In general, the KpA effects are underrated. But the Kemper drive and Kemper fuzz are in my opinion unmatched, and id add them to a pedal board as well if I wanted to have a more trad board. There are other multi effect units that give you a bunch of fuzz models, but none that organize them in such a logical way. I’d put their delays and reverbs up with any others, having owned a H9 for a while. No doubt some units including the H9 offer certain unique complexities and quirks, but the best part of the KpA effects is that there is a certain logic and uniformity that runs through them; For example the controls and features share by all the delays, the ducking feature in almost all effects.
Posts by Grooguit
-
-
As for the pay-for-premium plug-in's model? I would actually be OK with this .... especially if they lowered the base price. Then I could pay ONLY for the things that are most important to me. Natural reverb, and some of the fancier delays. I don't use morph (although I may some day as I can see how cool this feature can be) or MOST of the efx that are missing on the Play.
Almost all of the newer digital mixers are moving to this model. They charge extra for their premium plug-in algorithms.
I think that most of us would accept such a model ESPECIALLY if it gave us a continuously improving set of features and functions that could be paid for to update our KPA with for the next 20 years. This would also give Kemper new revenue to support the work needed to develop these features. I promise you guys, firmware developers, validation and release management are NOT cheap.
Have they hinted at such a thing? My guess is that if that this Player is physically capable of providing the advanced effects, they have every incentive to do so for free. Sure some guitarists would be willing to shell out dough for that, but the long term PR when other direct all in one competitors don’t do this might offset any short term revenue. Especially for a company with a hard earned reputation for a decade of free updates.
The lack of these advanced effects is giving many potential customers pause. This includes Stage owners that love kempers advanced effects and would be willing to shell out money for a Player if they didn’t have to lose their favorite effects. If the advanced effects could be implemented, they stand to gain more customers, including many existing customers of the head/rack/stage who have otherwise been sitting back and getting free updates for years.
The idea that such advancements of the player would make their big brothers less of a value is a stretch. Having 4 more effects slots and a 14 dedicated foot switches instead of 3, an effects loops, and a screen is no small difference in functionality. This is true even if some would view the Player as the best value.
Many guitarists that wants a no compromise premium KpA still have an incentive to buy a Stage or head/rack with remote, even if he agrees that the Player would be the best value. (The line 6 stomp XL is the best value for line 6, but that doesn’t antiquate the Helix) in fact I suspect that many new Kemper users whose first Kemper purchase is this new player will eventually what to upgrade to a Stage when they get a taste of kempers general workflow.
-
Maybe this is a stupid request. Take with a grain of salt for a guy that probably won’t buy one because he owns a stage anyway. The biggest complaints seem to be that not all the effects and morph are available in the new Player. Though most seem to accept that certain dsp trade offs are neccesary for a particular price point.
One of the things I like about my Stage is the smooth transition between Rigs and spillover of wet effects and the Player does this too. Yet this MUST require a significant dedication of DSP. ( line 6 recently updated the Helix to give this feature, but it requires you to give up HALF of its Dsp!!!).
Point being, if the Player had mode with no spillover, this would provide significantly more dsp to allocate having all the effects including the advanced delays and reverbs. so if you turn this mode off, and any of the advanced effects in rigs would be grayed out and bypassed. But if you turn this mode on, then you could use the greater library of effects.
Or maybe just have the caveat that the advanced reverbs delays don’t spill over when you change rigs, and only the shortlist of simpler effects that are currently in the player do spill over?!
Perhaps this wouldn’t even be possible whether or not, it’s feasible to implement?
-
One other point of comparison though between the Stomp/Stomp XL and the Kemper Player. Once again, just like the Kemper vs. Helix, Kemper has a DSP advantage forgotten when comparing Rigs to Presets.
The Stomp and Stomp XL follow the DSP allocation of their big brother the Helix. When playing through a song you need to remain in the same preset because there is no spillover and a small audio gap between presets. On the Player, you can toggle through the 5 Rigs in a bank an have a smooth transition with spillover of the wet effects. Therefore there is no need to try and place every effect you want for a song in one Rig, as you can get to four others real quick, even if you use an identical profile in each. Whereas in the Line 6 paradigm, you can assign more effect in a single preset, but that's your practical cap for a single song. Now there may be many situations where a small audio gap and lack of spillover don't matter and you can utilize a bank of presets any time you have small gaps where you aren't playing. But trying to organize you sounds in general in the manner is problematic since there are plenty of times where that small gap would matter greatly from song to song.
