Posts by dougc84

Hey all, hope this is in the right place, if not, mods, please move it to the right place. I've got a few things of interest to my fellow Kemperites over on Reverb.

Matrix GT1000FX 1U Power Amp
https://reverb.com/item/1412495-matrix-gt1000fx-1u-power-amp

Matrix NL212 Cab
https://reverb.com/item/141251…nl212-2x12-guitar-cabinet

Behringer FCB1010 Floorboard w/ OS X editing software (iFCB)
https://reverb.com/item/141246…er-ifcb-software-for-os-x

I'm open to negotiation on all of the above. To ship off the cab is really expensive (which is why I have it marked for local pickup only - after researching the pricing, it's $80-$140 depending on the part of the country), but we can work something out if you're not around the Richmond, VA area. I can also work bundle deals if you're interested in a combination.

I'm getting rid of the Matrix stuff as I want to move to a powered FRFR cabinet (I'm waiting on Matrix's FR10/FR12 options, as I want a single speaker, a guitar cabinet form factor, and a lightweight package). If someone has a powered, single 10" or 12" FRFR cabinet they're looking to get rid of and want to discuss trades, I'd be open to discussion.

The FCB1010 was literally only used for one gig. I programmed it for what I needed, strapped it to my pedalboard, and has been returned to the box and been there ever since. As many of you all know, it's a fantastic alternative to the Kemper Remote, and can be easily modded based on your needs.

Send me a private message if you're interested, either here or on Reverb. Thanks!

Quote from guenterhaas

all pedals should have true bypass

I need to stop this train right here. True bypass is fantastic, and, these days, I look for true bypass as the standard for a "quality" built pedal. But, there is one major problem with running 100% true bypass pedals: If all of your pedals are off, you've might as well run a low pass filter on your guitar, because all of your highs and clarity are now gone.

There is another factor in cables called capacitance. Basically, with any electrical signal, over distance, portions of that signal get weak or lost. This is why running extension cables to a portable heater is a bad idea, but also the same reason why you don't see guitar cables in stores longer than 25' or 30'. At about 15'-20', there is a noticeable roll-off of high end and clarity. That may be okay for you, or it may not. People who don't care about this say that Hendrix played with huge distances of cables and sounded tremendous. But this is 2015 (almost 2016), and knowledge and tech has come a long way.

Introducing a non-true-bypass pedal (or having any pedal turned on!) creates a buffer in the line. This is a good thing. This is why people with all true bypass boards should invest in at least one quality buffer (though I'd recommend two if you have a lot of pedals - one at end in addition to one at the start). You're basically boosting the line by lowering its impedance, making the signal stronger and travel further without as much degradation.

I used to run a Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner at the very beginning of my chain. It's buffered (not true bypass), and I don't generally use buffered pedals myself any longer. Its best benefit was it kept my tone consistent if every pedal was off or any pedal was on. Removing it made my clean, unaffected tones muddy and too warm. Why? The signal was no longer buffered, and through tens of pedal connections, the signal degraded like it was running through 80' of cable (I've got a large pedalboard).

So, while I agree with your statement, I also don't feel it is a complete representation of what a true, professional pedalboard should look like. This topic is a whole can of worms, but, to anyone interested in running longer strands of cable, I would recommend at least trying a buffer with your signal, be it standalone, as an active preamp or passive wiring in your guitar, or within another activated true bypass or non-activated non-true-bypass pedal. Personally, I couldn't live without mine on my board.

I'm going to throw in my 2 cents here. Do nicer cables sound better? It depends solely on the application.

I'm going to just state it here first though - there is no such thing as a cable that works that is a bad cable. But with every connection (soldered or solderless, it doesn't matter), you're transferring electrical signal from one medium to another medium. If there's a bad solder job, cheap materials, whatever, it's going to affect the tone. Now, it probably won't affect it as much to the casual listener. My wife wouldn't hear the difference between a Lava or a Monster and a cheap Horizon/store brand cable. But I certainly hear and feel a difference.

That said, if you're running a 10' cable direct into your amp, it honestly doesn't matter if you spend $12 or $120 on that cable. But, if you're using a pedalboard with tens of feet of pedalboard cable, 25'+ lines from your guitar to your board, and just as long to your amp, then perhaps back out in an FX loop - your cables are much more crucial. Running 20 year old ragged cables with poor connections is not only going to be a maintenance disaster in this case, but is going to pretty much kill your high end (particularly without any buffers).

