questions on the profiling process

Quote from okstrat

From what I'm reading and have seen on videos, the Kemper takes a snapshot of an amp with it's settings. In other words, I have a Trainwreck clone that cleans up with the volume knob on the guitar. Just because I took a snapshot of the Trainwreck with the gain cranked does not mean the Kemper is going to behave just like the Trainwreck when I roll my volume back, it's just going to give me the tone I dialled in at capture, with the ability to add more gain or EQ to it later, correct?
correct -ish, you can roll off the volume and it will clean up nicely but maybe not in the same way the amp would.

Quote from okstrat

So if say I take a snapshot of a high gain amp with the gain on 5, is it reasonable to expect the Kemper to sound like the real amp on 10 if you added more gain to the Kemper's profile it took of the amp?
same here, IMO if you add too much gain you'll end up with different sounding amp. not necessarily a bad sounding amp, but different.

I'm just trying to get a better grasp on the concept here - it would be better then to dial in a little less gain than you would normally use because you could compensate by adding more within the Kemper later?
I actually like the sound better when rolling off gain from a profile than adding to it, but that's my personal opinion. I think a little is fine in both directions, but I would rather have 2-3 profiles with different amounts of gain, and then I'd be fine with "filling in the blanks" with the gain-knob

Or, would I be better off taking snapshots of an amp at different gain levels even if they were close - say at gain 7,8 and 10 if I might use those when dialling in the real amp live?

yes,see above

Pete

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Agree on everything.
There are rumors that Kemper is exploring the possibility to add a feature that would allow to merge several profiles at different settings in to a seamless mega-profile the would even more accurately reflect the beheaviour of an amp...

Everything Pete said is correct.
The KPA actually captures the snapshot of your favorite setting on the amp. When you roll of your guitar volume, it cleans up very well (similar to the amp you profiled - maybe not 100% but similar). That's why I recommend to people to capture their amp with the tone controls set to what they feel is the sweet spot of the amp - and not a "neutral" setting. You can always shape the captured sound to whatever you like, as the KPA's tone shaping tools are very effective.

Quote from guitarnet70

Agree on everything.
There are rumors that Kemper is exploring the possibility to add a feature that would allow to merge several profiles at different settings in to a seamless mega-profile the would even more accurately reflect the beheaviour of an amp...

???? Seriously??? If Kemper could do this - I think the world would end!
That would be Uber-cool! Where d'you heard that rumor?

Quote from schneidas

???? Seriously??? If Kemper could do this - I think the world would end!
That would be Uber-cool! Where d'you heard that rumor?

IIRC Mats has discussed it with Christoph as a possible feature request and they were considering it seriously. Though I believe is gonna take some time to implement it if they decide to.

I actually like the 'the same but different' approach af the gain knob.
As already stated, you can take several profiles at different gain stages if you like.
I find that amps tend to have a few sweet spots, and a lot of not so sweet spots in between, esp in regard to preamp/power amp gain structures.
If you profile a sweet spot, turning the gain up/dpwn on the Kemper retains that sweet spot if you know what I mean.

One comment to the clean up with the guitars volume pot:

It will definetely clean up the same way the original amp does. This is part of the dynamic captured by the profile.
In the same way the strings will decay similar to the original amp.

If that was not the case, it would easily be revealed in the A/B comparison, that is performed after taking a profile.

Christoph Kemper

so there's no need to profile an amp with different gainsettings then? might as well make one profile with gain set at full (max) and reduce the kpa gain to taste? that's a good thing..

Quote from luntho

so there's no need to profile an amp with different gainsettings then? might as well make one profile with gain set at full (max) and reduce the kpa gain to taste? that's a good thing..

Not trying to big myself up at all here, but on checking the profiles I did of the lead and rhythm channels of the evh5150 I can say they are spot on the same as the amp in the way they clean up.
Gonna do all my profiles a bit dirtier from now on lol......

that's great news, makes it much easier to cover the whole range of the amp's channel

Quote from luntho

so there's no need to profile an amp with different gainsettings then? might as well make one profile with gain set at full (max) and reduce the kpa gain to taste? that's a good thing..

I don't think he meant that. He is talking about the guitar volume pot not the amp gain knob.

Quote from MadH

I don't think he meant that. He is talking about the guitar volume pot not the amp gain knob.

oops... , ..I screwed up already in the first post of the thread when I misread the Q I was answering...sorry for the confusion I may have caused

While profiling my tube amp collection I found all this:

1 ) The KPA captures the sound of my tube amps VERY good
2 ) Microphone selection, number of mic's, mic placement is very critical for a great result
3 ) A recording of the above sounds about the same as when I play the profile
4 ) It's possible to come very close to the sound of the "Amp in my room" with the right mic selection & placemant
5 ) Amp's with the tone stack after the gain stages sound still great even when I use the KPA EQ (bass, middle, treble, presence)
6 ) Amp's with the tone stack before the gain stages (e.g. Fender) needed more profiles (or an EQ block before the KPA stack)
7 ) For some amps (Marshall) will one profile (at 12:00) per channel and switch (mode, tube-selection, rectifier, ...) work fine
8 ) Other amps need profiles at various gain levels (Deluxe, Lonestar Special, ...)
9 ) Rolling down the guitar volume works great with the KPA profiles

All this is a lot of fun and leads to very great sounding results.