Posts by heldal

Quote from londonjeepster

yes open a support ticket,this sounds very odd.

I probably should. However, I think I've found the cause and a workaround. Maybe this can be useful knowledge to others too:

I wrote that there was noise with nothing connected, while what I ment to say was that there is noise even when the connected wireless receiver is turned off.

I got hold of some probing gear and started measuring. What I found is that the input-signal to the KPA is completely flatline regardless of whether the wireless receiver is on or off. Nothing registers on the oscilloscope in any audible frequency that could cause significant noise. There's nothing until the wireless transmitter is turned on. If anything, the output from the receiver is exceptionally clean.

Then I opened the boxes and started measuring inside. What I found is that there's a small difference in voltage between ground as delivered by the KPA's power-supply and that on the wireless receiver, with both boxes fed from the same power-strip. The difference remains the same when the wireless-receiver is off. It's well within what audio-interfaces are designed to cope with so nothing will break. What I believe happens is that the slight difference in voltage creates a ripple in the KPA's AD-converter just as it comes live, similar to when you plug in a guitar. This explains why the problem gets so much worse with delay or reverb as those effects keeps repeating the noise. Add some feedback in the simulation and you've got a high-pitched squeal. With no effects it is really just a loud tick.

I've been checking the powersupply on 3 more rack-mounted units from different manufacturers today and found small variations between the ground-signal of all boxes so this seems quite common.

My workaround is simply to boot the KPA to tuner-mode with the tuner set to mute the signal. I have been used to boot directly to browse-mode so far. A proper solution is non-trivial and would require modifications to both the KPA and the wireless receiver to enable interconnect of DC-ground between the boxes. That's no DIY-project.

Quote from Kempermaniac

Maybe the noise is not coming from the KPA but caused by computer monitor, mobile phone, wireless system etc.?

It's been on my mind. I've got the KPA head sitting on a shelf in a 6U rack with a wireless receiver (L6 G90) below. A RF-receiver doesn't generate much noise though. The shelf and casing acts as a shield for anything coming from there, and finally; the noise does appear even if the receiver is turned off. The panels on the KPA itself should isolate its interior fairly well from other external RF-sources too. I often have wifi-router, notebook computer, phone and tablet nearby, but the noise does appear even with all known sources of RF-interference turned off. My macbook that does multichannel recording and runs a mixing console normally sits on top of the rack without any signs of noise except what I must expect if I put the guitar right in front of it.

There's a few rigs that will produce noise on boot almost every time the box starts. An example is the one called "TAF Pushed Hair" from the standard set of rigs.

Some of my older guitars are very sensitive to RF-interference, but that's another issue. One of the worst sources of such interference is actually the KPA itself (the LCD-screen I guess). I need to get the inside of those guitars treated with copper foil and/or conductive paint.

I've got a problem with noise just as the KPA enters browse or performance-mode at the end of the boot-sequence. It's a hiss or white-noise that can be quite bad for up to 10-15 seconds. How bad it gets depends a lot on which rig the KPA starts up with. A clean rig produces very little noise, while something distorted with lots of delay and other effects may produce a horrible loud squeal. The noise appear even if there's nothing connected to the input so the noise must originate from within the KPA itself. I'm currently running firmware 2.2.1 8963 but have had the same problem with other releases too.

I can minimise the problem if I'm careful to switch to browse-mode and activate a clean rig before shutting down, but would rather not have to. There's also a problem with what seems as random performance/slot selection the first time performance-mode is activated after boot so booting directly to performance-mode is no solution.

In case there's no permanent fix for the problem, is there a way to choose one rig (clean) in browse-mode that is supposed to be opened on boot regardless of which rig was active at shutdown?

Quote from Ingolf

To me it means that Line 6’s days of being an innovator are now officially over.

Not so sure about that. What I am sure about OTOH is that L6 can learn a thing or 10 from Y about QC and robustness. Some L6-products are rock solid. I've got a wireless kit in that category. But others are utter junk. I tried and liked their JTV guitars, and ordered a JTV-59. The electronics on the first one died within a week. The second that arrived, after 4 months wait, arrived with a broken model-switch. The 3rd, another 3 months later, was DOA. Then I got my money back and bought a new decent acoustic instead. I had hoped to be able to manage with just one guitar for some gigs, but I'd rather carry 2 that works, than one that is hopelessly unreliable.

I can't give a definite answer, but I'll give my own experiences:

People running high end PA-rigs these days aim for linear systems so that is what you should tune the KPA for. If you play a lot through a particular rig make sure you get a good sound there and use that as you benchmark. I've found that a decent headset is a good start if I can tune things so that what I hear through the headset is a good match to what I hear from the PA. In the next step I use the sound in the headset as a reference for setting the EQ for my monitors. Tone-matching must be done at gig-level.