-
In Canada the Helix is $2,349.99.
The Kemper player is $1,025.00.
You can literally buy 2 Kemper players for the price of a Helix. Just imagine the possibilities.Another possibility would be to buy the Kemper player AND a Helix Stomp XL for less than the price of either a Stage or Helix. $1450 USD or so. With this set up, you could utilize the Player in the Stomp XL effects loop. Then use the Kemper for its profiles with convenient volume compensation, Noise gate and any pre or post equalizations you want to set for use with a specific profile. (all the stuff you want the dialed the same any time you use that Profile). Then you have the 7 left over effect slots in the Stomp XL to use Line 6's library of effects, whether pre or post amp. You'd still have a slot or two left over in the Kemper player to utilize its effects. and the combined footprint of the two units would take up less space than either the Stage or Helix, plus you could tuck each into a different pocket of a bag or your computer's bag. Best part is that since the Stomp is an all in one unit, you don't lose having the convenience of a headphone output at the end of your signal chain.
-
Didn't Kemper have a 2-button footswitch that could could assign additional functions for? I don't see it on the website. That might be a simple plug and play way to get a two more footswitch functions out of the player. Those you could use other brands per the Player manual where it mentions the KPA one.
-
This ist what the manual says:
The Stack, with its Amplifier and Cabinet modules, is fully compatible, and all types of PROFILEs can be used. The effects in modules A, B, DLY and REV are migrated, if the effect types are available in the Player. Otherwise, modules are set to “Empty”. Exception: Natural Reverb gets replaced by Easy Reverb.
I think that's a really innovative and convenient idea, converting the natural reverb to easy reverb; I bet it gets you in the ballpark of what you had set in Natural. I use the Natural quite a bit on my Stage. Most of the time though, i think the settings I'm using that aren't all that intense and could be approximated with the Easy. There's certainly no lack of quality in the Easy algorithm.
-
Display More
Here in the US it is listing for ~$700 as I understand it. This puts it in direct market competition with the Helix Stomp HX and XL.
Both the Helix units offer an efx loop and a color LCD screen. The XL offers a more comprehensive set of foot switches as well.
One can argue that a Helix is not in the same tonal category as the KPA (I certainly feel this is the case); however, I would argue that Helix poses significant competition in this price point.
Kemper Player Pro's:
- Backup to full KPA
- Better tube tone
- Easier to understand workflow (more tube amp + pedal board standard)
Helix Pro's:
- Color LCD Screen - Better labeling of the patch you are on and its routing/efx (although it is small)
- XL version has a more complete set of foot switches for live performance
- Effects loop for those that use it
My personal opinion is that Kemper is going to have to lower the price after a year on this product. I like the product and believe that it will be a very good one indeed; however, my product manager self says that the color LCD is sexy on the helix and will sell. I would not have released a product without the color LCD even if I thought it was functionally irrelevant due to size. In fact, I would have argued that the Kemper Player have a larger color LCD than the Helix and would have touted its readability in a live setting.
Still, it isn't like the Player is a bad product, I just think it would have been worth the extra cost for the color LCD. Just my 2 cents.
Those are good points. I have a a Pod Go which recently got the cab updates that Helix got; at least running one amp and cab, it should be tonally identical to the Helix and Stomp. I so wanted to love the thing but I feel there is a digital harshness that I sense even if I dial in a tone I generally like. While this thing will be compared to the Helix stomp and stomp XL, I think Kemper profiles, especially liquid profiles are in a higher class than the Helix amp and cab models. So just as the Kemper Stage has a niche in the market compared to the Helix that has more routing options, there will be a niche for this as well compared to Stomp users.
-
Call me crazy, but I think this Player would be great for those people that own and prefer the Helix work flow and their vast effect models and have the best of both worlds. You could place this in one of its audio loops and have the Helix change Rigs with midi messages (with no audio gap, which is the Kemper's strength). Each Rig on the player could have the KPA's very musical noise gate set just so.
