.5.... So i tried running my clean sens at around 7.5 and my distortion sens at about 5.2 and i really liked the sound. It sounds much fuller, and i'm running it at around 5 now. Hope this helps someone.

    Many users set the global noise gate in the input section far too high when locking the input section. This is why sometimes turning up the sense settings seems like a sound improvement. But in many cases it is just the noise gate that does not impact the tone anymore. I would recommend to dial in a medium gain profile and set the noise gate to the point where the noise is reduced but there is no impact on the sound. If you need more noise reduction for high gain tones, simply put an additional gate in the stomp section.

    Quote from deadpan

    For me the dist sense doesn't act like raising the gain but more like increasing the output of the pickup. Maybe there is a fine line between the two but I definite feel a difference.


    According to CK's explanation of dist sense hearing or feeling a difference between altering Gain or dist sense would be a placebo effect. ;)

    Yes i do use the boost. But like i said in my post, i had been underwhelmed mostly because of where i had the clean and distortion sens I was not nearly as loud as i SHOULD be... I do have gripes about the kemper though, guitartone, but overall minus a two issues, its great.


    For one, the complicated input senses (seriously no body completely understands what it does), and two, the one dimensional fixed signal path. Both problems could be fixed. Easily i might add...


    Auto input sens, and route-able fx chain...Boom 100% improved. (Wish they would do this for the 3.0 release. Kemper we've been patiently waiting...)


    For those that want an editable input sens, just have a checkbox available for those who want "autosens"...worst case scenario in will give beginners a rough ball park of where there input levels should be.


    And the chain...I still can't figure out why they made the chain fixed. Some of us like several delays and reverbs and some before overdrive, etc.


    Anyways, back to the subject of this thread. When i turn up the input sens its definitely boosting the pickups. I don't know if mine are on the quieter side or what, but it helped me a ton.I noticed that before the figured this out, the input would be green, and now, it is still green, but it flashes sometimes, which to me is good. Makes me think that its showing the kemper is receiving the right amount of input for proper function.

    Quote from Silvertonekid

    For one, the complicated input senses (seriously no body completely understands what it does),


    Christophe has explained the Input sense a hundred times but some guys just refuse to listen to him.


    You can turn the Clean sense up as high as you like, that's up to you.
    For me the clean sense is extremely simple.
    I plug a guitar in, I bang on the strings and adjust the Clean sense so it's not permanently clipping. maybe an occasional orange/red flash.
    I plug a different guitar in that has different pickups and do the same thing.
    I don't touch the distortion sense, I leave it at 12 because Christophe has explained that turning the Distortion sense up is the same as increasing the Gain on a Profile...turning Distortion sense up is like increasing the Gain on every Profile on your Kemper.


    You're hearing an increased volume on all your Profiles, of course you are because you've increased the Gain on all your Profiles by turning up the Distortion sense.


    If the Kemper poweramp isn't loud enough for you then you're obviously in need of volumes way beyond any pro gigging guitarists I deal with.
    Maybe you should have bought a non powered Kemper and a separate 100w tube poweramp.

    Being new to the kemper powerhead, I too tried to use input sens to balance volumes of clean vs distortion, and when boosting distortion, i did hear perceived volume increase, did a gig that way but noticed my originally great sounding distortion tones were to buzzy/tissy/muddy, like they had too much gain. That bugged me all night for 4 sets. After the gig I set everything up at home to play around and check things and I backed the input sens on distortion back to zero and my good tones came back. Thats when I realized I was just boosting the gain by doing what I did. I left input sens for distortion on zero and just went into my distortion rigs and slightly boosted the rig volume to affect the desired balance vs. the clean sounds. Sounded awesome at last gig that way.


    Good to read here that my assumptions were correct.

    Quote from Ingolf

    Good to hear you found the solution to your tone problems, @Orangecat.
    I for one find the manual about what clean and distortion sens do very clear.
    I don't even get why this needs explaining over and over again.


    Imo, the most confusing feature for new users, largely because of the way the input LEDs react to clean sense. It is supposed to be a volume levelling tool, but a lot of users mistakenly assume that it is some sort of gain/pickup control, much in the same way as DS.


