Kemper KPA vs. Axe-FX II (Yes, another one...please read!)

    I dont think thats true either. I tested this the other day. Once youre above ~4 on the gain knob, clean sense does nothing. I set a profile to 4.5 and cranked clean sense and tried to see if the tone was any different than clean sense at minimum. There was no change in tone at all. So it has no bearing on input clipping afail

    The KPA is an Amp Profiler. It never claimed to be a component-modeled guitar pedal modeler.


    I was able to dial in the Green pedal to sound like my Tube Screamer, and once convinced it could to my preferred settings, sold the pedal. I was able to do this within minutes. But... you have to use your ears. It's art, not science.


    If you conduct a knob-to-knob comparison among various versions of Tube Screamers, you'll see they don't all respond the same exact way either, so why should the Kemper's version be any different?

    Quote from db9091

    The KPA is an Amp Profiler. It never claimed to be a component-modeled guitar pedal modeler.


    I was able to dial in the Green pedal to sound like my Tube Screamer, and once convinced it could to my preferred settings, sold the pedal. I was able to do this within minutes. But... you have to use your ears. It's art, not science.


    If you conduct a knob-to-knob comparison among various versions of Tube Screamers, you'll see they don't all respond the same exact way either, so why should the Kemper's version be any different?


    as I said before, I have 2 tube screamers. One a stock TS9, the other a boutique TS9. They both have exactly the same behavior with the gain down. Anyway, i'm tired of these jousts.

    Quote from db9091

    So.. you're saying the boutique sounds identical and responds the same, knob setting for knob setting to the stock TS9?


    no, i'm saying the gain knob yields approximately the same gain at the 0 position on both pedals. I think I've said this same thing several times in this thread! And I never said that they sounded exactly the same in all positions. And I've said several times, the gain in the internal one at 0 sounds about like the gain on either of mine when they are set to 5. Hopefully, I won't have to answer this one again, lol

    Quote from Trazan

    I agree that the green scream should be able to go lower on the gain. I have no idea why it doesn't. It has been requested before 8)


    THANK YOU! I get so tired of folks disputing this. I think there are a lot of higher gain players who never think to turn the gain down and then make claims that it sounds exactly the same. It's not just the TS9 either. All the overdrive pedals have the same issue and the fuzz doesn't clean up properly when you turn the volume down because of this.


    As I mentioned before, you can put a pure gain boost in front of them and set the pure boost to negative 3 gain and that takes the problem but it unnecessarily takes up a slot. It should be fixed.

    Thinking about it...you should be able to lower the gain on the stomps (and amps) globally by decreasing the Dist Sense. Then increase the gain on the amps to compensate. I'll have to try that!


    EDIT: Or rather, if Input is not locked, adjust the Distortion Sense per profile. Oh why didn't I think of doing this before? :S

    Edited 2 times, last by Trazan ().

    Ah, I see what you're getting at then.


    You are saying that the KPA's Green pedal starts out hotter than what you are used to with your real TS9 on the pedal board, right?
    That is, a more distorted setting instead of clean, when the Drive = 0, which sounds similar to your TS9 on Drive = 5 (or 12 o'clock as I'm used calling it)


    Ok, This is because the guitar is going in too hot for the pedal in the KPA. Solutions are:
    1) Use the DISTORTION SENSE on the INPUT, turn it down, save that setting for your particular guitar or
    2) Turn down the Volume on your guitar


    This is a common issue with people who play 100% hot full-open volume out with their guitar's signal.


    Either way you can makeup for the lowered volume, but cleaner tone, with:
    1) The Volume knob (all the way to the right on the KPA)
    2) the Green pedal's makeup Volume parameter or
    3) the Master volume knob (Headphone for headphones, Master Out for Master Out, etc)


    There's more than one way to skin a cat in the Kemper. It's only broke if it can't be fixed!

    i'm using a strat with vintage 6.2k pickups so it's unlikely the input is too hot for the kemper overdrive pedals. These are among the mildest pickups you can get on a guitar. Anyway, Have a nice day. I'm outta here.

    I observed this as well, that the drive stomps are (for my purposes) high gain when the gain is on 0. I don't use drive pedals in either my valve or KPA setup so it's not an issue for me, but I can see how that would be frustrating if you want to use a TS as a shaper, for example.

    OK, KPA is here. Here are my initial impressions. All were played with my Anderson Atom, since that’s my main guitar, and a set of AKG K702 headphones:

    Aesthetics: I like it. I like the retro old-timey radio set vibe of the lunchbox version, and the rack version...while not quite as cool...mostly maintains the vibe. That said, one nit-picky complaint: the knobs feel like cheap plastic. Much has been made of having knobs rather than buttons, and I do very much like having the easy-to-use knobs. But they are made of very cheapo feeling plastic, which for some reason I was not expecting. They look like solid metal knobs, but aren’t. I have no suspicions about durability or anything, I just think using some nice knobs would have added some class to it. Small thing, and kind of dumb for sure, but it was something that struck me right away.

    Setup: No issues. Pretty easy to connect and get wired up. Startup was slow but not as slow as has been reported in the past...firmware updates must have improved that.

    UI: It’s really intuitive and easy to use. I didn’t bother reading the manual initially, and most of the basic functions were pretty easy to figure out. I did read the manual to orient myself to the more advanced features, but out of the box it’s pretty easy to use.

