A thought about Amp Profiles...

I agree that it's hard to know when you'll have a winner, but the guys who've made this a business (Armin and And44) seem to have an upper hand on getting a good one.

I would agree to an extent. However Andy at the Amp Factory delivers great profiles on a consistent basis. Theyre not all to my liking, but I wouldnt say any of them are lack luster. So I dont know that I would say its luck when there are so many being delivered at top notch quality. I have yet to try Armin's profiles but I hear they are great too. I dont know what techniques either of these fellas are using but they are getting terrific results consistently. Now having said that, they may have to wrestle which each amp with mic selection, placement, etc but its just proof it can be done. Maybe if you pm them they can give you some useful info. I totally realize you are a professional live and studio player, but they may know a few secrets to profiling that you are unaware of. Not sure, just a thought.

I have only profiled 1 amp and the conditions were less than desirable (amp in the same room) and I wasnt happy with the results. It wasnt my amp either. But it was lackluster lol.

Hadley

It happens everyday in pro studios around the world, the engineer mic's an amp for a particular song/session and it turns out he's not completely happy with the tone...same thing can happen with a Profile, it's not unusual.
If the engineer is pressed for time then he'll make use of the recorded tracks he's not 100% happy with, and tweak them and trick them into doing the job and sounding 'good enough'...session completed, invoice sent, bills paid....not the "perfect Profile", but job done.

How many amps, mic's, guitars, pedals have you gone through or recorded in the last 25 years, dozens upon dozens, correct?
Why?, if you got the perfect recorded or live tone 20 years ago, why the need to try so many different other combinations through the years?...I guess because particular combinations of guitar/pickup, amp/mic, speaker/mic, etc, worked better than others in particular times during your pro career.

Or, am I missing the point and you're saying the KPA couldn't capture the magic of your 65 Super Reverb?
Then I ask you.
How many times in your pro recording career did the engineer mic an amp, record you, and then use the un tweaked no post precessing raw mic'd recording on the final master track?
In other words, in some Profiling cases the 'raw' Profile is not the complete end product, it's just a tool for the engineer to get to the end product.

Quote from Radley

keep in mind: The Kemper was designed for people like you and me, not people who happen to have an idealized setup for profiling like Armin and And44...

I'm not sure I agree.
If Profiles couldn't be shared, then I'd agree with you.
But, Profiles can be shared, so the Kemper was designed for everyone and anyone, even for those who have no intention or means to Profile.

Well, in my experience the KPA is quite honest. What you feed is pretty much what you get and that can easily be demonstrated doing A/B comparisons. Profiling can be as easy or as tricky as getting a good recording tone from an amp. If you are unable to get a good recording tone "micing" the amp, well, you cannot really blame the KPA for getting the same result.

TheAmpFactory profiles are great simply due to the fact that Andy knows how to get the best recording tone from an amp and that translates to his KPA profiles but there is many profiles done by other users that sound great too.

Quote from Radley

The fact that only a 'chosen few' can get the results approved by the 'people who count' should be an ominous sign.

In a confrontational mood this evening, Hadley?
"Ominous" = sinister, portentous, threatening, menacing, ominous rumblings of discontent, an omen, especially an evil one.

Place the very ordinary mic in front of your Fenders and post a recording or two, then post a recording of the Profiles...let us hear the difference.

Quote from Radley

A thought about Amp Profiles:

I have perceived over my considerable time using the KPA that our favorite profiles are largely dictated by random chance as much as a great amp or mic. Some combinations provide great profiles, while others turn out very lackluster results. My faves tend to be the ones that don't have too much of that dreadful overbearing Marshall upper-mids peak, but sound more smooth and even across the audio spectrum. Even many clean profiles can do a better overdriven sound than the aforementioned over-hyped, cocked-wah nightmares...

Back to my original point - Producing a great profile would appear to be as much luck and blind chemistry as it is picking a great amp and mic...

I think it's just what many Marshalls sound like. You may not like it, I do - it punches through a mix well and it's a classic tone. Different strokes for different folks. One guy I know has a strat, sounds thin. Would kill for funk, but if you were going to play hard rock it wouldn't work. A les paul with a thick beefy tone wouldn't work well for much country picking.

