Posts by fretboardminer

Quote from Per

pretty special.

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

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 ...

Yes, I will do some credits for the profiling studio. Just wanted to see how others think - not from a legal, but from a personal point of view.

Soon I will release my first album where I played all of the guitar tracks through the KPA. Now that we are thinking about all the stuff that should be written on the cover I think about this, and would like to know what you guys would do:

The profile I used was made when I payed a studio for a whole day just to profile my favourite amp as good as can be. That was a lot of work and skill from the engineers in the studio - and my personal money. The guitar soundcheck in another studio where we recorded with the band was just pluggin in the line signal and doing the right level - period. The second studio (where we recorded with the band) was payed too and is certainly credited on the cover. Now I wonder: should I credit the profiling studio on the cover?

Early Fender amps didn't use treble bleed caps.

Quote from Quitty

How young do you want them?

I was thinking about individualistic players, no matter how old. People with a really very own, far out approach to guitar playing who still managed to be sucessful in the upper market. I am not really an explicit fan of Knopfler but his fingerpicking and his very individualistic phrasing make him a good example.

This ...

Quote from Axe41

I know I'm probably the only one who is OCD

No, you are not.

Quote from Will_Chen

There is a camp of users who believe you shouldn't make any adjustments to a profile as that is how the amp sounded when it was captured. I think that's incredibly close minded.

I like profiles that sound perfect even without EQ and stuff added before or behind the Stack section. But for me this is not a philosophical question, just practical: that way I have the slots in the Stomp and Effect section free for "effect" type of manipulations, as I don't need them to create the fundamental sound. IMO you can do as much tweaking to a profile as you would do to a recorded guitar track when mixing in a studio.

Quote from ckemper

Many tube amps add colouration with the gain control.
The more gain, the more bass frequencies are added to the guitar sound.
With less gain, bass frequencies go down, making the sound thinner.

Does anybody know, if there is a specific intention behind that added coloration?

This behaviour is typical for capacitor parallel to a pot. You find it on most Volume pots in amps as well as in guitars too. Also on Gain pots of High-Gain amps (Marshall, Mesa-Rectifier ...). Like in guitars, it is meant to preserve the high frequencies from being dampend at lower volume/gain settings. And like in guitars it hardly ever really works.

Some amps even have a Bright switch which is nothing else than a possibility to take out this condenser. On a Fender Twin at low volumes for example this Bright switch lets you choose between too muddy or too brittle.

The KPA allows us to profile the amps at their sweet spot and then play at any volume. That's so gorgeous!

For me the Gain knob at the KPA works fine, as long as you go down. Adding more gain than the reference amp had might be difficult sooner or later, but taking down the gain is ok for me. It just does not contain the above mentioned coloration. Which I like a lot. Who needs a brittle or a muddy Twin?

Custom curves had been requested several times before here, but maybe it is a good idea if you repeat this request once again.

I use a HILTON optical volume pedal in the KEMPER's effects loop. This occupies the Direct Out jack and adds more D/A conversion stages but it is the only way to get the sensitivity I was used to from earlier, analog setups. I am unhappy with the curves of the expression pedal and, above all, also with the mecanical inertia in other expression pedals on the market.

If you are happy with the Ernie Ball you could try if it is possible connect it to the KEMPER's EXP jacks in addition to your FCB1010. I have no experience with MIDI in the KEMPER but I know it is possible to use the Ernie Ball as a direct expression pedal if you connect it with a Y-cable.

Cool!

Quote from paults

Pop music is as entrenched in modern culture as Shakespeare and Beethoven. For that matter, in most age groups it is more entrenched. That's why classical theatre, classical music, tribute bands, and cover bands are commercially viable.

In Germany neither classical music nor classical theatre would be commercially viable without massive support from state culture departments. Beethoven, Shakespeare yes, but nobody here would remember Gluck or Sternheim if the government would not push every year many millions of culture support into state run theatres and opera houses. Also Pop music has massive support from state-run broadcasting stations. A lot of other musical styles just don't get any airplay.

Maybe the discussion gets an interesting twist if we invert the question: "why so few individualists?". I guess/hope many would oppose here: there are a lot of individualists. At least that's my impression - but: problem is they play in the backyard clubs and avantgarde festivals and get 10% or 1% of a regular fee. And, more important, they don't even have the perspective to make it into the higher market, because there is no higher market for excentric music.

The wonderful (and certainly individualist) guitar player John Russell has coined a nice image for that: some play tennis and some play ping-pong. Both are serious sports, but in ping-pong there is no Wimbledon, no millionaires, no mansions, no Rolls-Royce to be won.