However, I keep several backups in my gig bag. I run a large pedalboard with a snake to my Kemper. My best fallback? A 17 year old, 10', no-name guitar cable. I've never fixed it. It's kinked. The 1/4" end on one of the connectors is bent. But it has never failed me. I've had Monster cables fail me at least a dozen times. Lava cables - I've had a much more positive experience with. Same with Planet Waves. I've had a couple Mogamis as well, and they're really great.

All to say, if you're a "plug into the amp and go" kind of guy, the difference in tone is not worthy of consideration. The difference in build quality is much more important for the long run.

Quote from DonPetersen

this would give you a Profile of your mic'ed monitor, nothing else.
Totally clean Profiles don't need refinement. Refining is not a matchEQ, it helps the Profiler to capture more details of the characteristic Compression/Distortion - in a totally clean Profile there by definition none.

Right. And it would capture a completely (or almost completely) flat profile. But once refinement kicks in, wouldn't, after a few times through, it notice there's a difference between the Piezo (direct in) and the sound coming out of the speaker (a mic'd sound), and adjust accordingly?

Quote from Jimmyno

Basically it is a matching eq, isn't it?

It seems like an EQ match/IR type of thing, sure. I know there are some acoustic profiles out there... I wonder if they would do a similar sort of thing using a pickup instead of a mic (internal or external)? For instance, I have a Breedlove acoustic that has a piezo and a mic, and you can blend the two. The piezo sounds... well, it sounds great for a piezo, but the mic sounds amazing. However, I can't stop the feedback train on that mic - there's just so much feedback that I either have to really control every single thing I do very, very carefully, or blend in only a tiny amount (if any at all).

It's getting me thinking about micing up my acoustic, pushing that sound through a reference monitor, and then micing the monitor to create a profile, all while using the piezo pickup as my input on the Kemper. I bet it would work - I don't see why it wouldn't - the monitor would spit out a very flat response, and refining would capture more of the acoustic tone. Hmm...

There's also an asterisk (*) for favorited rigs. This really does need to be described somewhere, because the symbols are not intuitive.

Well... that escalated quickly. Time to chill out and breathe.

I'm in the group of people that doesn't like the SM57. A better, more PC way to phrase this statement would be "I don't prefer the sound of an SM57 for my own personal needs," not the implied "I don't like it; therefore, I hate every sound that it makes" (which is simply not true).

The SM57 is a fantastic mic. I own one. They'll capture anything. And, as stated, some truly classic guitar sounds have been recorded using them. I even considered picking up a second one here recently because they are so versatile. I use it for my own personal recording stuff from time to time, and it does a great job. For my own tastes, I find it's easier to get a great sound with less work out of different mics though. The Audix i5, for example, is a fantastic mic, and a direct competitor/replacement for the SM57, and it's frequency curve just makes me happier. I have a couple condensers as well - not the best on the market by any means, but they just sound more open and natural to my ear. The SM57 always requires work in post (for me) to get the sound that I want, and it almost always needs a second mic to get the sound that I am looking for.

Again, this is all my personal taste. I'm not stating a fact, I'm stating an opinion. One that I'm sure @silhouette is in agreement with.

For myself, my absolute favorite mic (and one I'm going to have to buy one day) is a Blue Blueberry. It's a mic designed for vocal work. I borrowed one for a few months, and I tried, just for kicks, putting it in front of several tube amps (before the Kemper came into my life). I literally could put it anywhere in front of the amp or in the room and it sounded tremendously huge and crystal clear. The tonal coloration was incredibly minimal. What I heard through my monitors was precisely what I was going for, and no EQing was required at all for any of the tracks I recorded with that mic. There's no profile out there (that I know of) that is captured using this mic, but does that mean I hate every profile I've ever touched? No way! There's some fantastic profiles out there using all kinds of mics, positions, settings, EQ, whatever.

The reason you get so much sustain is because the gain stage of any amp acts more or less like a limiter/compressor. The peak parts of your sound get chopped off, and it creates that beautiful overdrive sound we all love. Cranking gain typically lowers the ceiling of where that cutoff happens. This is why turning your volume knob down works to "clean up" a sound, and why dynamics are harder to achieve with higher gains.

That said, for your clean sounds, I'd definitely recommend a compressor stomp or post-FX (either in X or Mod), depending on the dynamics you wish to achieve, or try messing with the "Compression" setting on the amp block. I pretty much always have a compressor on in my X or Mod slot, because I like the dynamic interaction between my playing, my analog stomps, and the amp block, but it tames the volume level a bit since I have been known to be "too dynamic" of a player from time to time. Putting a compressor stomp before the amp block lowers the dynamics of your amp because you have more of a steady signal going to the amp block/profile.

