Turning knobs: Does it detract from the Profiler's "core" strength?

Quote from ckemper

When turning the gain knob of a tube amp to the right, it will add bass to the guitar or take away high end from the guitar (depends how you see it)
From a perspective of playability this is a drawback. The opposite is needed, and often achieved with a treble booster or tube screamer, mainly cutting bass from the guitar to create a nicer distortion.
Also the gain knob of the ProCo Rat provides this inverse behavior: Adding mid and treble when more gain is dialed in.

The gain control of the Profiler behaves neutral, it does not color the tone when a different gain is dialed in.
I cannot see a single drawback in that.
Why would rigs sound worse when giving more gain by a neutral gain control?
It acts just in the middle between a gain with cab and a treble booster.

Often my impression with real tube amps is, that sounds get incredibly thin, when the gain is turned down.
I have no idea what the purpose of that should be. And since we do not necessarily want to takeover all aspects of a technique, without questioning it first, I did not takeover this behaviour, because it does not make any sense to me.

Maybe someone could point out rigs, where rigs loose it's definition, when dialing more gain, but it shouldn't do so.

PS: There is for sure many rigs that sound awful with more gain. That's because these amps were never designed to sound well with a certain gain.

Display More

Well, sound quality is subjective but if you'd indulge me, i could run a few comparison tests and post the results.
Some amps, in my experience, change character when the gain is turned up or down, perhaps even beyond spectral balance differences. This is superlative-heavy, so pardon -
a Peavey 5150, for example, is very 'chuggy' on high gain setting, but turning the gain down makes it incredibly stiff. This is one point, for example, where the KPA excels - i can take a high-gain 5150 sound (the recently uploaded Bulb and Nolly XFXII sounds are a good example) and drop the gain somewhat while still retaining the high-end compression that causes the 'chugginess'.
Doing so on a real, live counterpart yields terrible results, IMO.

On the other hand, I have a Laney GH-100 profile whose source i would have to trace that sounds great with the gain up where it originally was - but really loses its 'balls' when you turn it down below 6.5, which is still a bit too high for me. The actual amp becomes more focused when you drop the gain - its a sound i'm dying to get but can't so far.

If the difference truly is all about the way compression is applied to a certain spectral balance, then it would be very easy to 'combine' two profiles at different gain levels into one -
and it would solve one of the major complaints about the KPA's inability to replace an amp because it only contains one "authentic" setting.

I really think if you go deeper and edit the Amp parameters available in the Kemper you can create

or recreate the sound and feel of the original Amp with a limited few profile's of a Amp.

Of course if you Own the Amp you can just profile new setting.

Different gain settings do not influence the amp dynamics, only the freqencies.
The spectral balance can be deeply adjusted by the Definition parameter.
Try it out.

About authenticity:
There is no setting of gain and definition, that goes beyond the physics of a tube amp.

It would be great to be able to set the center frequency for each B M Treble knobs.

I'd love to see controls that react more like the real amp, at least as an option. Yes it might seem "hokey" to an engineer, but the creative process of finding and adjusting a tone is a lot about mistakes and personality rather than predictions and perfection. We love the pedals and amps that we do because of their little idiosyncrasies that over time we learn to exploit.

Quote from Per

I'd love to see controls that react more like the real amp, at least as an option. Yes it might seem "hokey" to an engineer, but the creative process of finding and adjusting a tone is a lot about mistakes and personality rather than predictions and perfection. We love the pedals and amps that we do because of their little idiosyncrasies that over time we learn to exploit.

By Having the gain and dynamics separated you have more ways to exploit a amps sound and have more control over it.

It's not to complicated to learn how make these adjustments on the kemper.

Quote from troynova

By Having the gain and dynamics separated you have more ways to exploit a amps sound and have more control over it.

It's not to complicated to learn how make these adjustments on the kemper.

I think you completely missed my point.

Let me put it another way - you could set it up by dialing in and carefully balancing multiple parameters... or you could make it easier and have the option to do it all automatically with one. Which do you think a guitarist is gonna use?

[/quote]
I think you completely missed my point.

Let me put it another way - you could set it up by dialing in and carefully balancing multiple parameters... or you could make it easier and have the option to do it all automatically with one. Which do you think a guitarist is gonna use?[/quote]

I do get your point

Its just that I think for them to tie arrange of parameters on the Gain would be a simulation at best and there are so many Amps types.

Learning to use a couple additional Amp parameters like definition, clarity and compression with the gain can really expand the use of a profile of a amp you don't have available to make more profiles of.

Per:
We have these quick access knobs. If they were freely assignable and if we could even assign multiple parameters to them, (each parameter with it's own custom curve) you could somehow build your own charakteristic of a gain knob.

Just dreaming ...

Well personally I think we should have profile blending. That way you could make separate profiles at two settings, set them as your A and B profiles for the blend, and then adjust gain via the blend parameter instead of the gain dial (or perhaps it would be cool if you could set gain to behave as "blend"), if you could store that as a "blend" rig so that you can always bring it back, or export/import it as a single rig then it would be pretty cool and easy for everyone to take advantage of. Even if they don't set it up themselves, they can use blend rigs other people have made.

Quote from Per

pretty special.

You may say I am a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one...

We truly are artist as guitar players, always searching for a new pallet of colors to blend to paint the next master piece of tone .

So hope that no one here thinks that were just not ever satisfied, we just want every way possible to build a tone

Right now I bet theirs a mad scientist of a sound engineer out there with 3 or more kempers into a automated mixer building the ultimate tone.

Now that it is all rocketing up into science fiction. Why not have multiple profiles layered in different dynamic zones similar to multiband compressors in mastering studios. This would also shoot the complexity of it all into the range of mastering equipment. But, hmm, aren't we guitar players and dont't we like it, when it goes to eleven?

[Blocked Image: http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/Kelly/20111110_nigel_tufnel_49.jpg]

But to be honest: I like the dynamic range of my amp and I also like the dynamic range of my amp's profile inside the KEMPER.

I would love to see a tone stack library with stacks which mimic various amps and their specific controls. As far as the gain control, I love it the way it is and wouldn't change anything.

I like the idea above about blending (or interpolating) between two proiles at different gains. But in the meanwhile i'd settle for a "gain range score" that would suggest if the gain knob on a profile is most "realistic" over, say, 25%, 50% or 100% of its full rotation.
But anyway, i'm happy (delighted) to use the secondary parameters to "improve" on an existing amp's characteristics.

I was only reacting to Per's post. And I still think that freely assignable quick access buttons would be cool for many things one of them being what Per wants to do.

But I personally am totally happy with a neutral Gain knob. AISB: I like the dynamic range of my amp and I also like the dynamic range of my amp's profile inside the KEMPER. I don't even use the Gain knob, as I control the gain with the (active) volume knob on the guitar or with an expression pedal set to volume positioned post stomps. This is also a fine, neutral gain control.