Pure Cab, pickups and general profile thoughts?

  • Been playing around with the new Pure Cab function and had some very mixed results. To my ears it's a weird feature. On some profiles it sounds pretty good, compared to the original miced sound,
    but on most profiles I use (med to hi-gain) it sounds absolutely horrendous. In a way I cannot describe, although it reminds of a 'no cab' sound. In a very slight way of course, but it puts me off at any rate.
    Second, I have 2 main guitars (HSH DiMarzio+Duncan & SSH EMG's) and I have found the Kemper to be way to picky about what it's fed. The difference between SC and HB is way to big, compared to a genuine
    tube amp.
    But anyway...
    I mainly use commercial rigs (TAF and TJ) and at the moment I use headphones with my PowerRack. Wanted to check out TAF's Victory amp profiles, so I downloaded their free demo profiles.
    With the exepction of 1 (Silverback), they sounded so bad with the EMG's and turning on the Pure Cab made me want to cry ;( (not really ;) ). But I was not a happy Kemper. But even the Silverback profile, using the EMG hb
    it sounded great, switching to a sc it immediately turned to *#@ <X . I then tried a TAF custom shop Lil River 30 and with similar results. Pure Cab made the profiles sound different in a bad way. Fyi, I had it turned to about 4.
    I then turned to my faithful JCM800 Hot Mod (also TAF), which immediately brought back a big smile to my face. Even with PC turned on. :)
    Sorry if this post is all over the place. I sometimes find being a guitarist is frustrating in the way that an amp may sound great today and bad tomorrow. I find this especially true for profiles on the Kemper (to my ears).
    Just wondering if there are others here who have similar experiences (or otherwise) with their Kemper?

  • Just a thought-


    Are you using a midi pedal? That will currently makes some strange things according to me and others. LIke the cab part is gone when chaning rig via midi.
    In 3.0.2 all is ok.


    br

  • I don't use a midi-pedal at home, so that wouldn't be an issue. Maybe it's due more to the EMG pickups?
    One thing I noticed with Kemper is that it really reacts to the output of the pickup. The bridge EMG85 sounds ok,
    but the 2 SAV singles have a noticable drop in volume and thus the amp profile sounds different. This is something I understand, but find annoying nonetheless.
    With my old 19" Mesa rig this guitar sounded awesome, in a Lukather kind of way. Now I mostly use the other one of which the pu's are more balanced I guess.


    One thing though (and again this may very well be the EMG-syndrome), this afternoon I was cleaning up some profiles I don't use and came upon a strange issue. With some
    clean to cleanish profiles it sounds like the unprocessed signal of the pickup is bleeding though. I hear (again with headphones) the amp sound, but also a thin single coil sound that
    sounds more like I have the guitar plugged straight into a mixer. This is the first time I've noticed this. Humbucker sounds fine as far as I can tell, but the single coils don't.
    Know I should ask Kemper about this, but I wondered whether anybody else has noticed this and/or is using EMG single coils.
    One of the stock profiles I found this most noticable is Gundy- LuckyNile DP..


  • Might be of benefit to sent input presets for each guitar.