Considering Purchasing: Recommendations, Please!

    I've been poking along with my tube amp (a Peavey Delta Blues 15) and a couple of other solid-state amps. Totally not a pro -- I just like great sound. I come from a background of classic tube amps like the Fender Deluxe and old Marshall/Sun amps. I'm not a fan of littering the floor with pedals or dorking with the signal chain so I wind up forgoing a lot of sound sweetening because my go-to amp just works better when I plug directly into it (Strat and Paul).


    I've tried three PODs, the most recent of which is a HD500. I want to stress that I am trying to push this HD500 into my existing amp. Even with a spaghetti mess of wires criss-crossing the floor, I find the sound clipped and colored in strange ways.


    Now to the question: A friend is running a Kemper through a PA and getting wonderful results. My question is this: What gear would I get rid of and what gear would I need to make this both a practice/recording setup as well as a reasonable gigging setup? Power amp (cost)? Monitor speakers (cost)? Active monitor speakers?


    Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

    It depends alot on your needs.


    For recording, you definitely need an audio interface.


    You might want studio monitors if you want to make decent recordings and do a bit of mixing.
    If you're OK with practicing on headphones and have lower ambitions for your recordings, you can get by without the monitors.


    Gigging setup: if you can run the sound to the board and back to a monitor wedge on the stage, then you don't need a power amp. Most people like to have something different though. Powered version of kemper plus either a guitar cab or a passive speaker, same setup but with a separate power amp and the "unpowered" kemper. You can also get an active speaker like the yamaha DXR10, or one of the more expensive solutions.


    Really, what you NEED is something you know better than us :)


    You might also want a footcontroller to switch "patches" on the kemper. You can go cheap and get for instance the behringer fcb1010, or you could go for a more expensive midi solution. Or, of course, kemper's own remote.

    Michael has brought up some great points if you don't plan running a cab and don't need that feeling of air moving behind you then the non powered version would be ok and as long as you have some active studio monitors it will be fine for home use aswell. But.... If you wanna run a cab and plan to practise with the cab at home because you don't have studio monitors the the powered route is the way to go.

    Or you could buy a non power amp Kemper and see how you get on, If you decide to go the power amp route at a later date then you could buy a separate power amp and fit it above or below your Kemper in a rack/case.,


    Or if it's the toaster shape you could add the camplifier.

    I bought the powered toaster and got rid of all my pedals. I just use the Kemper, a volume pedal and the remote to do live stuff. Don't do much recording (no time and little kids in the house) but I will use it for that in the future. I have an apogee one that I can use as an interface when I get around to it. The kemper and a couple foot switches should be all you need to gig though.