My first holy $#!7balls moment with the KPA

  • My buddy has a Matchless Phoenix 35 combo which he uses with various OD pedals and some Strymon effects on the back end. Sounds great. Sounds even better when cranked up, but even though we run pretty loud in our church auditorium, cranking it on stage isn't desirable. He was going to go with a solution of putting his amp in a isolation box off stage but that required about $600 worth of Radial boxes and some construction. Not a big deal, but he knew I had a KPA at home and wanted to give it a shot.


    Spent literally 5 minutes before rehearsal between dialing in his amp and capturing the profile. The drummer, sound guy, my buddy, and I all heard the amp before the test run of the profile and it was glorious, but none of us were really expecting what we heard through the PA when the sound guy cranked up the KPA. He didn't even EQ the channel. It was a perfect reproduction of his amp, right down to the dynamics. He was floored, and quite frankly, I didn't expect it to go THAT well. We changed nothing after profile. No amp EQ, no amp parameters, no playing with the gain knob, nothing. It was his first time playing without a real amp and he said he didn't even miss it. Nothing tripped him up or caused him concern. What he really loved, is that he could keep his pedalboard investment intact. Now he's looking to sell one of his other amps to get a KPA. :)


    And if I'm honest, I'm sorely tempted to switch out my Axe-Fx with the KPA in this instance. I'll probably wait on that until the 5.0 firmware with updated delays and hopefully reverbs, but I might just use some Strymon gear for that and be done. I'm wrestling with this a bit because my rig works perfectly fine the way it is, but the ease of dialing in effects with over the Axe is tempting. And I have some pretty great profiles at my disposal.