I hate to be the negative guy, but I thought I would share my experiences with the KPA so far, and I'm sad to say, I am not a happy customer!
DISCLAIMER: This is not so much directed at Kemper the company, more the actual products. Each unit had/has been treated very safely, using racks and hardcases for transport, and kept well within safe levels of operation. Also note that every avenue was exhausted attempting to fix said errors before having no option but to contact Kemper/Point of sale for warranty support etc.
KEMPER 1 - Unpowered Lunchbox. Purchased by myself around 18 months ago direct from Australian Distributor. After 12 months has slowly but surely consistently had LEDs die on the front screen. Last count there is about 6-8 LEDs that are dead. An annoying problem, but one I am happy to look past as with weekly band practice and weekly shows, I dont have the downtime to send it back to be repaired. Otherwise unit works fine, and I am happy with the product.
KEMPER 2 - Unpowered Lunchbox. Purchased by my bandmate at the time.Purchased 18 months ago concurrently with Kemper 1 from Aus Distributor. After 12 months it had multiple LEDs die, around 10-15 at last count. Also has had 4 LEDs literally just fall out of the front of the Kemper, mainly from the volume knob. For the last 2 months, it has had an intermittent Output error, meaning sometimes it would receive input, but send no output to monitor or main out. A soft system reset would fix it, but as of last night, it experienced a hardware DSP error, and is now in the process of being repaired/replaced by Aus distributor.
KEMPER 3 - Powered Rackmount version. Purchased by current bandmate 4 months ago from Thomann in Germany, due to the steep $4000 AUD retail tag here. As of last week, after being used literally a handful of times, also experienced a hardware DSP error, and will have to be sent back to Thomann for repair/replacement.
KEMPER 4 - Unpowered Rackmount version. Owned by guitarist friend of mine. On arrival from Thomann, had a faulty input which meant guitar signal was weak/intermittent. Had to be sent back to Thomann for repair.
Not a happy customer at all. Whilst I am happy with my unit - I have lost what faith I had in its reliability, due to the fact 3 close friends of mine, who have all bought different versions of the KPA have had major issues. This is just not good enough in my eyes. To add to the problem, Kemper 3 died less than 7 days out from my new bands first show. We then contacted my friend that owns Kemper 2, and asked to borrow it for the interim. Problem solved until it then finally gave up its last life essence the night before our first show. All I can say is thankfully the Aus distributor have been super helpful, as they offered for us to borrow one of their demo models for the weekend to cover us for the first few shows. That being said, we will have a good handful of shows in the next 4 weeks which will mean it will be an ongoing issue having to borrow gear until Kemper 3 comes back from Germany.
Kemper werent too helpful in the matter regarding Kemper 3 (were not needed to be contacted regarding the others) Whilst I do completely understand that it is not necessarily their direct responsibility to deal with a unit that was sold from Kemper to a distributor in Europe, which was then sold to Thomann, which was then sold to a customer on the other side of the world - The other half of me thinks that considering it is a high end piece of equipment with a similar price tag from a newer company, I hoped that maybe they would have maybe gone a little further for their customer, considering we had a show in a week, and after 3 months and barely any use was completely dead. Maybe even giving a directive to the Aus distributor to replace the dead unit with one of their stock, the aus distributor then sending the Dead unit back to Kemper, and kemper to replenish the distributors stock with a new unit. Kemper then dealing with thomann & distributor. A very convoluted process I know, but just an idea. We were left feeling a little left out in the cold with it all. After contacting Thomann, they were helpful in the fact they will cover the shipping for the unit, but the lost time to send it from Aus to Germany and back cant be refunded, and we will be left with scrounging for gear for shows until it arrives back.
Sorry for the long nature of this post, but between us we have spent around $7000 AUD on these products, and each one has been faulty and/or unreliable. Let this be a little warning to prospective buyers that these units although good arent bulletproof, and in my case (which I hope is a one-off) extremely prone to error. At this stage anyone that asks my opinion on digital gear, I will be steering them towards an axe fx or a pod hd before these.