Any complex EQ you want to do, you could do in one of the Player's four effect slots; these are all settings you'd want customized to whatever amp/cab and gain settings you are using. Kpa's auto volume compensation when you make gain changes is one of KPA's strengths which you now bring to the Helix workflow.
This would allow you to have audio-gap free amp changes from Kemper within a single Helix preset (you can do that within a Helix preset with their amp models, but you'd run out of Helix DSP for other things) If you make changes to a particular Rig, whether it's gain, EQ, an effect EQ or noise gate, you make these changes once. If you use that Rig in a number of Helix presets, you don't have to go to each and every preset and make the changes over and over like you would if you were using a Helix amp model. The best part is that all this would be done without taxing the Helix DSP, with the very small DSP dedicate to using an effects loops.
That said, I personally like the KPA effects and actually prefer their approach of having similar controls across many effect algorithms, in particular the ducking parameter on everything.
-
Display More
If this had the same number of slots as its bigger brothers then, other than their Profiling capability, there would be almost no point in buying anything other than this unit. The loss of morphing and the Natural Reverb wouldn't phase me enough to care. Especially at basically half the cost.
Did they limit the unit on purpose? I'm sure they did.
Like a spare tire in case of a flat - backup solutions usually aren't as capable as the primary. If they were....again....why get the bigger unit to begin with?
The reality is this unit is primarily aimed at a different group of players. Some existing owners may want it and that's great. That's clearly not the real target, though.
I had thought similar, but even if they made a mini full-featured unit almost identical to the head/rack/stage that saved most of the space by having only 3-5 foot switches, the other units would still be preferred by many.
If you want the perfect all-in-one, the stage is still the best choice as it has all the footswitches and no external programing that a dedicated footswitch w/ audio loops would have, while still giving you a stereo effects loop and at least some midi functionality for an external pedal or two. The Stage in a nice paced bag is still smaller and lighter than most guitarist's traditional pedal board, even if you can't tuck it your guitar case; any guitarist planning to use the Player on a pedal board is not worried about tucking his Rig into his pocket.
If you prefer a head/rack format because you don't want your KPA on your floorboard, you have the head and rack, though sitting a small floor shaped unit behind you might be preferable to some of those that like the unpowered head and rack format.
I think the "limiting" on purpose is more based on competitive price-point than not wanting older products to appear antiquated, as they wouldn't be. If they could have squeezed all the Delay and Reverb effect algorithms into this thing and kept the price the same, they probably would have if the DSP could otherwise handle it.
-
What I find impressive is, they managed to allow it to switch rigs smoothly and maintain spillover of wet effects. I’ve liked how they’ve always prioritized that over more options in the same preset like line 6 and QC do. Meaning that in the Kemper universe, you tend to need to do less effect toggling because you have the option to smoothly go to other rigs, which on the Stage meant using the front row of foot switches more than the back row which is easier to do live, especially if you’re singing
-
Don’t get me wrong. I still want one. Though not to replace my stage. I bet a lot of bass players will love this thing as well.
-
You could use the stereo outputs if you need stereo to FOH, In that case you could use the XLR to use a single power stage monitor.
It loads any Rigs from the big brother. I'm presuming that whatever effects you have in slots A, B, Del, and Rev would, and the relevant Rig settings would be dialed up on this Player. While anything you have in C, D X, and Mod from the big boys would be missing, and of course any effects the Player doesn't have.
What seems to me to be the deal-killer is it doesn't not appear to have an effects loop. People have been wanting such a KPA to fit on a pedal board to use WITH OTHER EFFECT PEDALS or a traditional pedal board. Some of those other effect pedals are delay and reverb pedals which generally go AFTER the amp section (a philosophy that this unit implements by giving you some of their Delay and Reverbs effects AFTER the amp) Yet the Player's 5 outputs are meant to be at the END of your signal chain to go FOH, headphones, and stage monitors.
For my uses, I love being able to plug headphones in my Stage and practice with all my effects. I don't use external effects because the four slots and the Stage/head/racks full list of effects suffices, but before they updated them I used an H9 in the loop in the X slot AFTER the amp section. In both times, I loved being able to plug headphones in and practice with all my effects.
*To be fair the Tonex also didn't include an effects loop, which I criticized it for.
-
Is that strong enough to hold the Head permanently? (metal, screws,...?)
Because the Head is heavy!I’m thinking like 2014 I did this for a while. I recall it being quite sturdy.
