Posts by DigitalBliss

Hey bassman,
I also struggle with noise. You have run a good set of tests. The fact that the noise reduces when you turn the volume on your guitar down means that it is not coming through the power line. This is also confirmed by your battery/ups test. So any noise conditioners you purchase will not solve your problem. Since it's not coming through the line, it must be coming in through the air. As others have said, good shielding and grounding will help, as will eliminating the offending transmitters.

I spent a summer at my father in laws house outside the city a few years back, and my guitar playing never sounded better. When I returned home, I suddenly realized how much noise I live with in my home. When neighbors turn on appliances (especially motors) I hear them as noise, and since it is RF, its nearly impossible to block or eliminate. So I have taken great pains to make sure my cables and guitars are all really well shielded and grounded, but it is still a small problem.

One thing I will add is that the newest noiseless single coil pickups (I have some Dimarzio Areas) are better at removing hum than almost all humbuckers. Also, if you do like hummies, get ones with balanced coils (same number of winds on each coil) for maximum hum canceling. I don't know how actives stack up in this regard since I don't have any. Anyway, good luck.

Right, Mira is 25, SG is 24.75.

Glad to hear. As you know, I've been tempted by these as well, and actually went out over the weekend to look at them again. This time I brought my trusty SG with me (which is actually my most soulful guitar) and did an A/B comparison with the Mira. I love everything about the Mira in terms of it's refinements over the SG (coil tap, stable neck, no neck dive, lighter, locking tuners, hard nickel frets, PRS level of quality, better strap button location, etc.) I'll tell you though, my SG edged it out in the tone department. I know this is subjective, but even the guy at the guitar center was like "Yep, it slays the PRS".

So I came home all discouraged, because on paper it should have killed. But then I started doing some research on pickups. The Mira has PAF like pups, they are somewhat low output (A2 magnets with under 9 kOhms resistance) My SG has A5 mags with 14k in the bridge. This is where the roar came from when I did the A/B comparison (also, I did note the pickup height was similar between the two, so we can take that out of the equation). The PRS was noticeably brighter and quieter even in humbucker mode, but I think that if I swapped out the bridge pup for a 498T w/ 4 wires so I can tap it, I might have the best of both worlds. Both guitars are after all very similar materials, weights, and overall construction.

Or maybe I just need to boost the Mira a little to make it a fair comparison. I don't know. I'm still on the fence. It sure plays great though, and like I say, I love all the refinements that I consider a step up from the SG. More to come. Looking forward to hearing what you can do with it. I'm especially craving a dark smokey woody ripping blues tone with that sizzle you get when you brush the strings while raking to the next note.

SwAn1, I chuckled too. I edited my "helpful" post to be OS specific.

Rock on!

You know, I'm no expert, but the guys who had to roll back their versions to previous ones on Windows had a tough time because the installer lost count of the number of installs and they had to manually delete files to get it to finally work. Not sure about Macs, but on PCs I would uninstall all previous versions before installing. Its not much effort, and it might save you grief if you ever want to roll back.

Wow, that's great to hear. Congratulations!
Did it sound the way you expected it to?
I found it super playable, and really liked the size and shape of the neck when I tried one.

You can see they are on the RE by viewing the Rig Exchange from the main Kemper web page under Community->Rig Exchange, so since I can't see them in my older version of Rig Manager, I'm guessing it's because I have not upgraded RM yet (I'm waiting for firmware 3.0 to be sorted out first).

If you really want to try them you might be able to download them with your web browser and then copy them over to your KPA using the usb stick method. I don't know whether older versions of KPA firmware will recognize them or not, so I'm just putting this on the back burner also until all the FW/RM issues get ironed out.

If anyone wants to discuss this more, perhaps with Kemper staff, you might start a new thread over in the Rig Manager section. I feel like I have derailed this thread from it's intended purpose of discussing what I'm sure are truly fantastic Metallica profiles, and I am sorry for that.

Please continue on.

Can't wait to hear how you like it. After you've had it a bit and found some good profiles that pair well, I hope you'll make a few clips to share. That would be awesome.

