Synths and a Vocoder

    Obviously C.K.has a strong background with synths so given that my Line HD 500 has several synths would the KPA be able to do any? The tracking is far from perfect on the HD 500 but I actually use a few in my cover band and they do the job OK. I also use a vocoder and once again it's passable with the HD 500, so this thread is about my selfish wishes for the KPA. :D You would think the KPA could do a better job at both than the HD.

    I use a Line 6 M13 with mine and couldn't be happier. The Kemper has all of the meat and potatoes effects anyone could want, but the m13 (and I imagine the HD500) really excels at the oddball stuff like vocoder and synth sounds.


    I was goofing around last night, and nailed the synth intro to Europe's "Final Countdown" with the Kemper Roland JC120 profile and the Synth-o-matic pedal on the M13. Not my proudest moment, but fun as hell.


    Smart Harmony is a blast, too.

    +1 to a synth, vocoder, and talk-box.


    I was trying to get a nice synth tone the other day, and had a lot of fun with the following:


    r.u.sirius' Bogner Shiva Clean+ profile, gain turned up enough to add just a little bit of grit and help you get a good sawtooth wave sound. Plenty of other profiles will work, but this is was the first one I was really happy with.
    Noise Gate knob: High enough to cut off your notes pretty quickly, but not enough to choke off the attack when you play something.
    A: Compressor with Intensity and Squash anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 of the way up.
    B: Chromatic Pitch with the first voice set to +12 semitones, voice mix at -5.0, mix around 80%.
    C: Chromatic Pitch with the first voice set to -12 semitones, voice mix at -5.0, mix around 80%.
    (The idea here is to make your tone going into the amp be generated by the Kemper, rather than modifying a direct guitar signal)
    D: Wah Rate Reducer, set to whatever sounds good for the kind of synth you want. I've found that having Manual somewhere around 5.0 is pretty good, Mix should be fairly high, and the pedal mode should be either On or Touch, but the other settings are pretty good anywhere. The Ducking setting can be really fun here if you have the Wah set to Touch, as it won't trigger the effect for a second or two after you play a note.
    X: Phaser Oneway. This one is optional, but I really like the "Reso Bass" preset you find on a lot of synth plugins. The best example I can think of is on the Ninja Turtles cartoon (around 2:45 in this link, the very beginning of the scene - http://youtu.be/MpmzfPTwPiI ). Whenever they show the villains' Technodrome hideout, there's initially a high-pitched-phaser-dropping-in-pitch sound at the beginning of the scene, so that's always been one of the go-to synth noises in my head. Setting the phaser to a slow, negative Rate, with a high Depth, does this quite well.
    Mod and Delay: A combination of noise gate and delay, simulating the control a synth gives you over the "release" part of your sound's volume envelope.


    As far as the amp's EQ settings, my best results came from turning down the Bass and Presence pretty far, and boosting the Mid and Treble a fair way up. You could also try disabling the Cab to add a bit more "dirty synth" fizz.


    If you wanted to take this even farther, you could record a dry signal to your DAW and then run it through three or four sets of "up an octave, down an octave" to make the guitar tone sound really artificial before reamping it with a nice synth sound on your Kemper.