    Tone: This is a mixed bag out of the box. Some of the profiles are fantastic, dynamic, and sound and feel great. But most of them...not so much (again, without tweaking or adjusting). Interestingly, the best ones were gritty or crunch tones. Most of the ultra clean ones were flat sounding (sounded a bit lifeless and “dead”) and most of the super overdriven ones were very harsh and sounded like they have way too much gain...though to be fair I think most players think they need (and therefore use) more gain than they actually do (some of the best, most iconic tones ever seem more overdriven than the actually are). But I digress; one way or another most of the profiles seemed to have way too much gain on them (for my needs/tastes) to be useful for anything other than death metal, thrashcore, etc. The problem is, turning the gain down helps with the gain but then the adjusted profiles just didn’t sound very good. The best profiles are the in-between ones, with a little bit of gain, or some of the more dynamic clean ones. Also most profiles seem to be very sensitive to what pickup you’re on. Most are good on one pickup but not others; only a few are good on all pickups. At least, with the Atom.

    Effects: Honestly, I’m pretty disappointed with the effects. The two I use the most are delay and reverb, and most of the reverbs sounded...I’m not sure the best word. Phony? Not sure, but they didn’t sound great to me. The delays, too, sounded pretty...again, I’m not sure of the best word. One dimensional? Basic? Also they seemed very limited in terms of settings. In many cases this didn’t matter too much, but on some of the profiles I just couldn’t dial in a great delay tone.

    Keep in mind that this is without any tweaking, these are just my initial impressions of it right out of the box, without getting into adjusting many settings or seeing what can be done behind the scenes.

    So far, the best profile, by far, is Till’s Recto Clean. Till’s Recto Modern 3 and Raw were also great. And they were the only ones (literally) that I found that sounded good on all pickups. And, since I have a Road King, I can vouch for their accuracy. In fact, the clean is called Recto Clean, but it sounds more like the Road King’s clean channel (which is actually based on the Lonestar clean, rather than the “normal” Recto clean tone)...that’s a good thing. It sounds fantastic, truly. Here are my thoughts on a few of the other good ones:

    Bad Kitty Clean Drive - Just OK but too much gain. Turning down the gain makes it sound a bit lifeless. Still decent though.
    Liquid Leads - pretty nice. A bit too much gain, but good character.
    Saturday night - great on the neck pickup, not so good on the others.
    Soul Dano Drive - great on the bridge, meh on the neck/others
    TAF Big Twin - great neck, other pups not so much
    Wet Queen - pretty good. A bit out there, but this one’s fun to play around with, and adjusting settings doesn’t seem to kill the tone on it.
    Vab clean - pretty good clean tone.
    Vab lead - decent lead tone.

    Edited 2 times, last by mbrown3 ().

    Cool, congrats on receiving the unit :)


    I've never played much around with the knobs actually - but my very limited experience kind of mirrors yours; not all profiles sound great when turned down. Thankfully, there are tons of great profiles available for free on the rig exchange.


    Many people haven't found what they're looking for in the factory profiles, but have found many other ones they love. So my advice is to download rig manager, look up profiles that people seem to like and try those ones out. (i seem to remember morgan AC 20 being one of the popular ones, as well as marshall golub crunch. There are a couple of bogner shivas as well. But these are just a minuscule number of the available profiles).


    You can turn off all effects and "lock" the effects section while browsing through the profiles - that way you can audition the profiles without any added stomps etc etc.


    I'm sure people can help you with some verb and delay settings that work for THEM at least - maybe that will help, you never know.


    In the end, the profiler is only as good as the profiles on the unit - keep that in mind :)


    And happy (tone)hunting :)


    Btw. do you have any mics so you can try profiling your amp?

    Have fun mbrown3!
    Will you share the profiles you take from your own amps here and post A-B clips or audio clips?
    What microphone(s) will you use for profiling? Or profile amp direct only, without mic? sorry if I missed that info earlier.


    Don't forget to adjust the clean sense on the kemper to your guitar also download the full kemper user manual + additional profile packs from the kemper homepage.
    http://www.kemper-amps.com/pag…mplifier___Downloads.html
    And search this forum for all the recommended profiles.
    http://www.kemper-amps.com/for…8-Free-rigs-and-profiles/?


    Useful profiling video tutorials
    http://www.wikpa.org/Profiling_Tutorials#Videos
    List of about 300 producers and bands using kempers with videos and some profiling info and shared profiles.
    http://www.wikpa.org/Various_stuff

    Quote from mbrown3

    That said, one nit-picky complaint: the knobs feel like cheap plastic. Much has been made of having knobs rather than buttons, and I do very much like having the easy-to-use knobs. But they are made of very cheapo feeling plastic, which for some reason I was not expecting. They look like solid metal knobs, but aren’t. I have no suspicions about durability or anything, I just think using some nice knobs would have added some class to it. Small thing, and kind of dumb for sure, but it was something that struck me right away.


    Some folk have swapped the knobs out, some more visually appealing than others. One page that comes to mind is here
    http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1443016

    I'm just trying to be as truthful to my experience and personal opinion that I'm clearly presenting only as a personal opinion no more no less in an honest and truthful discussion about equipment.