New Kemper power rack user.

    Hi group. New Kemper user here. I have had the power rack and foot controller for about a month now. I was able to get some great tones right away but it has taken most of this month to really learn the thing. Thanks to all of your posts that have been really helpfull!
    I have used it a several rehearsals and one live gig. We have a 4hr gig tonight and I'll be using the Kemper! 8)
    This forum is a great resource :thumbup:
    Airlock

    So the gig was great, we had an at capacity crowd of 350 and about another 75 waiting outside for over an hour to get in.
    They interrupted us late in the first set to let the crowd know if they had friends outside it might be a while for them to get in.
    The bar ran out of beer and had to make an emergency run to get more. lol
    Needless to say they set a record that night :)


    The kemper was a bit mixed some really great tones but the perceived volume on the slots varied way too much.
    The hand full of custom rigs i made for specific songs sounded great but, now i think i may try leveling against pink noise rather than setting volume with a db meter in daw software.
    The other problem was my idea was to have Rig 1 be 5 goto sounds for most of the night and about 5 more rigs for specific songs.
    The problem was the 5 slots ranged from dumble clean to to a marshall with a timmy pedal dirty and the cleans were way to quiet. I could not just reach over and up the rig volume since the affect all 5 slots not just the active slot....
    Holding the rig button, paging to the the last screen changing the amp volume hitting save 3 times while playing is not practical either.
    Leveling with the full band playing would be best of course but having the band wait for me to dial all those slots in during rehearsal is not practical either...
    I really need a way to set a level that is very close at home. I may just have to give up on 5 amp sounds in one rig and make each its own rig.
    Tapping up and down through rigs may be the cost of playing a kemper?


    Do you guys just search for the next rig before the song ends so you are ready to tap slot one right when the current song ends?
    This is a 7pc band playing covers from GNR Paradise City to George Jones The Fireman so i need a range of sounds. lol
    With 4 X 45min sets that's about 48 songs, even reusing sounds on several songs that maybe 12 rigs to have some good song specific stuff.


    How many rigs do you guys use in a 4hr set?
    For reference i have always played tube amps and pedal boards. My rig before the Kemper was a Mesa Boogie TC50 with a pedal board.
    I got by with about 6 sounds between the 3channels on the anp and the pedal board but the versatility if the Kemper is what made me take the leap!
    Getting some really great tones , just need to figure how to level and select them fast.... We almost never play the sets as laid out ya gotta play to the cword at the time right!
    Would love to hear your guys thoughts!
    Thanks Gang :)

    Awesome Airlock!
    So far I have just set my Kemper and DXR10 up at home and had it running a known working rig at gig volume.
    Using that as a reference, I set other rigs up for a similar volume and save those as a performance. Rinse and repeat for more slots.
    I use the volume control on my guitar for micro managing volumes.
    So far so good.

    Glad to hear the gig went well. As far as differences in rig volume, I guess those are the perils of diving in feet first!
    I wouldn’t worry too much about changing your workflow. Your idea of using pink noise to fix the level
    of your rigs is a good one. Do that and you should have no problem from the next gig.
    Remember, you can use master volume to fix overall volume when on stage. The important step is to have rigs at the same volume.

    Quote from Airlock

    Thanks dmatthews, so do you use one rig = one song? With 5 sounds/slots per song?
    Airlock

    Nah, I'm not that disciplined... yet.
    I have 4 or 5 slots times 5 rigs each.
    Each slot is mostly one amp setup as:
    1 clean
    2 clean with gain
    3 acoustic
    4 dirty/filthy
    5 exotic/delay or other


    Dave

    Thanks guys, my plan at this point is to try using one amp per rig.
    I think al lot the level issues i had were caused by me trying to have more than one basic sound per rig.


    I have 4 different amps in one rig so each slot was a different basic sound going from Clean in slot 1 up to a very heavy marshall in slot 5. This caused a major issue when during sound check i realized that a couple of the patched were too quiet.
    You can't just turn the rig volume knob, that obviously just raises the volume of all 5 slots not just the slot you are on ;)


    So i spent most of the time between soundcheck and gig trying to guess how much each slot needed to change without being able to play at performance volume as the crowd was entering...
    Enter the rig menu and page over to last page make the volume change and hit save 3 times or changes are lost if you change slots.


    It seems clear to me nowthat is not what the creators had in mind?
    So not i'll try one amp per rig and tap through the rigs at song change. Then i can use the rig volume to make quick little changes on the fly during the gig.
    Thanks for the feedback guys.
    Airlock :thumbup: