Posts by multivir1

I bought a ML a while ago when I still had an AxeFX II.
I didn't use it that much and it ended up in a drawer. The main reason for that being that I didn't get 2way communication to work. In other words:
Patch A has FX1 on, patch 2 has FX2 off. As soon as you start fiddling with the the Midi CC state, there's a 50% chance to get it wrong because TouchOSC thinks you're in another state than the KPA is actually in, sends the wrong command, so you got to resend the correct command with another tap. In other words: not usable on stage.

I haven't tried any other apps than TouchOSC. I see that the ML has been mentioned a couple of times on this forum.
The proper solution would be to sync back the KPA's state to TouchOSC, but I never got that to work.

Has anybody found a solution for this?

To my ears, this is the best active monitor in this small form factor. I went through about a dozen different products, and there was only one that I liked better soundwise - which was 3 grand and weighed about 30 kilos.

Every company claims that their speakers are FRFR (full range, flat respone). If that was true, they would all sound the same. Once you try them out, you will find that some of them emphasize certain frequencies or sound livelier or duller than others. The FBT seems to "react faster & more dynamic" than other speakers I've tried. I can't give you a better explanation. It's loud, not too heavy and has a good overall sound balance with a solid low. I like it

Usually I bring my FBT Verve 8MA. This time I was using the venue's speakers, which were active Mackies for both stage and FOH. A pair for each.

...where we had up to three guitar players on stage at the same time. One was using a Peavey combo, the other a Hughes & Kettner.
After the jam we talked about gear and the bottom line was that the Kemper had the best sound. This was not because the tube amps sounded shabby, but the KPA had a solid presence both on the monitors and the FOH. The amps sounded great in certain spots - mainly on stage, while the KPA sat good in the mix - anywhere.

I had a Axe Ultra and a Axe II before (sold). I kept my tube amps and I still love to play them, but this was very very convenient!
One of my guitar player buddies at that jam had bought an Axe II after he heard mine. I have a hunch he's going to put that on eBay pretty soon

I tried the MS-50G yesterday when I was at the guitar store to get a new delay pedal for my acoustic rig. They just had received it this week.

On one hand - this is really cool. It's cheap and it does a lot of things. The MS-50G has amp sims and a bunch of effects (even some that the KPA doesn't have like acoustic sim, harmonizer, pitch shifter) and is comparable to the G3 (sound, processing power - it doesn't offer all the features though). You can have 6 effects at the same time and use the left / right buttons on the side of the footswitch to navigate through the chain. If you work with a pedal board and want a swiss army knife stompbox, the MS-50G is a good choice.

Looking only at the delay effect - which was why I went to the store - the options I compared were the TC Flashback, the Eventide TimeFactor and the MS-50G. I opted for a TC Flashback, cause I wanted something that has the ability to sound digital clean. I couldn't get the Zoom's delay to stay clean on the repeats. If money wouldn't matter, I would have gone for the Eventide TimeFactor, which costs almost 3x as much as the TC. Sound quality wise, the step from the Eventide to the Flashback seemed about as big as the step from the Flashback to the Zoom.

Although the MS-50G was tempting, especially at the price point, I left the store without it cause it didn't do anything better than gear that I already have. If I wouldn't already own a PocketPOD as an emergency backup rig, I would have bought it without thinking twice, but if you're looking for a great sounding pedal, I guess the one trick ponies will always win.
(Yes, I kept my tube amps and stomp boxes when I bought the KPA...)

...so apparently a few people here have AURAs and Mama Bears. Could you please profile them?

Quote from ballantine

Excellent work!!!
Can I know how you do all these functions and how you connect the KPA?

I'd like to do something like that... Do you have any documentation or tip for me?

Everything is controlled via MIDI. The heart of the controller is an Atmel processor.

The final version is done. It has a power led, a stereo jack connector for an expression pedal (wah) and works with my Mission Engineering pedal without calibration. It is connected to the KPA with a 7 to 5 pin MIDI cable. That allows me to have the DC adapter next to the KPA on the backline and run only one cable for both MIDI & power to the footswitch.

For now, I won't release a documentation on how to build the pedal, but if you want one, then I'll build one for you.
My asking price is 280 Euros. This would be a one-off, hand soldered by me.

You'd need to add shipping & local taxes, a 7 to 5 pin cable and a 9V DC adapter if you don't already have that stuff.

Contact me at [email protected] if you're interested.

Cheers,

M.

Hi,

I downloaded quite a bunch of profiles and must say there are some great ones - but I lost the overview.
It would be great if there would be a shortcut to downloading the profile, putting it on a USB stick, uploading it to the KPA, pressing a bunch of knobs to delete it again.

How about a small tool that allows you to hook up the KPA to the computer via USB and just go through the profiles really quickly, mark the ones that I like, delete the ones I don't care for? (usually this just takes a couple of seconds)

That would help to narrow down the selection of the 1000+ available profiles quite a bit.

It's great to have them all available, but the vast selection doesn't make it easier to find what matches my taste

Thanks,

M.

