First Time Profiling... (Jet City JCA20H)

    Just wanted to run through my thoughts on what I experienced...
    Before I do though. The profiles that I uploaded of my Jet City, the distortion ones are all different... for some reason the tagging didn't work on the site.
    They were supposed to be called 1,2 and 3.


    Anyway.


    Profiling is damn easy.


    I think it does help to know how to mic an amp up though. Studio/recording experience will ABSOLUTELY make you a better profile.
    I knew where this amps sweet spot is and how to use the mic I chose. I think I got some usable profiles.
    I do wonder/notice a few things after doing this...


    1. How much do the pickups in your guitar affect the profiled sound. I found my humbuckers gave me much better profiles. They are Seymour Duncans. My single coils were hard to get a good sound from, but they are the stock ones on my Japanese Strat.


    2. Input volume seems to play a large role in what sound you get from the profile. I think upping the volume coloured the distortion profiles i made. Not in a bad way, but it made some difference.


    3. The clean/distorted profiling choices make quite different weird sounds in the third part of the profiling. Setting it to clean I found the third set of sounds MUCH louder and more bass heavy. Shook the house.


    4. How much does the refining part of the profiling affect the sound? I tried chords, flurries of singles notes in one place. Scales. Notes all over the neck etc, even made one where I only played notes behind the bridge of my Jaguar.


    5. I'm on FW Beta 1.0.6 and my profiling often didn't start when I flicked the knob to profiler. I had to switch it back and forth to get it to work. Not a big deal. Once or twice the profiling told me there wasn't enough volume. Rebooting solved that.


    Overall I am extremely happy. I was happy just messing with the Kemper, but after making profiles... wow.


    It isn't 100% the same, that's for sure. But it is more than close enough to make me happy. I bought the Kemper as a studio tool to get thousands of usable tones that I can record songs with.
    It does that. It does more than I need it to.
    Profiling is an art in and of itself I think.


    As we go along and get more experienced in making good profiles it would be nice seeing tutorials or explanation videos popping up.
    There are some really horrible tones uploaded and even built in to the Kemper, but there are also some superb ones (Everyone has their own tastes I know).
    The ones that come to mind as excellent for me are Fecks, Toneclone, lots of the built in kemper ones and the ones by Stranded on a planet that went up recently. (Just the first ones that came to mind) (Especially Fecks)


    I would like to know how they were all done...
    I'm sure we could all learn from eachothers methods.
    The possibilities seem endless. I'm pleased I have this lovely bit of kit (Pleased to say the least).


    Rambling monolouge complete ... :P

    Thanks man! I am Stranded On A Planet, I will tag all my profiles with that from now on. For my profiles so far, it has been the amp in my vocal booth miked with a single 121 about 3 inches away from the speaker...on axis or damn close to it depending on the amp. I will be doing a whole other round of the same amps with my Electronaut M63 tube preamp, and I will also use some different mics (AEA R92, Coles 4038, Blue Woodpecker, and a 57). I get pretty anal about it, and so far I have an average of 20-25 profiles per amp at virtually all gain settings since I am trying to avoid using any of the KPA controls to post-mod the amps (not to say the controls aren't totally usable). I am guessing I will end up with somewhere around 100 profiles per amp of the 7 that I have in my studio now. That should keep me busy for a while.... :)

    We must have the same ears :|


    I find all the ones you've done useable, with the odd tweak.
    Hadn't heard of the Orangutan at all before I looked up what it was (After using your profiles). The ones you tagged as Stranded are all awesome.


    I did my profiles pretty quick, just an Audix i5 moved around a few times. I only have the one amp unfortunately.
    I had a bunch in South Africa, but had to leave them all behind when I moved to London.


    If I could make the noise here constantly I would take the same approach. I have quite a few mics.
    The slightest tweaks make a difference.
    I also didn't want to fix anything 'post' in the KPA. I wanted sound I like in, and just use that as is.
    Never fix something post! That's a rule that holds true for film/photography/sound... and now the KPA


    Could spend all day making profiles. Hours and hours.


    Thanks for being so anal about it. Having the massive range of sounds to sweep through makes me so happy.
    Your profiled tones will be making it on to my records :thumbup:

    That's killer man! Well I hope you will let me hear some of the songs with my profiles on them, that would be sweet. South Africa is awesome....I have been down there 3 times. It is pretty addictive making different profiles. As it turns out, I sold the Xits X10 I had because once I profiled it, I like the profiles more than I liked the amp! Crazy. Our studio manager is at GC Pro so I am talking to them about profiling some of their vintage shop amps too. It is practically endless it seems!

    Lot's of South Africa talk here, I like it. :D


    Of course we have South African Andy Innes from the Johnny Clegg band using his Kemper live on tour in Australia & New Zealand right now, and also going to be using it live on their upcoming France and USA tours.


    Check the photos out in the "User & Dealers network" section...note the Kemper sitting atop the Mesa Roadking.


    Btw, here are Andy's profiles of his Roadking...another bunch of great Mesa Profiles.


    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/551117…20Rdstr%20Vntg%20drv1.zip

    Yeah, I saw those photos of him on the facebook page.


    Nice to have more Mesa profiles... Thanks for that link. Were they on the rig exchange?
    I may have them if they were, though the names don't look familiar.