How To Thicken A Profile

    I'm still trying to find my holy grail of tone. There are many profiles that have great potential, but sound brittle and thin. Is there a way to ""thicken" the tone on a profile? I'm not good at tweaking. I've always been a plug and play player.


    Thank You

    I would like to note, that I do not play metal. I'm in a cover band that plays a wide variety of music (disco, pop, 80's rock and country). I am looking for a clean (disco etc..) light crunch/gain, a higher gain that is clear, but is more for rock and not metal and a creamy lead tone. Even the clean tones I found are thin. Under the advice of Sweetwater, at home I am playing through a Focal Alpha 65 reference monitor I did see another thread on this, but that person was recording. I do not have the ability to record and give samples. I know it's me and just don't know what I need to tweak.

    Is there a different monitor you would recommend other than the Focal? I have yet to play live with it (which I'm pretty frustrated about), but I did get a chance to play it through the p.a. we use. It still sounded thin and brittle (for lack of a better term). As always I appreciate everyone's help. Being a plug and play player, I will be asking many questions on here. Hopefully I don't become a pest to anyone. ha ha

    apr13st, what cab do you like to use? I tried that, but in my opinion, the stock cabs don't sound good. I downloaded the free Till cab lab, but still have to learn how to import them into my cab section.

    Check out some of the free profiles from the commercial sellers like MBritt, The Amp Factory and Sinmix for example. If you have profiles imported, you can use the "cabs" from those profiles (now you can delve deeper with studio, merged and DI profiles, but just try scrolling and hear how it sounds, lol).

    "Thicken" probably means a lot of things to a lot of people so it's hard to give you precise things to try but aside from the suggestions you've already had:


    1. Turn down the treble and presence slightly and together. I've found that these 2 tone controls are fairly interactive and their frequencies seem to mix quite a bit. Turning down just presence often requires me to remove a lot more than just a hair of presence and a hair of treble together.
    2. In the "cab" section drop the low formant control about -4 or -5 and bump up the bass just a hair as well. This is something I've been playing with recently and it really is amazing what it does.


    But the biggest thing I can see from your post so far is the listening environment. Small studio monitors don't sound like guitar cabs and don't push enough air to ever sound big and full like you think a guitar should sound. I dial up tones on my CLR and Q12 rigs at gig volume. If I listened to them on studio monitors only, I'd be underwhelmed too.


    Also, when I originally dialed in my rigs I used studio monitors (this was a couple of years ago) and I could never get the bass right. It wasn't until I started using much bigger sound to dial in tones that I was able to start getting the low end where I needed it to be.

    Could try as others suggested: reducing definition in the amp settings, adding some mids or cutting some treble/presence, and also try adding some compression in the amp settings too. This is different to a compression stomp and gives slightly different results.

    Quote from gtrgriff3


    But the biggest thing I can see from your post so far is the listening environment. Small studio monitors don't sound like guitar cabs and don't push enough air to ever sound big and full like you think a guitar should sound. I dial up tones on my CLR and Q12 rigs at gig volume. If I listened to them on studio monitors only, I'd be underwhelmed too.


    I think this is the key point here.

    Quote from jhguitar

    in my opinion, the stock cabs don't sound good.


    Sadly this is another thread where the factory cabs are discredited for not sounding good which is absolutely untrue.
    If the monitoring situation is how it should be, i.e. decent FRFR cabs amplified with enough clean headroom, many stock profiles will sound awesome especially for clean and breakup stuff.
    Other than that, for fat clean profiles I'dexperiment with a compressor in front.

    Quote from Raoul23

    For a disco clean sound there is a free Kemper profile in one of the rig packs which is for the song Get Lucky by Daft Punk featuring Nile Rodgers I use this live for a few disco type songs and it fits very well search the Rig Exchange for "Get Lucky" I'm sure it will be on there :)


    Yep, that's one of the Gundy Keller profiles. Go to the 2 or 4 position of a strat and you're there. His Gilmourish profile is very nice too.


    Sounds to me more like a guitar/pickup problem than the Kemper.


    Here it is:

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    Thank you for all of the responses. It's awesome that there are people out there like yourselves willing to help. I am going to try the suggested settings.


    Ingolf, I have heard many great things about the Kemper and definitely know it is on my end that it's not sounding good to me. Unfortunately, I don't have the knowledge to know all the little things to tweak. That's why I am relying on the experience and advice of others.


    I am going to try to sell my monitor and get one that is better suited for my needs. Can someone suggest a decent FRFR cab that I can use at home that won't send me to the poor house?