Particular speakers I have used or use are (all active):

• Adam A8X nearfield studio monitors. Good, but expensive. From $1000/piece
• Behringer B3031A studio monitors. Good, maybe a touch heavy on the bass, but cheap. Got 2 of these @ home. From $500/pair.
• Behringer F1320D wedge monitor. Requires a bit of wiggling with the built-in 3band EQ as they sound boomy with a flat config. The 300W amp proved slightly weak when playing with a very loud drummer. Worked great @home and in most settings, but I had to get something more powerful. From $250/piece.
• Yamaha DXR10. Good speakers/monitors. I first tried the DXR12 but it sounded a bit dark for my taste. This 10'er packs a real punch. Got 2 of them. From $600/piece
• Atomic CLR wedge. I borrowed a couple from a friend who use them with an AXE-FX2. They sounded great but are the most expensive at $1000/piece.
• Mackie HD1221. These are 1200W PA speakers that double as wedges. Powerful and a bit bulky. The speakers sound good, somewhere between the DXR10 and the CLR. At $750-800 a piece the price is also about half-way between the DXR10 and the CLR.

Quote from Raoul23

I had one of the very first uno4kemper chips, does this mean he will send everyone a new chip or is there a way to flash the orginal allowing the firmware to be upgraded

He said he did this as an extra service for recent orders which had to wait for some time because the label-pack was out of stock. I assume most people will have to pay 16€ (or 8€ if you got it recently) for a new chip. That is the downside of non-upgradeable components. You'd have to move up a step to get the modified BCF-circuitboard that is upgradeable via USB. I'm waiting to see how Kemper's foot-controller turns out before I decide on further upgrades.

I ordered the chip and labels separately as there were no labels in stock and I didn't want to wait too long for the chip. Now that a new batch of labels had arrived I received an email saying they would send a free chip-upgrade with the labels. Praise to Xavier at uno4kemper.com for excellent CC.

Here are the details about the new firmware. I assume the information on the uno4kemper.com site will get an update soon:

"What's new in this firmware ? A number of changes were done in order to improve the expression pedal behavior of the FCB1010. After a lot of finetuning and testing, the "hysteresis" is now reduced to a minimum, which means that the slightest movement of the pedal will now cause the volume or wah to respond, while earlier versions required some more pedal movement before the adjustment kicked in. Along with that change, also the adjustment resolution has been improved. But the most important add-on of firmware v.1.2 is the possibility to choose the "sweep curve" for each of the 2 pedals independently. Up till now the FCB1010 expression pedals showed a more or less linear behavior, which is far from optimal for volume or wah adjustment. A volume pedal normally uses a logarithmic "audio taper", and a wah pedal typically has something between audio taper and linear taper. WIth the new firmware, you have 5 different sweep curves to choose from , going gradually from linear to audio taper. You will notice that this results in a far more natural volume and wah adjustment.

I didn't have the time yet to extend the user manual, but by the time you receive your chip, please check our website for a new manual, which mentions how to configure the 2 expression pedal sweep curves. "

I've been using just about every DAW under the sun over the past 20 years. Any of the well known packages can do the job, but they differ slightly wrt what type of production they work best for. For personal use (mostly audio recording with a bit of midi) I recently discovered Presonus Studio One. A somewhat restricted version was supplied with a guitar-synth package I'm playing with. I was pleasantly surprised at features and performance on both platforms (OSX and Windows), and had no doubts when Presonus recently offered the complete pro-package at 50% discount. That is about 1/6 of the price for a full ProTools-package.

Quote from deadpan

Yes. To read the profile from the usb drive with out storing it on the Kemper.

Even better: be able to browse a collection of rigs on an external drive and choose individual rigs to import.

Bugfixes must take priority though. The latest firmware has some annoying clicks and pops when switching between rigs. It sounds the worst when switching between two clean rigs.

I've mounted mine on a shelf in a shallow 6U effects-rack along with my 1U wireless receiver. Then I cut a frame from a sheet of aluminium and painted it black to cover the openings around the unit. The frame is mounted with 2 rack screws on each side. I may have opted for a ready-made solution if there was one available at the time.

It's been mentioned previously that you should set the main out to master mono if you want to use the L/R signals separately. However, regardless of whether you run the master to FOH in mono or stereo, I recommend that you use the monitor-output to feed your backline. Then you are able to adjust levels separately, and can even unlink the main output from the master volume control. This is what I do, with main output level fixed at -20 or 25. Sound engineers really appreciate to get a stable level from my KPA regardless of how I adjust my backline.