Having said that, I either dial in my amps how I want them when I profile so it's in the ballpark, or if I need to do sonic surgery I add an EQ in the post amp fx blocks on the Kemper. You can do some powerful stuff there, much more than you can with the amp controls in the kemper. I bet you could even tame the notched wah caterwauling of a Vintage Marshall with one!

back to your original point - I think it has to do with the random nature of tube amps. If you're persistent, you'll get good results eventually but some times the stars just don't align. I'm going to guess that you are probably a billion times better with miking an amp than I am - or you should be! - so I would think mike placement and choice wouldn't be an issue for you. The Kemper is a digital device. It's not going to sound differently from day to day... that leaves the amp itself. I don't know how many times when I was gigging a tube amp that even my onstage non-miked FOH sound was sometimes glorious, sometimes ok, and sometimes just left me shaking my head and hoping I could get through the gig. And I didn't use bad amps or ones that needed new tubes or TLC - I used a Bogner Ecstasy, numerous Mesa Boogies, and vintage marshalls among others. It wasn't a problem with the quality of gear I was using, it was just that some days the tube gods smiled on me. Or maybe the humidity or weather affected the speaker cones, or voltage was raised or dropped a hair. Whatever. When I DO get a profile I dig, I tend to like it all the time because it is the same every time I pull it up now.

One thing I do when I profile an amp is I do sometimes blend multiple microphones, but I don't run any EQ or anything. My thinking is I'm trying to get a signature tone of that amp as close as I can get it without any post EQ or chicanery - because I can add that to my profile once it's done. Sometimes it leads to slightly 'bland' profiles, but they are true to the amps and I prefer it that way.

Quote from Radley

Love you Lance, but this is weak sauce...

Love you to Hadley, but what I said is true.

I find it pretty much matches when compared with recording the exact same setup (profile vs the original). Now as to whether that sounds good, well I think that tracking an amp is a lot more nuanced than just slapping a mic in front of it, most often you will want to add a little EQ and maybe even a hi-pass before you're getting towards a "decent" sound if you don't have an ideal space. Is that the fault of the Kemper?

Now if we could determine that there were tangible aspects that the Kemper was not accurately profiling then that's something that the KPA team could look at and work on.

Basically, lets be less obtuse and cut to the chase. Do your profiles sound different to the recorded amp itself? If so how?

Quote from Radley

Well I'll be darned - I love this platform enough to be on CK's beta team, yet am still suspect by certain users.

I'm not sure I understand what this thread is about?
Are you asking other users who like you don't have access to pro recording facilities at home for advice on how to make accurate Profiles of your Fender amps?

No one 'suspects' you of anything....we all respect you, but I'm not sure we understand you.

Quote from Radley

The fact that only a 'chosen few' can get the results approved by the 'people who count' is a concern. In other words: I can place a very ordinary mic in front of *any* of my Fender amps and make a great recording - why should this not be the same when profiling these same amps?

Well, that is not my experience but maybe like Guitartone said you can "Place the very ordinary mic in front of your Fenders and post a recording or two, then post a recording of the Profiles...let us hear the difference.".

Quote from Radley

The fact that only a 'chosen few' can get the results approved by the 'people who count' is a concern. In other words: I can place a very ordinary mic in front of *any* of my Fender amps and make a great recording - why should this not be the same when profiling these same amps?

I don't think its a 'fact'. I've made what I consider good profiles of my meager amps with an SM57 and there are a handful at least of folks who've made some fantastic stuff. The reason Andy and Armin get singled out so much is they've offer so many profiles, there's bound to be a few which will connect with anyone. Much more impressive to me is cases like rmpacheco who captured his Morgan AC20 so well, probably my favorite profile. Or Eric Stam whose high gain stuff doesn't have the overly present sizzle and splat that many of the higher gain KPA profiles have (and I don't like). It does seem to me though that in trying a great many profiles the Fender clean tone seems one of the hardest for the Kemper to recreate with a high degree of accuracy. The tonal spectrum is there but often the snap and hint of compression isn't quite right.

I'd like to say that I haven't been very ambitious yet to profile my own amps (not quite satisfied my my Marshall 6100 profiles and have yet to profile my AC 30).

But it is what it is: engineering an amp is an art in itself and with some amps you have to struggle and wrestle and fight until you have captured them properly.
Sometime you've got the magic mic position and sometimes you miss it by a few inches.

And another thing is for sure:
People who profile lots get better results.
Like in: the more milk you have the more cream you get.
That's what Andy and Armin do.