Posts by fretboardminer

  • FRFR On the way

    As far as I know the EV ELX112is passive!!!


    That means it is only a speaker! No mixer inside and (more important) no poweramp! So you need at least a poweramp between the KPA and your EV ELX112. If you want a FRFR where you can easily plug and play your Kemp you should get an active speaker.


    Generally I totally agree that a fullrange speaker (or "FRFR" look >> here >> ) is the better way to go. Many reasons have already been told here (more choices in for speaker sounds in your rigs, better control over what is in the FOH (and recording), avoiding mistakes in microphone positions in a fast soundcheck, possibility to have the sound of hard driven speakers at any volume ...) I would like to add this one: all guitar speakers have quite extreme beams. That is when you look right into their face they sound really harsh and from the side they sound way too muddy. There is only a small spot (like 45°) in between where the sound is as you want it. This beam effect is much weaker on FRFR.

  • active volume pedal as expression pedal?

    In the meantime I tried with a ZOOM FP01 expression pedal with a correct TRS-jack cable. There is no difference compared to the BOSS FL-50L with a Y-cable.


    It is not so much the physical ruggedness, that is troubling me but the uneven swell: violine swells especially with stronger chords always start with a slight bump at the beginning, they come in too sudden and then the rest of the curve is ok. They start from zero as the should do but in the very first movement they jump up to say 15 out of 100.


    Here is a >> soundcloud sample >>


    The bump at the beginning is even visible in the waveform (download enabled).


    I have set the RANGE parameter in the RIG menue to -5. Location is "post effects" and there is no compressor in the whole signal chain. Noise Gate set to 0.0.

  • Monitor output symmetrical?

    Quote from guitarnet70

    I normally dial back Bass and Mids from the Monitor EQ on the Kemper depending on room and stage. I also have it on Mic and Floor.

    Yes, I bring up the presence to 3 o'clock and the bass down to 9 o'clock. Yesterday I just used the XLR from main out (that was Line!) but now here from the jack input, yes Mic and Floor sound just fine!

  • Monitor output symmetrical?

    Quote from guitarnet70

    Monitor out is Mono

    Hi guitarnet70:


    Shure it is mono but is it symmetrical, i.e. TRS or simple mono jack? Also the level would be good to know - seems to be MIC level because the LINE setting on the RCF is way too low.


    BTW: Thanks for you recomendation of the RCF NX SMA12! Yesterday I played the first gig where I decided to use the KPA! I really liked the Kemp and also the RCF NX SMA12 - although there is still a lot to do. Soon I will have a gig, with the Berlin Radio recording and then I need the setup with monitor out and main out. Still the RCF NX seem so be much darker than listening to the main out through my monitor speakers. Even on louder levels they are darker. I like the sound when I just dial in some high end but I need to make shure that the PA and recording sound will not be too bright. So I am fiddeling around with he two EQs on the different outputs.

  • Monitor output symmetrical?

    Does anybody know if the monitor output jack is symmetrical? I don't find any info about this in the manuals. The input of my RCF NX 12SMA is symmetrical. I know it won't do a damage if I use a stereo cable but will it do any good?

  • active volume pedal as expression pedal?

    In my old setup the volume pedal was the most important effect. (You can do lots of things with a simple volume pedal like crescendos and sforzatos, violin tone, (squashy, "effect" type of) compression and weird tremolos!) Now on the KPA I miss my HILTON active volume pedal. I can hook up a BOSS FL-50L with a y-cable as EXP2 but to play the volume on such a shabby plastic device is quite sad, when you are used to a really smooth Volume pedal from the world of pedal steel guitar players. Now when I try to do the same y-cable-connection with the HILTON it won't read anything no matter how I connect the in and out jacks or switch the the Expression Type (1 or 2). Any ideas what could be done here? Is it possible that the y-cable does only work with passive pedals? The HILTON has a buffer on the input and output.


    I know I could insert it into the loop but then I loose slot X in the effects rack and I also add two stages stages of digital conversion (DA and AD). OK, this will probably what I will have to do but maybe someone of you has another idea.



    PS: >> this thread here >> reeds like it is possible to use an optical pedal but not one with buffers. So maybe a Morley will do for me?

  • Most Important Feature For Which You Guys Are Immediately Waiting?

    • On any file system I know it is impossible to save two files with the same name. On the KPA it is. But it is not really handy to have five different sounds called: "MyFavouriteChamp". On "store as" it should feedback "file already exists - replace yes or no?" when you forget to change the name.


    • Also the snapshots should be just links to the corresponding files, not again one more copy of the same file in another folder. Is is confusing, when you bring up a rig via snapshot, do some changes, store it and next time you bring up the same rig via the browse knob your changes are gone because you load a different file.