-
What type of solution are you looking for?
A cool feature, which might be quite simple to add, would be a global setting that lets the kpa switches perform the way it does when Rig manager is connected, like you describe above (whether Rig manager is connected or not of course). There's probably some users that would prefer that functionality live.
-
The have rack shelves with holes for screws:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/UTR1--middle-atlantic-products-utr1-1u-utility-rack-shelf
you just remove the feet of your head, position it where you want on the rack shelf, and screw the feet back on through the shelf. I did this for a brief time in 2014 or so.
-
This might be one of those things that sounds simple but would be tough to implement and would leave lots of hard decisions that would need to be made, leading to new requests of the new feature. For example, would this be a global setting? You'd need to give the option to have it apply to certain outputs and not others. Would the increase stay on when switching Rigs or default back to off? DSP wise, this would be asking the kpa to do some additional processing, as by definition you want it to not use one of the allowed effect slots.
A couple work arounds: do you use morphing in a lot of your live rigs? If not, you have two options. I believe you can morph the Rig volume in the amp block, which would provide a clean boost or cut and you could this with an expression pedal. Or, better, you can have morphing controlled by the second press of the footswitches and do the same thing. The best part of using the footswitches, is that it's the closest row of switches on the remote/stage and has visual led indicating morph and regular state. For this you want to set the how quick the morph occurs to zero so it's instantaneous. If you have occasional other uses for morphing, you can have Rigs set up for those specific needs and perhaps in those cases you can save an effects slot for using the clean boost effect after the amp block.
Another organizational thing I like to do to use up all five Rigs in a performance first before even programing effect toggling, even if the difference between two of the Rigs is nothing more than one effect on or off, because it's always easier to press the bottom row of switches. If more combinations of sounds are needed in that performance, then I utilize instant morph by a second press of the Rig switch. Since almost all the effects have a mix control, I can effectively toggle effects on or off with morphing by setting the mix at 0 or 100% or vice versa. Now I have ten combinations and am never more than a double press of a single bottom row switch away from any of them. If I need more combinations, then I program the back row effect switches to turn things on or off.
-
Pre amp may not be necessary. I use an SM57 straight into Kemper to create Profiles.
I wonder if it does phantom power
-
Display More
I like Triangle Picks.
First row: Techpicks Italy with different materials. I like them how they are, but also mod them with different bevels, slightly smaller, less round...
Row 2: BlueChip TP60 and STP60 (which is slightly smaller than small Primetone), Wegen CF140 (I polished the surface and slightly optimized bevel),
Dunlop Primetone Tri smooth 1.4, then small Tri 1.5 and small Tri 1.4
Row 3: Dunlop Primetone Tri Grip small in 1.5, 1.4, 1.3, Akira Takasaki Primetone in 1.4 and with grip polished off, Gravity Striker Standard 1.5 RH speed bevel
Row 4: Three custom Ultem picks, Ernie Ball Prodigy small 2.0 and 1.5, Dunlop Petrucci Trinity Pick
Row 5: Dunlop Gator Grip 1.0, Dunlop Flex Triangle 1.14 and a modded smaller version, Ibanez Hard Elastomer 2.2 and smaller mod
Row 6: Classic Celluloid Triangle Pick (346 style), next ChickenPicks Bermuda III pointy and regular in 2.7 and 2.1mm
I like triangle picks too. Seem to have a little more control. 3 times the pick wear ain't a bad perk as well, especially when spending premium on picks.
-
I assume they could have added this fonctionnality in rig manager for the Stage cause we have two soft buttons to jump from a mode to another one, the problem is that Head and Rack have a physical chicken head knob. So there would be a hardware difference position from the real state....
You should buy a head (and a remote)
I had a head and remote. I sold and bought a stage because I was tired of setting my head behind the remote for live use, as I've exclusively monitored with IEM'S and therefore had no logical place to sit an unpowered head but the floor.
I'd think though that this feature could be implemented on the head or rack. Just a setting in system setting that lets Rig manager override where the chicken head is pointing, with the exception of OFF. If I'm correct, this knob it isn't an analogue switch that routes the signal differently through different legs with wires soldered to each. It's just a soft switch, like the digital pots controlling various parameters, but has been given the assignment to it to power on and off and what mode to go to.