Quote from benvdd

I'm far from an expert so correct me if I'm wrong but...
2-way communication over an RJ45 connection, which is what the FC will use, is perfectly possible. In other words, all expression pedals hooked up to the FC will connect via an analog (stereo) jack cable, and the position will be translated into MIDI cc, hence the need for calibration.

It sounds like you're referring to the proprietary Kemper pedalboard. This will obviously use RJ45 and bidirectional communication. However, it seems that they're not using standard MIDI. And I guess that it will take a couple more months until their unit will be available.

In the meanwhile I've hooked up my Mission Engineering pedal to my footswitch and can report that with this combination, there's no need for calibration.

Quote from benvdd

EXP pedals connected directly to the FC would calibrate just fine (MIDI cc readout on KPA)

I've checked the manual & my KPA. I can calibrate the analog pedals on the Kemper, but not the signal of a midi expression pedal. If I should be mistaken, please let me know how to get there.

As for DigitalTube's wish to use more presets - that's how I had it in the first place. However, this is MIDI. If you have all 127 slots assigned to rigs, then you'll just cycle trough them. But if you assign say 5 rigs only, then the pedal doesn't care about that and the KPA doesn't care if you send MIDI program changes for a program that's not assigned... Unfortunately, there's no 2way communication possible between the KPA and any MIDI pedal.

Quote from ckemper

1. I will not combine Tap and Tuner, since a number of people will want to use the Tuner button as a mute button as well, for changing the guitar etc. This should not be in a position where you accidently press it. The Tap on the other hand should be as accessible as possible.

Hi Christoph,

I would recommend you to combine Tap & Tempo nevertheless. Just implement a 3 second press to activate the tuner. Only few people will accidentally step on the switch for that long, but I guess a majority will prefer to use that free switch for another functionality. Just my 2 cents. As you might have seen, I just finished the first prototype of my own little KPA footswitch:
http://youtu.be/C_VqzWF8QXQ

I'll see what I can do then

I thought about adding expression pedal jacks. What speaks against it is that you need to calibrate these pedals. Which means that you need more buttons on the pedal. You can still connect your expression pedals to the KPA directly. The only downside being that you have to run a cable from the exp pedal to the Kemper which is usually a bit longer than the patch cable you'd be using to connect it to the footswitch.

Hello everybody

I just finished my own Kemper footswitch prototype. I wanted something really small and light that had all the functionality, but was as simple as possible. So here we go: http://youtu.be/C_VqzWF8QXQ
Let me know what you think...

Cheers,

M.

Hi,

I play acoustic guitar too...
If you have a Mama Bear or an Aura pedal, could you profile it for me? (OM's)
I think this should work with the KPA... And to me it makes more sense than profiling a transistor acoustic guitar amp if you want to get a 'natural' sound.

Thanks,

M.

use midi PC instead of CC

+1 for Per's suggestion.

I also work the volume pot a lot if I go straight into a broken up amp so that I can go from clean to overdriven just by varying the guitar volume. Like Armin I have also installed the condenser volume modification.

So far, the KPA cleans up too fast when you turn down the volume. It would be great if I could set that behavior in a menu somewhere...

I might come. I'm from Zurich, so it's not just next door for me. Plus I start a new job on the 1st of march, so I'll have to see if I can take a day off already...

I'm not in the USA, but in Switzerland.

Currently, there's no local dealer that carries the KPA, so I ordered mine from Thomann in Germany.
I had a couple of smaller issues that I reported to the hotline - my KPA is working, I have occasional weird behavior during reboot, which I thought were firmware issues. They decided that I should send it back and get a replacement.

Since everything that's sent from Germany to Switzerland and back has to go through customs, there are a few formalities which kept Thomann from sending me a new KPA right away. If I'd send mine back, they'd have to wait for it, fill out the custom papers for a replacement shipping and then send it back to me. That's about 3-4 days transit each way plus a weekend in between
plus the time they need to process it. I guess it would have taken close to two weeks from the day I would have sent my KPA back until get a new one.

So I called up the KPA hotline in Germany, and asked them nicely if they could already ship the replacement if I gave them my credit card # as a security. They'll send me a new KPA tomorrow and I'll send mine back once the new one arrives. Zero downtime!

That's what I call customer service.

Thanks Burkhard, Katja & Co.

Hey guys,

I'm one of the lucky guitar players who own both an AxeFX II and a KPA.
I don't want to participate in the religious discussions - they're both great units.

Over at the Fractal forum there's a thread called "Bassman challenge" where they're trying to get as close as possible to this sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PaiDuiLzas

Which sounds f*in' awesome to me

Today, two Bassman profiles have been posted and both didn't really give me what I was looking for. Holgi's 1959 Bassman is too clean for me (adding gain on the KPA doesn't sound 'right' to my ears) and toneclone's 1964 Bassman cab didn't give me the sound of those good ole 4x10's that is responsible for quite a bit of the characteristics of the late tweed Bassman amps.

So I just did what's obvious - used the 64 amp and the 59 cab - there you go. Noodle around with it, compare it to the youtube video.
It's not 100%, but pretty close. Let me know what you think. Even if you don't like it - I do

http://www.weilthing.com/KPA/2012-02-13 20-35-02 - Hybrid B'man.kipr

Cheers,

M.