Try the compression adjustment on the amp block first though. That might help the most and you won't have stomps to deal with.

Quote from Raoul23

before FW 3.0 the kemper did a little guess work at removing the cabinet it was not perfect but pretty close, so changing the cab was fine IMO. Alot of users on here have a fav cab and change all their profiles to use that cab because they are used to using say for example a Marshall 4X12 with Vintage 30's in. I would experiment with changing cabs on profiles sometimes it takes a rubbish profile to new heights which sounds awesome. The tills cab get a lot of love around here and they are free

TillS's 2012 cab pack is free; however, the new CabLab kit isn't. I wasn't a fan of the 2012 cab set, but a lot of people absolutely adore them, so I recommend them myself pretty frequently. Supposedly the paid pack is phenomenal though; I might have to try them out.

But, in regards to the OP - you can change whatever you can change. Your results will depend solely on the profiling process; however, worst case scenario is it doesn't sound great or doesn't sound like the original amp, but is that such a bad thing if you like the sound?

A progress bar (in any UI) is simply an indicator of the state of loading. They are inaccurate, but do provide user feedback based on the unit's "best guess." For example, when you install software and are given a progress bar, the installer can guess that a particular thing might take 5 seconds, and might represent 10% of the install progress. It can't know if you're also rendering a 4K video in Final Cut Pro. Same goes with the Kemper. It's a bootup process, so it probably hasn't even assessed whether or not you have 20 rigs or 200 on your device, all of which it loads into memory.

My guess is you simply have a lot of rigs installed. An inaccurate progress bar is fine, as long as your Kemper loads up successfully.

You can try holding down the rig button while starting up the Kemper. You may have a corrupted rig in there somewhere, and that'll fix it.

Sucks that happened. One thing I found out (the hard way) from a package shipped Swiss Post to the U.S. was that after it clears customs, the package is passed off to a separate company in the country of origin. In the US, this is either USPS, UPS, or FedEx, but generally USPS, depending on the size of the package and its destination. While the shipping information online doesn't tell you who it passed it to, it's pretty much guaranteed that the tracking number stays the same. You can hit the major names with your tracking number until something comes up.

It is annoying, sure. I get it. It sucks to have to deal with this. It's one the reasons I'm happy (though I didn't want to at the time) that I bought used.

Either way, welcome to the forums, and enjoy your new hotness.

Definitely and44. They're great tools to build a song. I don't care how good they are, they will never replace a real drummer.

Unfortunately, there are many musicians out there (myself included) that either don't know any good drummers, or drummers that match up to the sound they're looking to achieve. I, for instance, the stuff I write is sort of a combination of Steve Vai, Devin Townsend, 65daysofstatic, and Explosions In The Sky. To find a drummer that's proficient enough to play a progressive metal style but relaxed and confident enough to play simpler ambient/post rock/shoegaze, and to make them blend nicely - it's just not a thing within my network of musicians. Relying on a drum plugin gives me the ability to create something that sounds professional and polished, and, while it's not perfect, when I have enough material and decide to put together a group of musicians to perform the stuff I've written, they know what I'm looking for, and can put their own unique spin on things. And, if I can't find someone, then I can spend some extra time really polishing up what's in my tracks and have something I can be proud of.

And yes, bass/snare is essential. Everything else is just flourish. A kit with a kick, snare, and hi-hat is all you ever truly need. Apple nailed it with their "follow" option in the drummer plugin - feed it a track you wish for the kick and snare to follow, and, well, it just mostly works. That's something you don't get out of any other plugin, and makes for a fantastic "scratch" tool, IMO.

I think what we're all getting at here is one simple point: You're not going to get the perfect drum sound out of the box.

Every tool you use, whether it's Logic/Garageband's drummer plugin, BFD3, EZ/Superior, Addictive, whatever - you're going to need to know how they work, sound, and interact with one another, and then know how to configure them in some sort of way that works for the kit/pieces selected as well as for your specific mix. The levels of compression you use (and, to that point, even the type of compressor you use - VCA, FET, Logic's Platinum), EQing, individual kit pieces (and their respective levels), and any other effects will make a subtle but noticeable difference to how the kit sounds.

