Posts by Michael_dk

I kind of like the idea, but share most of the "reservations" that have been shared in this thread.

Another reservation would be that EQ and gain information like this only tells part of the story anyway - e.g. what is the character of the gain when considering the EQ curve, is the overdrive/distortion especially driven by the low frequencies, or the high frequencies? That sort of thing.

Though you could argue that "limited information is better than even more limited information" On the other hand, it might be more misleading than helping, I don't know.

Whether or not it belongs on the front page, I don't know. But I don't think it makes sense to place it under "Introduce yourself".

Quote from Ruefus

I use quad ought (#0000) steel wool for all sorts of stuff, but never on a neck.

I'll have to give that a shot.

Might be a good idea to put painters tape (masking tape) on top of the pickups, wipe it after it's done, and then place masking tape on top of the first layer before removing, sealing in any loose fragments of steel wool (to prevent it getting into the pickups due to the magnets). But I have no idea if that is at all relevant when just sanding the neck (much more relevant when polishing frets, surely)

Quote from DonPetersen

um, the WD40 is only there for the sanding process, afterwards it should of course be cleaned thoroughly

Haha, now I get it.

I tried it after reading an article in a guitar mag about some blues player who did it. Maybe he misunderstood the idea as well. What can I say, I was young and stupid

Quote from DonPetersen

and a little bit of WD40 IME

Yeah, I tried that once - my hands didn't like it

You can even get far with the rough edge of a kitchen sponge

Quote from lbieber

There seems to be a logical disconnect in the expectation of functionality for Kemper products. The products had a specific set of functionality when we purchased them. There was no contractual obligation, guarantee or promise of any additional functionality. If you bought a toaster, rack, or stage expecting something different , you made an illogical purchase. If you bought a Player expecting that it would do something different, you made an illogical purchase. If Kemper provides improvements then consider yourself fortunate. Otherwise, and to be frank, this all sounds like a bunch of entitled whining. Kemper 'owes' us nothing. To be honest, if I were making decisions at Kemper, I would view this type of complaining as 'no good deed goes unpunished'. I would be motivated to discontinue the updates as a result. These types of threads present a danger IMO. How about using the product that you bought and being happy if it happens to get upgraded?

Umm... What?

This thread seems pretty sober to me, not whining at all.

Of course the previous history of updates - and the continuation of this to some degree - is a factor in deciding whether to buy or not. That's basically "goodwill" (or reputation) for the company, which they also profit from. No, there's no contractual obligation, guarantee or promise. But some expectation of continued improvements is absolutely reasonable. Whether the company decides to fulfil such expectations is entirely up to them - and their evaluation of impact on the perception of their brand.

And do you really think a professional company such as Kemper would be butthurt about some users on a forum wanting more updates, to the degree that they decide to just not do them anymore? That's ridiculous.

I'm sure they love what they do and are excited about the new features they bring forth, but come on. It's a business. They wouldn't develop new features if it wasn't deemed profitable.

I agree that things are moving slow. But that is how it has always been, at least while I've had my KPA. Almost glacial

When they DO put stuff out, in my experience it is very well thought out and often exceeding the expectations of many (with room for disappointment for some, of course).

I've also thought about whether they are stretched a bit thin since liquid profiles announcement (which included 4-5 other new things). But if I had to guess, they're not MUCH more stretched thin than normal. I think they simply prefer to have a smaller development team than a large one. It certainly impact how quickly they can roll out stuff, but it probably has other benefits, like a better fit for their company culture.

I will say, however, that I don't think they ever announced a profile store, although that was how I interpreted the facelift of the rig manager re. the kemper-provided (free) packs from commercial sellers. Upon re-read I decided that they simply added a page for each of the vendors in rig manager.

I think if you ask here, the majority will say that there's no real tone difference. Some people will say that the kemper is almost there, but not 100%.

I will say, though, that "solid state" (from the thread title) is not really the correct term for modeling amps (or profilers, if you want to use the official term for the kemper). Solid state at least originally referred to physical electronic components, not firmware/software stuff. Overdriving these solid state amps (i.e. overdriving the electronic components/circuits) supposedly sounded super crappy (no experience with them myself). So the term "solid state" has some very negative connotations to many people that is not really "fair" to the sound of profilers and modelers. Whether any specific modeler or profiler is on par with a tube amp is of course a separate question

EDIT: I think I completely misunderstood your comment/question

Quote from BayouTexan

The difference is negligible to the human ear.

Yeah. From "tiny bit less than zero" to "absolute zero" to "tiny bit more than zero" - something like that.