    Mr CK had mentioned that they planned to make some changes to the input section in this regard and I think it would be quite welcome. If nothing else, the manual should be updated to mention that the input LED is not of consequence when using clean sense.


    That damn LED. I feel like I have to go home and adjust clean sense now. ^^

    Quote from Guitartone

    Christophe has explained the Input sense a hundred times but some guys just refuse to listen to him.


    You can turn the Clean sense up as high as you like, that's up to you.
    For me the clean sense is extremely simple.
    I plug a guitar in, I bang on the strings and adjust the Clean sense so it's not permanently clipping. maybe an occasional orange/red flash.


    Thats what i'm saying...with my guitar i would never get orange or red before. Even now turned up real high like it is, it's barely flashing green...

    Guitartone, it can't be that easy to understand if christoph has to explain it to every new user. Are you saying you didn't need clarification about what this actually did when you first bought the unit? You missed my point totally, i shouldn't have to shell out a bunch more money to get a 100watt tube power amp, when i bought the powered version of the kemper. Its more money, and it really meant for players playing live not so much recording. its rated at approximately 100 tube watts when you converts the rms wattage or whatever anyway.... You are totally misconstruing post dude, but your entitled to your opinion. So am I, and I was never saying that my way is the right way. I was just hoping it could help someone in my situation.


    Seriously though, what's wrong with having it the way it is, but have a sub menu check box for "auto input gain"?? It won't affect you if you don't want it to. But for some people, it could could be a good starting point. Also, it could level your guitars for you instead of you trying to guess if your guitars are leveled correctly.

    Distortion Sense at 12 o'clock is "Auto Input" Gain.


    Auto Input Distortion Sense was easy, CK made 12 o'clock = whatever setting your Gain knob is on.


    But how is it even possible for CK to create Auto Input 'Clean' Sense, must the Kemper guess what pickups are being used?


    Having said that, you've actually solved your perceived volume 'problem', you increased the Clean Sense to its maximum level for the guitar you're using.

    Yep, an auto-clean sens would be a contradiction, because Eng. Kemper has invented it Clean Sens just to give the user the possibility to overcome a common weakeness on digital devices.
    Refer to wikpa.org for a better understanding.


    Silvertonekid, what is the sensitivity of the cab you use with your Profiler? My 70W Ambrosi power amp and my Dragoon 2X12" shake the walls... a 600 W power amp would sound almost twice as loud with the same cab.
    It sounds like you're feeding the poweramp with too weak a signal, or like your cab's sensitivity is very low.
    It might also be a matter of cab placement, a guitar cab sounds very different if you move on- or off-axes, and if used as a backline (on the floor) most of its sonic energy gets lost.


    I don't really feel like thats auto gain. More like unity gain. Theres a difference. I was more talking about a feature that would sens and adjust to it. Like similar to the beat detector when you hold down the tap tempo button. If you held down the input, strum your string as loud as possible and then it senses how loud that is and makes the adjustment for you. Guitarists like simplicity and this seems fairly straight forward. Like I said, they already implement the technology on another part of the amp... so, why not?

    Quote from paults

    If they DO make changes to the Input Section, I would not like the Distortion Sense control to go away.


    My 80s guitars have much hotter pickups than the current retro or real vintage guitars have. Turning down the Distortion Sense is a one knob way to make all rigs sound like the sound clips people post of them.


    I agree Paults. My inputs were clipping and my sounds were muffled/distorted/oversaturated. I turned down my DS a bit and it made a world of difference in the sound of the rigs, they now sounded as I thought they should in comparision to the real life amps.


    had the DS control not been accessible, I would have not been happy with the Kemper sounds.


    I now love my Kemper.

    Drog, in order to have the input not clip, clean sens is the control to tweak. Dist sens is meant to not have a sound distort too fast when the gain increases.


    IOW, the distortion you get when CS is too high for the input signal is not the "profile" distortion, but he Kemper input's distortion, which is bad.


    :)