And think about it this way too - you're basically a guitarist filling the role of a drummer - another picky instrumentalist. We all know, as guitarists, we have our preferences on gear. Some people like simplicity - a guitar, a cable, and a tube amp. Some people drown their tone in washy reverb and delay and have a pedalboard the size of a 61 key keyboard (I'm looking at myself here - hey, I like options!). We all have our likes and dislikes in gear, and so do drummers. The kit a drummer uses is a collection of pieces not that different than the gear that we (as guitarists) use. I'd recommend getting at least one expansion with whatever you get as well. They are basically the equivalent of giving a guitarist another guitar - sure, it's still a guitar, but it sounds and feels different. A Les Paul sounds very different than a Strat. Unknowledgeable Fan in the front row doesn't know the difference. But, as a musician interested in doing drums, you totally should know the difference between the snap of a piccolo vs. the growl of a larger snare.

@Ingolf The point I was trying to make above was that a lot of people stick with the defaults too often or use a base or bundle's preset without any modification, expecting everything out of the box to sound amazing. And a lot of times they do - they're just stereotypical and easily identifiable. I think we're agreed on that actually. And as far as multi-out for Drummer is concerned, you're probably right - it probably is available. I haven't spent a lot of time with it beyond scratch drums to really care too much, and as it's more of a "scratch" plugin for me to get some basic thoughts and ideas, I haven't felt the need to dig in too deep to it.

There's definitely some reverb or delay on the sound. I would guess, for this style, probably more delay than reverb. Otherwise, here's some ideas:

1. Obviously he's using a Friedman. Search for a good Friedman profile. It doesn't matter if it's the Phil X model or not, but if you can find one, you'll do better than others. There's a huge thread around here somewhere with hundreds of Friedman BE100 profiles, and a similar with SB50 profiles. That'd be a great place to start.
2. You can see the knobs on the front of his amp. Since you cannot control the Kemper, EQ wise, just like a real amp (because it's all baked into the profile), they're great suggestions for EQ adjustments you can make.
3. The guitars he is using all are humbucker-equipped guitars. You won't get the same sound out of a spanky Strat. Additionally, it looks like he favors the bridge pickup. A guitar with a PAF-style humbucker in the bridge will take you a long way.
4. It doesn't appear like his lead sound has a ton of gain. It's especially noticeable when he plays a little softer - it cleans up really quickly. As guitarists, it's easy to want to crank the gain on a lead sound, but you actually end up just compressing it, losing dynamics, creating noise, and getting further away from the tone you're looking for. Roll it back a touch and you'll be even closer.
5. Tone lies almost more in the player's hands than the amp you pick. Steve Vai, for instance, sounds like Steve Vai, whether he's plugged into a Fender Bassman or his custom Carvin Legacy. I guarantee you can get this same kind of sound from nearly any Marshall-style amp. When demoing some amp sounds, try playing some of his licks that you're familiar with and you'll get closer to the sound you desire.

TL;DR - EZ Drummer is your best bet. And get Logic X.

I find the drummer feature limiting tonally. Especially if I'm working on a progressive metal track. But, for me, I can coax a good "base" sound by doing the following (at least in Logic, I'm not sure how much of this actually applies to Garageband, and how much of it is in the same place):

1. Lay down a track you wish to be "followed" by the kick/snare. This is often the bassline, but might be the rhythm part. It should be choppy. You can always take an additional take playing nothing but palm muted notes or by playing staccato, and then mute it in the mix, if you're having problems with it "catching" your groove. Obviously, you should be playing to the metronome/click, otherwise it's just not gonna work.
2. Mess around with non-standard drums. The rock kit is your best bet (though not great) for anything metal/heavy rock, but try the funk kit/drummer out, for instance.
3. EQ everything. For simple EQing, hit "b" on your keyboard (at least within Logic, not sure about Garageband), and you can adjust the mix of each piece, compression, EQ, room mics, etc. Alternatively, if you right-click (control-click) a drummer region, you can go to Convert > Convert to MIDI Region, and you'll be able to modify it within the piano roll and hyper editor (again, this should be possible within Garageband but I'm not positive). Manual entry of MIDI data is tedious and time consuming, but you'll get exactly what you want. Use MIDI humanization to make it sound more real.
4. Want a fill? Create a new drummer region for a measure or so where you want a fill and max out the fill dial. Play around with the complex/simple and loud/quiet panel to find something that works within the context of the rest of the drum parts.

Unfortunately, there's no direct way to split up the individual pieces of the drummer plugin (even in Logic), so you gotta deal with what you have.

