Playing My New Kemper.....My First Impressions

    First off, thanks to all the people who gave me great advice from the last thread I posted prior to making my Kemper purchase. It really helped me!


    I received my new powered head Kemper on Friday and as promised in my last thread, I already shot a couple of introduction videos that will end up on my Youtube channel soon in a Kemper Playlist. I want to create a video series that helps the beginner learn the Kemper as I am learning it sort of real time if that makes sense? Anyway, look for it soon on my YT channel and feel free to subscribe



    https://www.youtube.com/user/VisionRecordingCt


    Anyway, after updating the firmware to the latest version and downloading Rig Manager I was all set to try out some tones. I simply plugged in the main output into my powered studio monitors which are Focal Solo powered monitors with a 5.5" speaker. I must say that I was really amazed on how good a lot of the stock profiles sounded with little to no tweaking. I realize that the guitar, the speaks etc. have an effect on how the profile will ultimately sound as the profiles were created with a specific guitar, pickups etc. For my initial test I was using my Gibson Les Paul with standard pickups.


    After scrolling through a bunch of profiles I decided to go out and purchase a few profiles from Michael Britt and Top Jimi as I have listened to their profiles online and they sounded amazing. I purchased the Dumble pack from Michal Britt and the Marshall pack from Top Jimi. I will say that those profiles sounded absolutely amazing! I could not believe that I was getting this kind of amazing tone coming out of my monitors with a 5.5" driver. The profiles needed almost no tweaking to get them to my taste. The only thing was there seemed to be too much reverb for my liking but just a simple twist of the mix knob on the river control on the Kemper and it sounded just right.


    Now a lot of people especially on YT are always interested in hearing if the profile sounds "exact" to the real amp and I totally get that as that's the entire point of the Kemper right? For me however, I have no idea if the Dumble pack I purchased sounds just like a real Dumble as I have never played one and have have no way to tell. To me that really does no matter as all I know is that Dumble pack from Michael Britt sounded great to me. It certainly did not sound like a typical "modeler" like I have used in the past. It sounded like a real tube amp mic up in my studio. Very impressive.


    Next step is to plug the Kemper into a guitar cab and check out the merged profiles and see what kind of tone I can get. Thus far I am really impressed with the Kemper. I backed up all my profiles on my HD and Im thinking about purging a lot of the ones as I don't need 435 profiles thats for sure. Most I will never use. I'll probably only end up with 10 profiles that will cover all my needs.


    Stay tuned for more Kemper updates!

    Quote from davidvignola

    I'll probably only end up with 10 profiles that will cover all my needs.


    Welcome and enjoy. :)
    You are right that 10 Profile would be enough.
    But opportunity makes thieves. It is rather difficult to resist the temptation when so many interesting sounds exist. ;)

    Quote from davidvignola


    Now a lot of people especially on YT are always interested in hearing if the profile sounds "exact" to the real amp and I totally get that as that's the entire point of the Kemper right? For me however, I have no idea if the Dumble pack I purchased sounds just like a real Dumble as I have never played one and have have no way to tell. To me that really does no matter as all I know is that Dumble pack from Michael Britt sounded great to me. It certainly did not sound like a typical "modeler" like I have used in the past. It sounded like a real tube amp mic up in my studio. Very impressive.


    For me the Dumble ODS 100 sounds where a little "colorless" and "characterless". But I used them as base to create and change them to sounds I found under YT of the Dumble ODS 100. Since them I'm absolute satisfied with these rigs.
    And I think that is the sense of a Profiler / Modeller like Kemper.
    Welcome!

    Quote from davidvignola

    I'll probably only end up with 10 profiles that will cover all my needs.


    Ha! Famous last words, David!


    Mate, P.A.S. (Profile Acquisition Syndrome) is insidious. All it takes is a little nip, and before you know it the sips have become mouthfuls, which in turn become bottles, and before you know it you've built a cellar under your house containing the most respected vintages on the planet.


    Just wait. You'll see... or maybe not. Some of us, few as they may be, have managed to achieve the lofty goal of running a dozen or less profiles, but judging by what I've seen on the forum, it's a rare individual who's the strength to see this through.


    Mind you, the forum may not be a valid indicator of the ratio of success to failure in this area because those who've managed to reduce their Profile numbers so drastically are more likely to be playing than futzing around on the forum, lapping up every new, shiny, free offering from fellow members and gulping down Guido's coffees every few weeks. :D


    Good luck with that, brother; you may well need it!

    Yes, I know what you all mean. It's so easy to get bogged down with having every new profile that comes around. I can see why its fun to play around with them and just enjoy fiddling around with different tones. For my however, I have always been a sort of 1 amp tone guy (Marshall / Friedman) tones. But I always wanted to have a couple of different options like a nice clean fender and maybe an AC30 but honestly thats really it. So I am going to try my hardest to keep myself at a 10 profile limit which is 9 more amps than I would ever want to have to purchase and this is still gets me way ahead of where I have been. Then its playing the guitar and not putzing with tones all day is what I really want to do.


    Let's see if i can actually stick to that....LOL

    Well, you've got the right attitude to achieve it from the outset, so I'm betting in your favour at this stage, David.


    Just remember to try to resist those nips, which become sips, and then... bang! You're gone, buddy! :D


    Interestingly to me, you've the same taste as my brother. If he ever gets around to ditching his JVM 410H (work motivation's holding him up), I'm certain he'll stick to a few Marshall profiles along with his other favourite brand - Friedman. Between the two of you you'll probably run no more than 15 to 20 I reckon.


    Again, good luck with it. Make sure you're wearing your fireproof underwear when you visit the forum and secure those blinkers really, really tightly and you just might be able to pull it off, mate. :D

    Yes of course - sometime to much could be a bad thing.
    I'm using only five performances for live / on stage. Thats for me enough.
    But over one year of "kempering" I still love to explore profiles of amps I never heard before.

    I'm coming up on a year and right now I have four 'base' profiles in four performances ranging from no gain - high gain with each performance slot based on the same effects/stomp presets across all four. (i.e. 1) chorus 2) flange 3) phase 4) auto-wah )But with morphing, I can envision having a different performance set up for different groups of songs, or even for individual songs. I'm trying to keep it simple but there is a lot of potential for exploration that means delving into the full feature set requires an organizational approach that for me, keeps changing as I learn more about the Kemper and both existing and new features.

    :D
    Funny... receiving dead fish, indicating someone "sleeps with the fishes", is a custom introduced by the Calabrian mafia... and I am from the region Calabria.


    Mhhh... I believe I should contact Don and make him an offer about his new toy he won't be able to refuse...