After spending over a week with my helix rack while on vacation (it was my toan away from home 
), which, I got sounding pretty awesome in the headphones I must say ( no context, just guitar), I was really excited to play my kemper loud and with my band again.
And you know What?
It sounded great. Perfect? No such thing. Ever.
Perfect for the moment, you're damn right it did. 
Does it have it's own signature character? Does it sound even close to 88-96% dead on?
Don't care and it doesn't matter, it sounded f'n great. Clear ,crisp, cutting, "Fruit" punch, with a robust mellow aroma of sounds. Tone proof. You'd have to be some kind of anal retentive, self righteous, fart sniffer, to not be able to get this thing to sound beast af. (Edited for excessive language and redundancy) 
My apologies.
Anyways, I learned a few things from the Helix which brings us to a topic I've been pondering for sometime now...
Sometimes I feel like I can get a "better" (for the moment) sound when using a real dist/od pedal in front of a clean profile, >SOMETIMES<! 
Sorry for yelling.
For example, an EVH MXR 5150 III in front of , oh, idk, a clean soldano profile? Which sounds ridiculous I know. Like, hey Elvis, why don't you just use a 5150 iii profile like a normal person?
And that ladies and djents, brings us back to the helix. I found better success getting a good tone from the helix by running a preamp model into either a clean model OR the studio tube mic pre model and running a dual line6 cab, split with an IR on the other side behind it. Eq's here and there for sure but this came from what I found somewhere once...
Running digital or analog pedals, anything from delay, to reverb, overdrive and distortions in front of a clean tube amp or any pre amp to "warm" them up? In the sense of the od/dist matter, it basically becomes that cascading gain affect with extra eq options? I started to do this with the mxr 5150 and kemper before trying it with the helix fwiw. Not sure if that matters or if I made that clear.
So...
What are some of your favorite things about the kemper and why? What are some of your experimental victories? How has the kemper changed you as a player?
How much better is the kemper compared to your previous setups, as goofy as they may have been or as cheap as they may have just been what's affordable ? I.e. solid state crate amps, 1st gen multi effects and modeling units etc. Other setups?
What's your take on the pedal idea?
Also, 5.3 is in beta rite meow, who's gettin antsy for 6.0 reverbs? 
Chairs,
P.S. What does a guy gotta do around here to get a Picture of beer?!?!?