As far as external drum plugins, I've opted for Superior Drummer. I actually have spent the last couple months trying out every demo I can get my hands on. EZ is also really, really good, and one of the most inexpensive out there, but I wanted the added control and additional features. Tons of people use Toontrack's stuff, which is both a good thing and a bad thing.

The Good:
The best feature about EZ/Superior is that picking out pieces and building a song works REALLY well, and it's super simple to get a basic groove down without trying too hard. It makes songwriting within a DAW significantly less tedious. Bussing everything back out to Logic (via the multi-channel EZ/Superior option) makes it so you only really have to stay in EZ to pick your kit and a few loops (though I'm not sure if this is possible within Garageband). Everything else can be done within your DAW, and within the context of your own mix. Additionally, EZ/Superior are almost always on sale somewhere. I bought Superior for $179 off Amazon, it's normally $349 on their site (which has it reduced to $244 through the end of the year, which is still higher than Amazon, Guitar Center, etc.).

The Bad:
Sticking with the basic drumkit and loops results in you sounding like everyone else that uses EZ/Superior, which, in turn, makes it super easy to distinguish whether or not the artist chose to use EZ drummer or a real drummer for the mix. Simply changing some cymbals from their defaults and doing some manual EQing will help quite a bit. Another downside is the "crossgrade" from EZ to Superior (if you want to upgrade) costs just as much as a new license for Superior.

Based on what I've tried out:

BFD3 is perhaps the most expensive plugin out there, and, IMO, sounds the absolute best. It sounds the most realistic. However, it crashes like crazy and it doesn't give you the level of workflow you get within EZ/Superior. Plus, since it's not as popular as EZ/Superior, finding tutorials is harder, and added kits/bundles/whatever are more expensive than all the rest. The song generation and stability of EZ/Superior + BFD3's sounds would really be the ideal match (for me, at least), but I'm not made of money.

Steven Slate, in an A/B comparison, both with video demos and using the plugin, sounded like trash. The drums sound artificial. However, EZ has a bundle of Steven Slate drums available, so if you want the "Steven Slate" (drummer) sound, you can get it within an EZ bundle, and you've got the best of both worlds.

XLN's Addictive Drums sounded pretty good, but the interface was just... awkward, at least to me. It's also less featured than Superior, for not much less money (I think it was around $150 or so).

There are others out there, and others I tried out, but there's a reason Toontrack's stuff (EZ/Superior) are the most popular - both packages are easy to use, affordable, expandable, and sound great. There are a lot of albums out there that actually have drums written within EZ - Devin Townsend's Ziltoid the Omniscient is a prime example.

All that said though, I would highly, highly recommend picking up Logic X. The tools and features within Logic X greatly outweigh the tools in Garageband, it's just as fast to load up, the plugins are better, the samples are better, and, I believe, even the drummer is better.

No, he's not. The point he's trying to make is that the power amp has a significant effect of the tone of a tube amp. Getting just the preamp (unless you want to profile a preamp only) sound is going to net you a different sound altogether from profiling with a direct box and a load of some sort (whether speaker, dummy, whatever).

For instance, say you profile a preamp section of a head. If you were to compare the profiled preamp, powered by the Kemper's amp, into a guitar cab vs. the original amp w/ its original power amp into the same guitar cab, it's almost guaranteed that something will be missing from the sound. Depending on the amp you're trying to profile, some have power amp distortion, tube filtering, etc.

This is why the "dummy load" suggestion is in order. To run pretty much any tube amp's power amp, you must have a load connected, otherwise you're going to blow your tubes in minutes, or potentially worse - blow up the amp. Some amps are built better than others and have better protection in case of a disconnect, but most, however, will get destroyed pretty quickly.

That said, when you take two profiles: a preamp profile, and a studio profile, what's extracted to the cab block is no longer a cab. It's a cab AND a power amp. And because the cab block works on Kemper's version of IRs, your cab may not sound accurate because cabs and speakers aren't designed to produce power amp tube breakup.

Quote from viabcroce

Can't you disassemble it and reassemble around an RJ45?

Theoretically, yes. You're not going to get an RJ45 through the boot. You could always take that off though. There's a chance it wouldn't fit in that enclosure, but you can make anything work with a little superglue and duct tape.

The problem you are running into is you're essentially creating two sets of sounds, and neither are balanced. Your sound guy will manage the sound in the room, and it doesn't matter how high (or low) you set the treble or bass, they're going to set it to fix what sounds good to their ears. The other problem with programming in sounds for your cab vs. sounds for a PA/studio is that they inherently sound different. You wouldn't mix half of your album on $15 radio shack desktop speakers and then the other half on quality studio monitors, and then wonder why your album doesn't sound right. Same goes with the Kemper. Stick to making your patches on one device, then you can compensate for other outputs, just like a car stereo has EQ settings to adjust how the song sounds in a car.

