2 Gigs under my belt... The Kemper rocks (in a country way)!

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So, quite a few more gigs in the bag and still loving the Kemper. I tried something a little different this weekend. I used a 5150III as my stage monitor amp. It seemed like a waste to just use my 3P for just its power amp section, plus the 5150III is louder (not that I really need it with IEM's). I think the biggest reason is that in case of a Kemper crash (hasn't happened yet), the 5150 will be a quicker plug-in transition. The 3P requires a bit more cable connections with the addition of an fx loop buffer and two channel inputs. Plus, I wanted to bring my 3P home to play it there and the 5150 is def not a small room amp.

I check with our foh engineer every night and he is still completely happy with the Kemper tones I'm sending him. I just step through our set list on my ground control pro pedal and I'm seldom if ever tempted to go over and tweak anything. And if I do, it's usually because I'm using a different guitar that may need an extremely minor eq adjustment in the amp tone stack. I looked over to my rig last night and thought, "I'm running entirely digital". I never would've thought that. I mean, I've done it before because I'm not afraid to try new technology, but I always went back to tube amps and pedals. At this point, I'm not really sure what I'm looking to get that I'm not getting and that is both an unsettling and satisfying revelation. I have spent years and thousands of dollars chasing tone and thought I had it caught a few times. I'm sure there will be changes again in the future, but it is really nice getting the tones I want to hear with the tweakability and consistency that I have them now and be able to use them on bus gigs and fly gigs. When I've heard tv tapes and youtube clips back of our recent shows, I think, "no one would ever in a million years NOT think that was a tube amp."

I honestly think the folks at Kemper have developed a true game-changer. Thank you Kemper.

Rig Update... I uploaded the new firmware and I've been playing around with all of the new pitch fx (new to me, since my version was older). I ended up figuring out how to get everything I had been getting out of my Line 6 M5 out of the Kemper, so now it's just my Kemper with nothing in the loop. I've got two new smart harmony solo patches, a whammy patch and a really cool fx pad that takes the place of my Octo Verb on the M5. Here's a sample of the freaky organ thing I created:

https://soundcloud.com/lonestargtr/kemper-tell-her-intro-pad

No, I haven't even messed with performance mode yet. The little reading up I've done on it doesn't really seem to be any benefit. My Ground Control Pro is calling up the rigs just fine.

Quote from paults

Your Soundcloud clip is great! It is an excellent example of a musical way to use Ducking. Excellently played, too

Thanks. I did it pretty quickly, but I've been noodling around with that sound the past couple of days. I have to play pretty soft to get that pizzicato string sound, so the pitch effect has a bit of a hard time trying to "hear" what I'm doing but other than that it's pretty cool. It's a lot of fun to noodle around with.

Quote from 60Strat

Any chance you might post your soundcloud sample rig on the user download page? I too have been using the Line 6 to get that octave up ringing sound (Edge). Thanks

Here are the settings I used on my soundcloud recording. You can use them with whatever rig you already have so you get "your" tone.

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awesome!

Quote from Glowing_Tubes

Hey Mike,
How do your band mates feel about the Kemper? Just wondering if it was met with any skepticism when you first brought it out and if it dialed in pretty quickly.

Thanks

I don't think they were overly skeptical. I tend to change things on a regular basis anyway, but always end up sounding almost the same, so they weren't too worried. I did spend a few weeks dialing it in at home and then spending a few hours in a rehearsal room with a p.a. dialing it in. I got pretty close and then picked my favorite 6-8 rigs and built our set list presets based on those. I think our foh engineer was the most skeptical but he loves it. Between he and I, we do a pretty good job of selling Kempers everywhere we play. ha. To fully commit to it, I think you have to be pretty familiar and comfortable with it. Plus, I only use rigs that I profiled myself, so they already sound like my original guitar tones. That helps a ton. Otherwise, there are just so many options and it's hard to narrow it down. It took me a few weeks of playing around with it and monitoring it in different ways to get it where I trust that it'll sound good in most situations.