Received a new Kemper yesterday, and I have spent over 16 hours and have yet to get a useable tone out of it. It began crashing about 5 minutes after I began using it. Contacted Kemper support. Trying to fix that caused the rigs in the browser to sound like they were a mile away down a deep well with reverb. The fix for that caused every model in the browser (but not perform) to have what sounds like an auto-wah pedal on in the background, which would not go away even with effects turned off. One rig file is corrupt and keeps showing up as being removed when loading the rigs. That all seems to be resolved (except that the glitched rig still gets kicked out and is not in the bank) after the tech had me do another type of reset.
However, my main issue is that every rig in the Kemper seems to have a hard/stiff, harsh/brash, clanginess to it. I have adjusted the input sensitivity for clean and gain, adjusted the mains ouput by -12db to keep from overloading the speakers, and that seemed to lower the amount of the harsh tone, but it is still there, just turned down somewhat. The highs do not sound musically pleasant at all, even on the clean rigs. It is very sharp and ice-picky, even with very warm PAF pickups in a couple of my guitars. It reminds me of having the wrong Line/Amp switch engaged while running to a powered cabinet with an old Vox Tonelab I had. Like the "cabinet sim" is not turned on or something and it is just raw signal.
I own many other modeling amps, and while scrolling through their models, there are some I do not like, but they all have a distinct feel and personality, and I get what the programmer was going for. With the Kemper, all the models sound like the same model, just with different amounts of gain or a different EQ setting. I cannot imagine this is correct. My 50 dollar Pocket POD has more authentic sounding models through these speakers than what I am hearing from the Kemper Rigs. Is my unit defective, or is there something major I have missed after 16 hours of scouring the forum and reading the manual multiple times? I am running it through KRK Rokit 6" powered Monitors, but have also tried it through 2 powered speaker cabinets, using mains out and monitor out. Nothing removed the harsh tones. Please help.