Probably completely inconsequential and inaudible differences. If you're like me, you will still try to get it to absolute zero regardless

Is the profile a very distorted one? In that case there will not be much in the way of peaks and valleys

I wonder also if you've accidentally zoomed in on the waveforms as described in this video:

Quote from Antipodes

Very true. Our auditory perception of any sound is strongly influenced by the part of the sound that arrives first to our ears which will be the pick attack - which is particularly prominent at modest SPL. Enclosed headphones help (to some degree at least) screen out the pick sound which gives the sound a bright attack before the processed sound from the monitors or even the sound from of an amp some meters away arrives at the ear.

Huh - I never thought about the immediacy of the pick attack being a factor in this instance, I mostly thought about it in terms of attack and frequency, but it makes a lot of sense. Especially considering the Hass effect.

Quote from Actovis

I use the KRK V6 as monitors, while recording and playback

It can be problematic - for some - to monitor on speakers while recording. Or rather, the direct sound of the pick hitting the strings can skew the perception of the tone, making the recorded tone seem more dull/lifeless. That's why I asked.

But you say you've tried using headphones as well.

Quote from Actovis

first of all thanks for all the answers

Michael_dk I used the monitor function included in cubase. I switched later between the monitor function in cubase and the direct monitiring from the focusrite.

Bakersounds I tried that in the very beginning but honestly I couldn´t mke it happen. Maybe I have to dig a little deeper in how that works... Dou you have any helpful links to threads or videos for that?

BayouTexan I´ll try that, the gain on fhe focusrite was off to very low and the gain at the profil was like 5-7/10. I´ll try changing that too.

DonPetersen so you think it´s something different than the conversion? I´m sorry for asking, english is not my mother language

Bu are you monitoring on headphones, or on speakers? When recording, or when playing back?

I really wouldn't suspect the converters in this day and age - at all.

How are you monitoring while recording?

I think part of the reason it takes so long to boot is some self-checks it does every time it is turned on. This is speculation, of course - I have no idea of how extensive such boot testing is.

Quote from OhG

Thanks for all the help guys. I've re-done my rigs to have all distortion and clean sense set to zero, and then just rebalanced the gains and volumes as needed. Took a little work, but at least now everything is set up right. I created the 2 input presets that I needed and everything now works as I'd hoped. It was worth it in the end.

Great to hear!!

Quote from OhG

Right. That's why I'm saying, I get how it works. My question now is, for the DS values, if I increase them to bring them back to zero, I'm assuming I'll then need to go into my gain for that rig and turn it down a bit to get the overall sound/gain back to where it was before I turned up the DS levels, correct? Similarly, with the clean sense changes, if I turn those up or down, then I'll need to adjust the rig volume in the other direction to get everything back to the same overall volume as before, correct?

More or less correct.

I think for clean sens, the answer depends on the rigs in question, since it functions differently (and has a different purpose).

I'd go through the rigs and see the DS value most commonly used (maybe within some suitably small interval, it might not mean a lot in the grand scheme of things), and use that as the overall value for whatever guitar you normally use (lock and save the input section). Then adjust the DS value and gain of the other rigs accordingly. Less work that way.

Then you may still need to look at the CS parameter. use your ears.

By the way, while the DS is an offset to the gain value, they don't use the same scale. So +3 on DS is not the same as +3 on the gain knob, so use your ears here also.

Quote from OhG

Correct. What I'm saying is, it just sets them all TO the same value, rather than increasing them equally by the same amount.

For example, let's say I have distortion sense on one rig set to -5.0 and another rig set to -1.0. If I turn the distortion sense from -5.0 up by an amount of 2, now that rig is set to -3.0. What I'd want is for the other rig that is currently at -1.0, to then be turned up by the same amount (2), resulting in it going from -1.0 to +1.0. But instead of turning each rig up by the same amount, all distortion sense does is turn them TO the same amount. So in this case, the rig that was at -1.0 isn't turned up by 2. It'd actually be turned DOWN by 1 so that it's at the same -3.0 level as the other rig.

Think of the Dist sense not in terms of individual rigs, but as a "preset for certain guitar".

Don't change it for the individual rigs. Instead, lock the input section, and save the input section with its dist sense as e.g. "Stratocater". Forget the individual rigs.

The Distortion sense can be thought of an offset to the gain value of all rigs in the Kemper (only the ones that are actually distorting, not the clean ones - if I recall correctly). So you won't see a change in the gain value of individual rigs. Simple and easy.

If you're checking the gain levels of the rigs, you're looking in the wrong place.