What I would recommend doing is this:

• Obtain a studio monitor if you don't have one already. You don't really need two, just one will suffice, and it doesn't even need to be that high of a quality monitor. Headphones, your standard guitar cab, etc. - they won't work for this. If you need to borrow one, fine, but I'd certainly recommend at least having one around. You could do this with your guitar cab instead and inverse the process, but then you're making a sound that sounds good to you, and the audience/studio/whatever is less of a priority. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but it does matter for the tens, or hundreds, or thousands of people listening to your playing. And, last time I checked, if an audience member doesn't like what they hear, they're not going to support you and/or your band.
• Set all of your global EQs flat, dial in your clean sense for your guitar, and leave it alone.
• Sit down and go through every sound you use. Dial in what sounds good at a loud volume (because what your ear hears loud, at a live performance, sounds different than at bedroom levels). Make changes to the EQ in the stack, add post-EQs if you want, and mess around with the cab block being used for those profiles. Those are going to make the biggest impact, and this will be how it sounds through the PA or at a mixing desk in a studio. I would suggest trying to find a really good cab (TillS's are really nice) and use it globally (locked) that matches what your actual guitar cab (i.e. if you're using a Marshall 1960, use a Marshall 1960 cab on your sound). If not, you're going to get drastic EQ differences where one profile is going to sound very bassy through the PA but not so much through the cab, and others that will bite your head off through the PA but fine on stage. You're going to hear a very different sound coming from your cab vs. coming from the mains if you're using different cab types. The cab makes a huge difference in your tone. Also, by locking your cab, you're not worrying about the mic either (because all mics capture different frequency ranges), since that is a part of the profiled cab tone.
• Now that this is complete and all of your patches have been saved, disconnect the monitor, make a backup (because you should!), and plug in your guitar cab. At this point, your cab will probably sound either very muddy, or very bright. If you used the same type of cab in your cab block as you use live, there's a possibility that it may be spot on, but unlikely. NOW (AND ONLY NOW) you can tweak your monitor out's EQ to taste.

After that's done, all of your profiles should be fairly even, balanced, and properly EQ'd. Your main out should be completely flat, and your monitor out may have some EQ on it. If you want to adjust your monitor further, go to town. But leave your mains all flat. If you show up to the venue and it doesn't sound right through PA, then you can adjust the main out EQ and you're golden.

Quote from Jimmyno

I don't get this. Usually FX in recordings are always post cab, and they don't sound "dull".

Here's thing thing with this statement: Many guitarists use a delay or reverb before their amp. Most guitarists don't want to run 4 cables between their pedalboard and their amp. In a live or practice sense, it doesn't necessarily make sense to have delays/reverbs sitting post-stack. In a studio, sure, it's fine, you should probably add your effects in post, but it is a different tone.

For instance, a heavy, cascading delay (or multiple delays) can act almost like a volume boost. Before the amp, this can cause it to start breaking up. After the amp, you just have a louder sound. Depending on the effect you're going for, both are very valid use cases.

Anyway, all that aside, the Kemper does have some good effects, and this is an example of them. They are underrated, as the shining point of the Kemper is the amp profiling process and the quality of the sounds. However, for what I do (ambient/post-rock), the delays and reverbs just aren't big enough. As far as delays are concerned, there aren't enough different types (a bucket brigade would be killer, for instance) and adding delay in multiple spots isn't possible (I like chaining delays to create space). The reverbs... same. We've been waiting on a spring reverb for forever, and the "ambience" sound just doesn't get there for me without completely washing out the original sound. This is why I stick with the Timeline/BigSky combo (stereo FX loop, Mod slot). I generally leave the amp's delay and reverb blocks off. The overdrives and fuzzes... I defer them to my board as well, because my sounds originate from multiple overdrive pedals stacked.on top of one another. The Kemper does a pretty faithful recreation of a TS, but other types of overdrives and fuzzes are missing.

However, I do use tremolos, flangers, compressors, EQs, etc. on the Kemper, and they work and sound excellent. I truly believe that, to this point, Kemper has not involved themselves on anything "extreme," as there are external options for getting those more extreme sounds. It plays like a head unit, and that's excellent for using it in whatever way you feel necessary. For me, it's not an all in one unit, but it works great, and sounds absolutely amazing.