I've been looking at the S2s as well. Torn between the 3 models, but leaning towards the Mira as well. The one I played was very SG like in tone. It has a blues tone that is to die for (at least what I think of as a bluesey tone), but obviously can do much more. I also liked the jazzy tones with the tone control turned down. Only thing that put me off was the bridge. It's one big block, so it has no way to adjust intonation on each string. So I'm still undecided at the moment. I'm sure you will love it though. It took all I had not to buy one on the spot. Luckily they didn't have the sunburst or it would have been all over.

Quote from Jevo

Wow!!

Thank you very much

*** I didnt post this above... wtf??

Thank you posting your profiles I'll try them out when I have time, but I'm not sure what this ^ post means.

I don't see them. Are they on RE?

I looks like downgrading might not work either. See this thread. Hope KPA team chimes in soon.

+1 to that,

Also it would be cool if the next one up or down was based on the current view, so if you sorted by author say, it would get the next one by that author.

Hey Alex, Great job on this.

I would like to ask you some questions about your code as I'm thinking about doing a similar project. I wrote you a personal message (use the "Conversations" button at the top of the page). Thanks.

I got one of these recently and I really like it.

try this...
Make sure Kemper is off.
Press and hold the rig button.
Turn the Kemper on by turning chicken head knob to browse.
When you see something like 'rigs initializing' (I cant remember the exact phrase but its something like that) you can release the rig button.
Let it finish booting and you should be fixed.

Here is a story for the gear lovers out there. Raise you hand if you're not (oh not many, not many).

I guess I’m still a relatively new player. I’ve only been playing about 5 or 6 years, and practice time is a little hard to come by (I try for at least an hour a day, but on busy days I don't even get to play at all), so I would still put my skill level just shy of intermediate. My first guitar was a Strat which I still really liked. I have since tried a number of others, and purchased a few that I thought covered different musical ground.

One guitar I bought early on was an Epiphone SG. It sounded pretty good, and I dig AC/DC so it was kind of a cheap impulse buy. After a week or so of playing it, I noticed two things that really turned me off. One was that I had to hold the neck up (which I was not used to), and the other was that the neck was not very stiff, compared to my maple neck Strat anyway, and I could bend the pitch of notes just by man-handling the neck. Well, I set it aside and occasionally played it, but didn't really touch it for a few years.

I was getting ready to sell it (cleaning it up, putting on new strings, adjusting the truss rod and action, etc.) and wouldn’t you know, I picked it up to play some blues, and man did this guitar sing. I put on some backing tracks, found some nice bluesy profiles, and played for hours. I decided I could not sell it after all. Not only did the neck dive not bother me anymore, but if you treat it nice it holds it’s pitch just fine (I guess, I’m maturing as a guitar player). Here is the thing that really got me though. I have a Les Paul that sounds awesome but weighs a ton. This SG sounds really fat and maybe a little darker and smokier than the Les Paul and weighs a fraction of what the boat anchor does. Huh! Go figure.

I had no idea that this thing was such a sweet rock and blues machine, and it was hiding in my closet all this time. It pairs up especially well with an old TAF Blues Jr profile called TAF Blues JNR Growl (tip of the hat to Andy for that profile of awesomness). The fact that my impression of this guitar has changed so much surprises me, but hey I’m not complaining, I feel like I just got a new guitar.

I use a windows tablet for that very reason. But you're right, android support would be nice. One thing I didn't realize is how much CPU the Rig manager needs. It's ok on my desktop pc, but on the tablet it takes a lot longer to open, and get itself set up (download the latest RE rigs and such). It takes a good minute, but then after that browsing and auditioning rigs is not bad.

Similar goal in this thread, but your timelines are different. Still, there may an opportunity to corroborate.
Foot Controller

I can't see how Kemper could get sued for providing the functionality to attach a photo to a profile. I could see how this would work if they divorce themselves from any media and let the user dig up their own pics on the web. If the author of a profile told me the exact amp name, I can surely type it into google and find a pretty representative image and attach it to the correct profile in Rig Manager. If a user did have an embedded image in a profile they did themselves, just zero it out as a necessary step in uploading to the Rig Exchange. I think this would be fun, but I use a small tablet to run my Rig Manager, and it's already starting to bog down with the 5000+ profiles in the RE now. I can imagine what would happen if I started attaching hi res photos to those streamlined little kipr files.