Hey guys,
wondering what is the best way to save cabs on Kemper.
I found saving the same cab from different studio profiles sounds different every time. makes life to difficult.
So do you guys only save merged profile cabs to get consistency or how do you guys approach this cab saving and tweaking profiles with them?
thanks!
Unless I'm missing something, saving them from Merged Rigs won't solve the "problem".
Here's the thing:
The Profiling process is capturing a mic'd-cab setup. Everyone's preferences for which mic's to use, how to position them and which, if any, preamps to pass the signal through, differs from everyone else's. You're therefore never going to get a "baseline", "this is what cab x sounds like" result that you can save and be done with it.
If it's a reference, "uncoloured" cab you're after, the only way I can think of to get it would be to use a reference microphone (flat response and expensive) in an anechoic chamber, employing all the "standard" mic positions you prefer and including those in the saved-cabinet names.
I think you should be able to get fantastic results Profiling the cabinet alone, but you'd obviously have to amplify the Kemper's Profiling audio stream going into it. Creating IR's is an alternative, but in my and many others' opinions the Kemper captures nuances of cabinet behaviour that conventional IR's cannot due to their static-snapshot nature.
There's still a problem with this approach even if you end up with "pristine", awesome-sounding cabinets - nobody in the recording world's using them. The whole idea of mic'ing amps in studios isn't to achieve clinical results; it's a mojo-seeking exercise, trying to find a mic and position that best captures a player's tone and even enhances it in a good way. IOW, the "accuracy" you seek isn't on the menu.
So, with the Kemper, and in your situation particularly, the idea would be to find cabinets that've been captured in ways that suit and help create the tones you like. Out of 20 cab-x Profiles, you might only like one or two. Perhaps if you labelled them, "Bright", "Darker", "Glam-rock Mojo" and so on it might help. That way you won't have to try to find an all-conquering, single representation of any given cabinet.
HTH, mate.
