Driven tones sound muddy with less crunch

Hello Shane,
congrats having a Kemper. It took some time before I pulled the trigger.

So: How do you listen to your Kemper? Studio Monitors? Headphone? Guitar Cab? PA?

Regards

Tom

Try a crunch rig that has too much gain, and turn the guitar's volume knob down to get the amount of crunch you want. As you've already noticed, the guitar sound in the recording is played twice, and panned hard left and right.

Welcome!

Maybe my interpretation is wrong here, but it seems like you have the idea that a profile is "the totality" of an amp; like say a full amp model, like you'd see in amplitube or whatever similar plugin/modeler you may have experience with.

This is not the case for Kemper Profiles A profile is made using a certain amp, at certain settings of the dials, with a certain cabinet, with a certain mic (or mics), in certain position(s) on the cab. All these things are captured in the profile. This means that while you can change settings on the KPA and get different results, those different results are all based on the original signal chain. Arguably, the biggest constant here is the cab and the micing of that cab. Any profile is a results of all these choices made during the profiling process (identical to the way it is when you record guitar in a studio). Thus, they are also ultimately the result of the taste and vision of the person doing the profile.

In short: If a profile doesn't work for you - try another one

I will add a bit to what others have said.

Try different rigs of the JCM800, as the clean will not sound as good if you are increasing the gain. I find it better to reduce gain on a over saturated amp profile than to increase gain and get a good sound. Also maybe try a different cab with the rig, as sometimes it's that simple.
If you find that the amps just do not have enough distortion with your single coil guitar, you can increase the distortion sense to get the gain you expect. The Kemper does act differently with single coils and humbuckers as you would expect. You can also add a boost in one of the effect slots A-D to get what you are after.

Agreed with the above post - removing gain from a rig is likely to give you results more like the original amplifier than adding gain.

Turning the gain down will mimic how the profiled channel of the original amp reacts with less gain.

Kemper's Rig Manager software makes it very easy to quickly audition sounds - you can search or sort by manufacturer or amp model (or any of the other indexed tags). Then, double click on a rig, and it is loaded into your KPA's edit buffer. You can save it if you want to, or select a different rig.

Quote from ShaneS

So so with that being said how do you go about searching for a certain sound if you know the particular amp model?

Sort by gain.

Quote from ShaneS

Profile - ST-JCM800 Clean+ (The clean was worse)
Gain 5 - 6
Bass -1
Middle -2
Treble +5
presence +0
Volume Middle

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Once you find more "gainy" profiles that you like, you might not want to drop the mids this way unless you're going for a "scooped" metal sound. In your case, with your Strat, you might find that dropping the mids tends to produce harsher, more-crunchy and grainy tones, whereas if it's vintage warmth you want, I'd probably leave the mids alone or boost them slightly.

Quote from drog

I find it better to reduce gain on a over saturated amp profile than to increase gain and get a good sound.

This! I was going to say it too.

Quote from ShaneS

how do you go about searching for a certain sound if you know the particular amp model?

The profiler doesn't model the behaviour of the controls on an amp, but most people who make profiles will produce a set of profiles that combined give a decent representation of the amps characteristics. What I do when I search for a tone is to look for a profile with about the amount of gain I need, if possible a profile made for a guitar with similar characteristics to the one I plan to use (same type of pickups), and then adjust gain, eq and presence to taste. The more I have to tweak knobs, the more likely I am to go back to searching for a profile that is a better match to my needs. Most of the time I end up using profiles where I keep the tone-controls close to their neutral (12 o'clock) position.

Quote from ShaneS

Hi Guys...Brand new Kemper owner here and I have spent all weekend just exploring the rig. So far very impressed and can really lock in some clean tones. Where I am struggling is the driven crunch tones. I am brand new to amps as I have mainly been acoustic for years so this is like learning two things at once so I apologise in advance for any dumb questions.

Right now I am trying to get the crunch similar to Tom Morello in Killing in the Name of. I figured this is a great way to learn the kemper / amps as his sound (at the opening of the song) is just his JCM 800 and his Tele. I have the JCM800 from TAF and I have a Fender strat on neck pickup. I have spent hours trying to dial in a sound thats close but all of my "crunch" or overdriven sounds distant/muddy. At this point I am probably over correcting with adjustments but I think the closest I have come is the following:

Profile - ST-JCM800 Clean+ (The clean was worse)
Gain 5 - 6
Bass -1
Middle -2
Treble +5
presence +0
Volume Middle

There is no space set, nor any reverb or any additional stomps / mods. I am open to any suggestions like I said just trying to use this song / sound to learn the rig. I also tried a similar practice on Nirvana in bloom with a different profile and got a similar muddy response. I can't really seem to dial in that crunchy sound.

Shane

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Try to dial in more mids and hit your strings hard.

I'd pick up some small studio monitors, I've never been happy with any tones I've tweaked using headphones. Also check out the Space parameter. Enjoy your Kemper!

Hey Shane
I love mid crunch guitar tones and the Kemper can give you an infinite variety of them. I have a few tips you may or may not find useful.

First and foremost: hook yourself and your Kemper up to Rig Manager and the Rig Exchange. Thousands of sounds are there for you and all for FREE!!!! Find yourself a few profiles that are close to what you want.

2) Add a little compression. Especially if you're going for the clean-ish side of crunch
3) Really work with the Clean/Distortion Sense controls (Input section) and your guitar's pickups. See "About" below.
4) Spend some time playing in the Stack/Amp block especially with Definition, Power sag, Clarity, etc.
5) Record your results, tweak, re-record, re-tweak, lather, rinse, repeat ...

Be aware there are several ways to add the same effect but get a different result. Example: compression. You can insert it in the front end A to D slots -OR- the amp section -OR both.

#3 About Clean/Distortion Sense. This is a little controversial (here come the flames) and therefore it's strictly my personal opinion:

It's my experience that playing with these values can control/optimize where the onset of distortion occurs with your picking. Touch sensitivity is a good thing if you're dialed into controlling the amount of distortion with your fingers. A lot of players love this interactive kind of feel.

So here's where it gets hairy: Many, many, many people will tell you to leave your Sense controls at ZERO. I have a lot of different guitars so I use this exact same approach myself. But in the beginning, when I was using just my Strat, I found that playing with the Sense adjustments worked really well. Helped create a sweet spot between the KPA, the guitar and me. Just saying. If it feels good and sounds good ...then it is good. That's all that matters.

Best of luck on your tone quest!

That's great Shane.

Keep at it mate; things will continue to improve.

@ShaneS

Agree with previous comments...

Why do you have the Mids so low? IMHO, you definitely want to boost the mids. That will get your amp to sing, and really open up the tone. This is particularly the case if you are playing single-note lead lines. Scooping the mids, which is a practice I never understood, is equivalent to putting a wet blanket over you amp/cabinet.

Cheers,
John

I second Michael_dk suggestion and I would try different profiles. The combination of guitar type, pickups and amp isn't always guaranteed to be as you would expect (wouldn't be nice if combinations of guitars/amp were always predictable).

If you have rig manager installed on your computer, within seconds you can audition all the JCM800 profiles in the rig exchange. Simply type 800 in the search (inside rig manger) and start going through the profiles by hitting the down arrow on your computer keyboard, When you hear something that's close to what you want, I doubt you would have to compensate that much with EQ. I like TAF profiles but I believe they are usually warmer/darker which is great for many applications but not others.