Posts by mbenigni

Yeah, I think it's time. Nothing's set in stone until I find a buyer of course, and I've U-turned on this a couple of times already, but it feels like enough.

Mostly it's down to a realization that the KPA just isn't what I need right now. I'm not in a working band, much less a working band that would warrant the set up I'd have to truck out to gig the KPA.

I think a lot of us, no matter how much we love the Kemper, would agree that ownership is sometimes a bit of work: keeping up with firmware, cultivating your favorite rigs and profiles, matching with the best power and speakers, etc. If you're in a band or working on a project where that effort is paying dividends, then rock on. If you just dig it as a hobby, same. But increasingly, it's all just making my hair fall out. The seeming impossibility of getting a floorboard together that satisfied my (admittedly personal) preferences was the last straw. Great, great sounds, but in practical terms it's been three years of "almost" for me.

For sale: Kemper Profiling Amp, Unpowered "Toaster", Like new except as noted below, original box, packing materials, and documentation. $1700, shipped anywhere in the continental U.S.

This KPA has never left my (smoke-free) house and it is in perfect condition. Packaging etc. are just as they were when I received the unit from Sweetwater. However, I recently had it in a very well-lit room (direct sunlight) and noticed an uneven spot in the paint on the edge of the chassis. I can't say whether this is something I did or whether it arrived like this from the factory - in most light it isn't even visible. The attached photographs call out the spot, just for "full disclosure".

I also have a Camplifier Studio available for sale, but I don't want to sell this until I've sold the KPA itself. If you'd like both as a package, I'm asking $1800 shipped anywhere in the continental U.S.

http://www.kpa-solutions.com/camplifier/

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OK, somebody buy one of these and try it with the KPA

If I can find a buyer for my EV ELX112p, I might just do that.

I thought Motion Sound used to have a product meant to achieve similar results, with some combination of down-firing woofer and X-Y paired tweeters... or something that would generate pseudo-stereo imaging from a single source. But I can't find anything on their product page now, just the more straightforward designs with two independent sets of speakers mounted on angled baffles. Maybe I'm confusing Motion Sound with a different company (but it wasn't this Centerpoint Space Station; it was something I saw years ago.)

EDIT: Google indicates I might have been thinking of Groove Tubes. Apparently they sold the earlier versions of the Space Station.

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Now can we assume that it is an Software Bug ??

Sure sounds like it, but it's possible that it's bad hardware interacting with overly complex software. For instance, perhaps the KPA and Remote need to pair to establish communication via Mac address, but a battery that powers RAM to store that Mac address is losing power to a leaky capacitor, causing failure over time? Although I'd be very surprised if there were a battery in there at all; pretty much everything relies on non-volatile RAM these days.

In any case, communication with the KPA is probably required in order to retrieve the setting for contrast, which is stored in the KPA. That might explain the wonky display if a connection is not established.

Very mysterious. More mysterious: Kemper still does not appear to understand the problem. Was the Remote designed by Kemper, or did they farm the project out to a 3rd party?

What I'm proposing here won't help with visual feedback (LEDs) from a generic pedal, but it will get rid of the annoying "primer presses" you sometimes have to go through to get your floorboard in sync with a newly loaded rig.

IRL, stomp boxes toggle.

Bump. Possible? Impossible? Possible but unlikely?

On/ Off state of each effect is always "known" to the KPA, therefore KPA OS is a logical place to make a toggle option available. This is well-evidenced by the fact that the following is already included:

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CC#16, any value - Toggles all Stomps between On and Off setting.

Even an additional CC like this one, to Toggle post-Amp effects, would be helpful. But better still would be for each of the individual Stomp and FX CC's to respond to "any value" (excluding 0 and 1, which are required for On and Off respectively) to Toggle between On and Off.

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It looks as if I did get 2 defective remotes.

Interesting. So best indication at this time is that Kemper has a QC issue related to some percentage of bad hardware. It would be nice if they could determine the part causing failure and get some kind of testing online, to reduce the probability of shipping a bad unit.

Glad this finally worked out for you. I started selling gear in hopes of purchasing a Remote back when the early bird announcement was made. Maybe Kemper will eventually get supply and demand sorted out and I'll wind up with one after all. (Every alternative seems to present one problem or another.)

PVO_Dave, who manufacturers the rack in your photo above? I just got a Quiklok BS-625 for a toaster/ 1x12 set up, but the stand is really heavy and the top rack is a little unstable - I can't see any practical way to transport the rig once it's set up, which pretty well defeats the purpose.

@Guitartone, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Just a little joke to illustrate that an external synth connected "in some kind of way" to the KPA is of course possible. All tongue in cheek - I'm sure you were thinking more along the lines of digital connection, integrated controls, etc.

Yes, it's called an SY-300.

I don't think you can do this with the midi moose. It will only send absolute PC messages. In order to select rig number in current performance, you need to send CC 50-54, value of 1.

