Return to Kemper

  • The prodigal son returns after going to explore greener pastures.


    Nothing unheard of but recently got a good deal on a QC and had to hop on the hype train.

    I had it for about a week. It sounded good, but not better than my Kemper. More importantly, it may be flashy and easy to program, but the live gig use features (gig view vs performance mode, etc) are nowhere near my Kemper.


    Although I'd love some more features in the kemper (more flexible routing, morphing on effect buttons) I will gladly trade them for the rock solid performance it offers.


    I sent back the QC and will probably get a Stage to join my power rack.


    Your experience may be different but I know I always enjoy hearing people's experiences so hopefully someone else will get something out of this.

  • Welcome back!

    I have now my kemper head for more than 9 years and still using it for all guitar recordings.

    I've been thinking about getting a Kemper Stage for a long time because I thought the device would be too big for me. I've been using it now for over a year and couldn't be happier about it.

    The size is really perfect for stage usage.
    And for live gigs it has all fx I need.

    Btw. what do you mean with morping on effect buttons?

  • Glad you returned! What a great story, thank you for posting that. 🙏 This has been my experience with the unpowered Toaster after two years now..


    It has completely changed not only how much I play guitar, it's also caused me to fall in love with the instrument all over again. There's maybe 40 Profiles on my Kemper, but those 40 are truly incredible. The thing blows my mind! Through in-ears? This thing is GOD. It's mercilessly addictive. It's cleaned my playing up because great Profiles don't cover up sloppy playing!


    Some guys like to always tweak their sound, day-to-day, mess with it - and I'm one of 'em. The controls are so easy, they're right on the face of the amp. Easy. Love adding an effect pedal in there on a whim: Fuzz, octaver, transpose, etc...turn a few knobs, VOILÀ.


    Glad to have you back!

  • yeah getting on to 11 years with my vintage white head and with all the new ‘#me too’ devices the only thing of interest is the stage😁

    New talent management advice to Laura Cox -


    “Laura want to break the internet? let’s shoot another video of you covering the Nightrain solo in the blue singlet, but this time we’ll crank up the air conditioning”.

  • I guess I'm a newbie with about 8 years with the Kemper :). Every now and then I'm tempted by something new, smaller, more colourful, maybe simpler. But when I try something, I realise, no, that doesn't sound right. I didn´t try the QC yet, but currently I have no motivation to do so.

    "Wenn´s net brummt, is kaputt"

  • I regularly work in a couple of studios that have all the "Big Ones" available. Lately the QC disappeared from all of them.....just saying

    If something is too complicated, then you need to learn it better

  • That’s interesting, thanks for sharing. I have a pal with the QC but the buttons seem too close together and the ecosystem is nearly non existent for me. I was jamming with the Kemper yesterday and for me there’s nothing missing. Good to have you back.

    A brace of Suhrs, a Charvel, a toaster, an Apollo twin, a Mac, and a DXR10

  • I'm not sure I understand what you mean but you already can morph using effects buttons, you don't need an expression pedal to morph...

    I would love to see Kemper introduce some sort of "scene" style morphs that could be assigned to the stomp buttons. I love morphing for solos, but only having 2 "scenes" can be a bit limiting at times"

  • That’s interesting, thanks for sharing. I have a pal with the QC but the buttons seem too close together and the ecosystem is nearly non existent for me. I was jamming with the Kemper yesterday and for me there’s nothing missing. Good to have you back.

    Agreed I have large feet and I could tell this was going to be a problem

  • I would love to see Kemper introduce some sort of "scene" style morphs that could be assigned to the stomp buttons. I love morphing for solos, but only having 2 "scenes" can be a bit limiting at times"

    It's just a way of thinking....

    I had a Helix before and my device was set with four differents snapshots for the 4 downside swicthes and stomps for the upside ones....

    I wasn't lost with Kemper (just with terms) but for me i had Performances (instead of presets), 5 Rigs (= Snapshots) & FXs switches.....

    Morphing is a wonderful option that can double your snapshots.....And you can have all values in between with a pedal....;)


    I imagine elsewhere , it's called "scene" for performance's Rigs....

  • Had the same experience with Fractal FM3 recently.. thought it would give me more flexibility in finding the sound I want. It's great for clean/mid gain sounds (on par with my favorite profiles), but spent many hours looking for a high gain sound to no avail. There's limitless tweaking option but doesn't really help.

  • Great to see you back and I think this shows that these units are so good that the difference is less about the sound and as much about usability.


    I have no gaps in what I need the KPA for as a live tool, does everything I need.


    I also know that my playing, set up, performance, stage presence and rest of the band are bigger factors than if I have the high pass filter set at the right frequency - we sometimes forget this when getting obsessed with tone!

  • I did similar about five months ago. I had purchased a QC (but had kept my kpa). I loved its portability and it was fun to mess around with something new, but there were a handful of things that made me return it. The way it organized captures was completely disorganized and made it extremely to find a capture, especially once you download a bunch of things.

    No effect presets. I missed the auto volume compensation when adjusting gain like the kpa, forcing me to do the dreaded, "adjust the gain, save, go to another preset and see if the volume matches, go back and adjust the volume of the first preset and hit save." Having dual amps and cabs was fun, but I didn't come up with any combo I like better than a single amp and cab; it just added needless complexity, used too much DSP, and created more volume balancing issues.


    The ambient effects were limited and you needed to instances and a parallel path just to get a basic dual delay. The foot switches are too close together to be ergonomic and it's a pain live switching modes so I was doing a lot more tap dancing. No spillover between presets, so you need to utilize scene mode, so if you use presets between songs, you need to go from scene mode to preset mode and back to scene mode between each song. The shape of the kpa makes reaching to foot switches easier than the quad as well.


    It had way less power than advertised and found it difficult to fit all that I'd like to use in a song in one preset, made necessary since you had a audio gap and no spillover between presets, unlike the kpa in which you can fly from rig to rig in a performance without issue. Finally, the other advantage of the QC being an audio interface is solved with the release of 9.0.

    The touch screen was nice, no more convenient than using the KPA editor or IOS rig manager.

  • All my experiences as well, meanwhile, Got a Kemper stage last night and I am in love all over again :love:

  • I'm considering doing the same thing, Voxman.

    I have been a QC convert for almost 6 months, and currently my QC is on its way to Finland to get repaired...I was on Kemper for 5+ years, and have since sold off my Kemper, power Kabinet, remote, and expression pedal (wow REGRETS) and now am considering going back to Kemper....I honestly feel a little silly, and I really have enjoyed my time with the QC, but now I'm worried I can't trust it.


    I believe the main board on my QC will need to be replaced, it sounded like THIS before I shipped it back. I suppose I'll wait and see, but seeing as this is my second QC in about a year and a half (first one locked up during a gig due to a glitch and so I returned it and stayed on Kemper for another 3+ months), my trust is getting a little thin!