  • Most Important Feature For Which You Guys Are Immediately Waiting?

    in order of relevance:

    • Editor / Librarian
    • tone stack switchable before/after the amp
    • use the KPA as USB audio interface (record and reamp directly via USB)
    • phase inverter switch for the monitor out
    • the 6 quick-dials for MOD, DELAY and REVERB freely assignable to other things. (I never use delay or mod-effects but I would like to have other parameters quickly accessable on stage.
    • a control to dial in a kind of "loundess" (correction of the Fletcher-Munson curve) in the lower settings of the Expression 2 volume pedal.
    • ELECTRO HARMONIX FREEZE in the stomps

  • Bedroom Solution for all the Cheapskates

    I just bought the RCF NX sma12 and I can tell you they are not really ideal for "bedroom" levels because at really low volumes they seem to render less treble than what they bring out at higher volumes - so if you tweak the settings of your KPA at home with low volumes on a 12" FRFR you might end up with a way to much brittle sound on the gigs.


    I am still happy with the RCF NX sma12 but for a budget solution it might be better to chose a cheaper fullrange active speaker for playing at home plus a more "conservative" poweramp+guitar cabinet setup for the gig (i.e. a second hand clean guitar-amp with a power amp input).

  • Optimal eq and volume? Order of adjustments

    Quote from BRUNO

    Compensating guitar sounds should be done before the amp's gain or it's just not the same..for this you can use one of the Eq'q in stomp.

    :thumbup: I totally agree.


    Quote from BRUNO

    It would be cool to have tone stack options like pre gain a la Fender or Mesa (classic Mesa not recto) and post gain a la Marshall ,Vox etc ...

    Post this in the feature request section! Especially for crunch sounds it makes such a big difference when the EQ is before the amp. As a fan of Fender amps I always add an EQ to the stomp section. But for this purpose there is no simple EQ selectable (bass, mid, trable, presence like the amp EQ). You can only choose graphic or studio EQ and you loose one slot in the stomps just for that. Would be much easier if the dedicated amp EQ would offer a switch for pre or post amp.


    Quote from VESmedic1

    Other than that, I have "pure booster" locked in box X I believe, that way any patch I decide needs a volume boost for leads etc, I have it right there, and available via IA on my MIDI pedal.

    You could also use the Expression 2 jack on the back of the KPA for that kind of master volume or solo boost. Then you have the box X slot free for other things.

  • How can I minimize that "ambience" character of the KPA?

    Quote from musicman65

    "Normal PLAYING (on your guitar) doesn't provide enough isolated upper mids/highs for the most accurate refinement."

    Ah, I see. Yes, I totally agree with you on that. On refining we should play all that we want to meet again later in the profiles. And playing isolated and extremley dynamic high end seems to help a lot.


    Also on what you said about the upper mids and hights I totally agree with you. If you compare my raw profile (track 2) and the one that I tweaked (track 3) you see that I tend to add too much of high end. I guess this is because I monitored it with the 700 Watt RCF NX-SMA12 set at normal "room" level in my appartment. At these low volumes they seem to swallow a bit too much treble. So I dialled in even more just to compensate... But when I turned the RCFs louder just for a test I always thought it is a bit too bright. You can see this too if you look at how the same track taken DI from the KPA without the RCFs (track 7) is even more brighter. And the bright part of the signal is what emphasizes this "metal ambience".


    If you listen to the raw DI signal (track 7 ) you also find the metal ambience sound there. In a way it is all too logical: an electric guitar is basically just a block of wood with steel wires - no wonder it sounds "metallic" if you rub it. But in the REFERENCE Champ mic recording (Track 1) this is weaker and it all sounds smoother again - the tube amp seems to even that out by just allowing not too few and not too much of the high end signal. That's how the engineers meticulously made it, when they designed the circuit. So it is not a "fault" of the KPA but it is a consequence of the ability to dial in too much high end in the digital world. This is something I have to get accustomed too. So the key question seems to me to find the right balance for the high end.


    BTW: especially the comparison between the conservative microfone recording (track 1) and and the raw, unedited profile of the same amp (track 2) is really stunning to me. They are so close, that's scary! I checked several times if I did not make a mystake and saved the mic file as a Kemper file - no I did not!!!

  • How to embed a soundcloud player?

    I tried in vain to embed some sound samples that I arranged in a set on my soundcloud account. Did not work. Did I miss something? I tried the flash code (Object Tag) and the HTML5 code (Iframe). Both did not work. I also tried in vain to put it between two Code tags.