However, you may find that using the midi moose as intended is even better. Just use its bank up/down buttons to change performances, rather than the buttons on the KPA.

Hot damn that sounds legit.

100% agree about the value in being able to profile an amp design that sounds great but isn't necessarily stable.

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When someone with a later date gets theirs I will upgrade my irritation to pissed and throw a childlike tantrum. It should be entertaining to you all!

Ha! Missed this post. Points for self-awareness!

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Kemper's website wouldn't take any of my normal credit cards and then when one finally worked I find that the order didn't fully go through. I also noticed a pending charge on one of the CC's that didn't work but nothing on my CC that did work. Charge still hasn't been removed. I've emailed Kemper but they take forever to get back and nothing really gets done. I was on the early bird order list supposedly. Such a frustrating process to go through to buy an expensive item. Still not sure about what's going on.

It doesn't seem like Kemper is well equipped to handle direct retail sales on an international scale. I still don't understand why they didn't just distribute them in bulk to vendors who could have fulfilled orders more smoothly, e.g. Sweetwater in the U.S., Thomman in the UK, etc. I think everyone - including Kemper - would have been much happier.

That is weird. Is it possible PayPal is trying to account for fluctuations in Euro to USD conversion rate by applying that "fee" back to Kemper?

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@mbenigni
What feature do you want that the remote lacks?

Primarily, the ability to control external MIDI gear in addition to the KPA itself. The Remote will presently send PC messages to MIDI Out, but there's no way to map expression pedals, which means more gear/ cables/ kludgey workarounds. Other things would be helpful IMO, but far less important, e.g. the ability to swap the top row and bottom row of buttons, to make stomp/FX switching more easily accessible vs. rig changes.

Bottom line is the Remote is a bit of overkill for me, and more than I wanted to spend. It's also late in arriving (for my immediate purposes, suffice to say it's not available) and I'm hearing enough about unexplained failures to make my cold feet even colder. I've owned a Kemper for years; it's crazy I'm even still thinking about a practical set up.

If you're really curious, this dovetails with a f/w request I've got going in another thread, in hopes of making it easier to use generic controllers... but this is just one more thing to wait for, instead of playing guitar: http://www.kemper-amps.com/for…alues-for-Stomp-CC-s-etc/?

Bump.

I'm officially going through hell trying to make my old MIDI controller hop between CC and PC modes in order to work best with the KPA. If the KPA could use a single CC value to toggle the aforementioned CC#'s I could use a PC-only controller (and translation) and be done with it. There aren't a lot of options in the way of battery powered MIDI controllers with acceptable form-factor; the Tech 21 MIDI Moose is one example and in my case it's already paid for.

I know it's not much of an ultimatum if I'm the only one who cares, and I know Kemper have their hands full, but this seems like such low-hanging fruit, so to speak. I'd like to hear ASAP whether Kemper thinks this is feasible (in the very near future) because I'm probably going to arrange to sell the KPA otherwise.

Again, the request in summary, for all CC's relating to effects with on/off states:
CC #x value 0: off
CC# x value 1: on
CC# x value [other]: toggle on/off

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weird being conflicted with both excited about my new KPA

3DogNate, I hear you. To be honest, Kemper ownership has been this way for me for nearly three years now. I love the way the thing sounds, so I have a hard time parting with it, but trying to deal with practicalities like controllers etc... I feel like I'm pushing a rock up a hill. I'm always waiting on some new feature or some new product to make it all come together. I sometimes wish I never got into this process in the first place, and as of last night (after a really bad time trying to program a third-party floorboard to meet my needs) I'm back to considering selling the KPA and getting into something more practical, e.g. a Roland device with flexible Assigns, etc. The alternative is to throw MORE money at the problem, by way of buying a Remote (which will get here "when it gets here" and probably, but not necessarily, work.) But that costs an arm and a leg and I already know it has limitations I'm not happy about. It's all beginning to feel like good money after bad, and worse than that: good hours after bad. I just can't believe I went to bed empty-handed again last night - i.e. without a practical, reliable solution for gigging.

Sorry to be so negative (and mostly off-topic) this morning, just really at wits end... again. I'm starting to think of the KPA like Pandora's Box, except tones come out of this box, and once you've heard them you can't close the damned thing again.

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It should be able to happen in the kpa, although it might take way longer, as the kpa would have to render audio as it processes return audio

That's the tricky part. If the new signal path were entirely internal to the KPA, it wouldn't have to take place in real-time, and therefore this request would be at least theoretically possible. But in order for the feature to be valuable, you'd want to profile the loaded profile and whatever was in the effects loop - that's where things get a little sketchy, as the latter h/w is an analog signal path acting in real-time.

The alternate approach is to add an option to merge two existing profiles, e.g. take your favorite commercial amp profile, made with the best mic in the best room at the best level, etc. etc. then add a profile of your favorite stomp box chain (of applicable effects), which is relatively easy to create as a DI profile.