Is it just me or does anyone else also feel that the interaction between dirtboxes and amp in the KPA is a little unnatural? Am I doing something wrong? As hard as I try and as much as I tweak I can't make the combination of a profiled amp + stompbox sound like it does in real life. Can't quite put my finger on it, seems to lack "mojo" or something.
When I use the amp profile by itself it sounds really good, ballsy and punchy, with lots of sustain and articulation. Then some times I like to add a stompbox in front of it, usually a tubescreamer, for adding a little more dirt and transients (sorry, I couldn't bond with the pick parameter, sounds very unnatural to my ears), and then all that magic seems to be gone and the rig suddenly sounds thin and anemic. If I push the amp input by turning the stompbox level up, it adds too much bass and too much gain apparently, that's not what I'm after - and btw in real life I don't have to do that. I've tried raising the bias to around 2.0 and adding sag (5.0) in the amp section, and it got better but still not quite what I expected to hear, and the "feel" seems way off.
Any ideas?