Maybe Mark Knopfler is a good example for an extremley individualistic guitar style that yet made it to the upper market. But that is already many decades ago. Any modern examples?

Quote from viabcroce

export them in graphics (pdf, jpeg... whatever) and print them together

This is what I did last time. The problem is, it is a very pedestrian method and takes a lot of time during which there is no more chance to make corrections in the music. The Premiere is already in August. Correcting until the very last moment is very important in these kind of compositions. Also you loose all the other benefits of modern scoring software. I found out a way of tricking polymetrics into polytempics. This is not much less awkward but it can be done all inside Finale. This is the way we go for now. Until someone will write a software that can cope better with multiple timelines.

Thanks though to all of you for all these suggestions!

Quote from londonjeepster

can you imagine what Hendrix would have done with a Kemper,would he have tried to recreate the sound of players that had gone before or would he have created something new? think we all know the answer to that.

Honestly, no! Believe it or not, I really cannot guess which answer you are suggesting. Could be both, no?

Quote from paults

You are usually a force for good - were you in a bad mood about something else when you wrote these posts?

Talking about copying is not bad per se. As long as it is not disrespectful towards cover bands.

Look at piano players: before the concert the organizer will have a piano tuner come and he will take care that it is well tuned and all of it's components are working well. That is how it is done with many acoustic instruments - a craftsman takes care of the sound and the musician can focus all his energy on style and tone. Somehow the electric guitar is different in this respect.

Few guitarists can afford to pay a specialist who can setup and maintain the whole combinaton of guitar, pedals and amps. So normally you are quite left alone in choosing and arranging all those impedances and gainstages and other electronical factors that make up a good sound. In that situation copying a sound of your hero can help for a while.

Will_Chen's video post is great for showing us how important style and tone are besides the sound. With the KPA it will be much easier to have a good sound and focus more on your tone and style. I am curious if and how this will change the guitar music to come?

Quote from Will_Chen

He could always do what they did back in the day and put ink to paper.

Yep. That was my first response to him too. A bit of a calligraphic exercise would be less trouble than fighting our way through all those hidden corners of music printing software. The problem is that modern days composers are a bit like us KPA guitar players: we are getting used to having all these EQs and compressors and delays and stuff at hand so easily - there are so many features in modern scoring programs which composers would not want to miss either.

Quote from lightbox

Maybe a "step tracker" software could layer different tracks with different tempo.

Thanks for that hint. I will have to investigate that. I also don't know this program. The optical representation should not be a problem, each track has it's own grid according to it's given tempo:
[Blocked Image: http://www.audiosemantics.de/FORUMS/polytempic.jpg] 
Technically they are somehow close to it, as many have algorithms to open up the rigid time frame for "human touch" corrections. But, yes it would need multiple playheads. I think this is another point where the biggest problem is the lack of demand in the wider music production szene.

Quote from Will_Chen

Polytempic? Huh, does it actually sound cohesive or just chaotic?

No it's not cohesive and not chaotic, it is polytempic. Each of the groups play tight in their tempo but all groups have different tempi. I heard this when I was at the Fusion festival and heard different bands play at different stages at the same time. Charles Yves did this hundred years ago by having different orchestras play at different corners of the market place.

The problem is, it will be performed by a symphony orchestra. The conductors need printed sheet scores on paper. So every solution based on audio files and time-stretching won't work. And the polytempics only appear for a short moment and after that they all have to meet again at a certain measure and from there on they go together again. That is quite a riddle ...

I am helping a fellow composer on his score about polytempic music. That means the string section goes in 60 Bpm while the choir is in 100 Bpm and a few more other groups have all different tempi. So it is not polyrhythmic (different measures, although this occours too) but polytempic (different tempi, which is the problem). This is really crazy to notate in FINALE. I know, there is no direct connection to the Kemper Profiling Amp but I am grateful for every tiny little hint. I don't know much about sequencing software but I know many of them today can produce score grafics too. But can they handle polytempics?

You should try EMG SAX! Last winter I built up a Warmoth Strat and first time ever used EMGs. And I am still really happy with it. You should keep the old pickguard and replace it completley with the new pickups and other electronics mounted into a new picguard. That makes it very convenient because you can benefit from EMG plugging system and you can conserve the original configuration untouched.

No signal loss in cables, no hum - and a really good Strat tone. If you indeed miss "Humbucker Sounds" I would use some preamp EQ in the KPA. Or you could use a EMG SPC. With the plugging system these things are easy to exchange later on and easy to test and return on moneyback if you don't like it, because there is no soldering.