Quote from Lokasenna

Another option is to get a rack case and mount the Kemper to a rack shelf - drill a few holes and screw the feet through it into the toaster. If you have any other gear like a power conditioner or amp, you can throw them in the rack too.

For the record: a shelf-mounted KPA-head requires 5U.

I've got mine mounted on a shelf in a shallow 6U effects-rack along with a L6 relay G90 wireless receiver. A couple home-made black-painted aluminium panels fill in the gaps on either side of the unit. I'm working on a solution to offset the KPA to one side and a custom bracket to mount my Sennheiser IEM-transmitter vertically alongside it. That will give me the ultimate compact rig for gigs where I have access to a dedicated monitor-feed that I can control myself, and thus don't need to bring my own speakers for the backline.

Quote from ETS

4Sound in Norway sells this for 1199 -.kr +149-. For shipping, the cheapest I found and there is no
duty on musical instruments in Norway, only 25% VAT, but the carrier may take a small fee in calculating the tax, nothing major
so I think with about 1500.-kr total from Thomann whilst 1348.-kr from 4SOUND you will not lose any sleep over this, and maybe
there's no fee at all, hell yeah, you even got 30 days return and 3 years warranty aswell from Thomann !

Ordered a Kemper Head with the original bag and a FCB1010 from 4Sound last april. I got the KPA in june, but I'm still waiting for the bag and the FCB. When ordering from abroad there's theoretically only VAT to pay, but carriers often charge NOK600 ($100) or more just for handling the customs paperwork.

Quote from Cybertwin68

Yes I had this as well took bloody ages to delete all of the duplicates

Did you get any directions on which ones to remove? The most recent? If the new timestamps are kept in the next firmware it would OTOH make more sense to delete the older versions of the models.

After loading additional factory rigs from within the 2.2 firmware I ran out of rig memory, and noticed lots of duplicates. Many rigs, possibly all factory rigs, have duplicates which look and sound identical to the older ones, except they all share a similar timestamp (2013-10-04 20:2x:xx).

Edit: timestamps do vary some but most duplicates seem to date from early October 2013.

Quote from Labrat

I don't believe in the fourth quarter release. The UnO4Kemper was released in July and was a joint operation with Xavier and Kemper. This has taken the heat out of the "waiting time".

The FCB1010 firmware won't help much if there's no FCB1010s available. I placed an order last April, and don't yet know when or even if it will arrive. Behringers Norwegian distributor says they've had FCB's on order for more than a year. Some are expected in November, but it's unlikely to be enough units to cover the order backlog. Is the controller being discontinued? I know the controller is available from a few international sources, but private import with fees and shipping-costs would make the controller 3 or 4 times more expensive.

Quote from whippinpost91850

Is anyone here with a JTV, switching models with MIDI ? If so what are you using to do this? I just got a JTV89 and before I gut it to make a lefty, I need to know. I origionally was gonna try and do a RACKVAX but they are apparently out of buis.

The VDI-interface to control the variax-circuitry is proprietary and will only work with a L6 POD. A separate midi-interface that works without a POD is on the list of feature requests for the variax.I personally wouldn't use it anyway unless the connection to the guitar also was made wireless which VDI isn't. It isn't much of a problem to dial in a model manually, except possibly in bright sunlight where the LED-indicators on the controls are invisible.

Quote from Snowbird

Is anyone playing a James Tyler Variax with their Kemper? The JTV looks like it would be a great solution for one guitar with one amp that would cover a whole lot of ground. I'm wondering if the JTV plays and sounds good, or is it like the other Line 6 gear that I find very synthetic and sterile. Any opinions? I'd love to hear what people think.

I've tested several Variaxes. The JTVs are to the older models what the KPA is to a L6 POD, a vast improvement. The US custom models are excellent instruments just using the magnetic pickups. The korean-built models are similar, but do require some work on the frets. I bought a JTV59, and given a plek-job it is very close to the $2500 US custom model. I do however question reliability. The electronics failed on mine, and it took the distributor 2-1/2 months to diagnose it only to report that they couldn't fix it and that I would get a new one

I would like the display in performance-mode to be re-worked to include a similar display of the signal-chain to that in browse-mode.

Quote from almogaver

This happened to me. Do you know how to restore the missing rig in the corresponding slot?

Switch to a different bank (performance) and back, that fixes it for me. I see this happen consistently the first time the KPA is switched to performance-mode after booting to browse-mode. One or more of patches in the bank that first is opened are missing their rig. Switching to a different bank and back fixes the problem.