Curious ..... Anyone using Cab " ON " with their Real Guitar Cab ?

benifin · Apr 9th 2015

This is a bit weird.

I use a real 2 x 12 Celestion Cab and my sounds are now all modern pop / rock guitar style 3.0 Merged Direct Rigs - I have 2 identical banks - one with Cab OFF for live use and one with Cab ON for home headphone use - both bank - other than the Cab setting are identical.

The other day I did a live band gig and realized at the end of the night that I had "accidently" been using my Cab ON banks instead of my Cab OFF banks.

Weird thing is that it still sounded good - great actually - different - but great - in fact until I noticed the "mistake" I was rocking away as normal

It got me thinking .... my understating is that rule no.1 with the Kemper is " only one Cab at a time " ie:- running Cab ON in to a real cab should sound worse - much worse because .... cab-in-to-cab = no good

So ....... do others use Cab ON with their Real guitar cabs ? -or- do you always turn Cab OFF when using a Real guitar cab ?

Ben

coolfix · Apr 9th 2015

Well it deeply depends on the profile itself and on the "part/print" of the cab in it.
I use a real cab and I have mostly been disappointed using cab on so I always remove it.

Another tricky one, and I'd be interested knowing if I'm the only one noticing that or if it is a common known thing:
1- At the beginning I did use the "Lock" feature to set cab off into all the profiles I use, the profile A was loaded when I locked the cab off.
2- I noticed that the profile B sounded different this way that when I remove the Lock and load the same profile and set cab off.
My understanding is that when I lock the cab off, the Kemper is actually keeping the part/print of the cab in the current profile (profile A in my example) and then remove this same "part/print" to all my other profile (profile B in my example).

Did anyone noticed the same thing?

Quitty · Apr 9th 2015

I think cab off is originally meant for cases where you're running through a guitar PA and cab - IE, through the effects return, for example. Still doesn't always apply.

I used to play through a Marshall 30th anniversary 6100 head and 'lead 900' cab, through a compensated input on the back meant for general purpose sounds - cab on. Sounded amazing.
I now play through a dual rectifier head and a Framus cab through the effects return - still, cab on. Sounds meh, but definitely better than cab on due to Mesa's fairly flat poweramp.

It depends. There are no rules. Cab off sounds fizzy and 'direct-like' in both cases.

And yes, IIRC cab-driver (the part responsible for 'cab off' in the Profiler) accounts for the original profiled cab as well. Locking it off locks the cab-driver parameters.

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