Posts by JedMckenna

Quote from BayouTexan

There is a simple rule here in Texas. You pick no more than 3 tones; clean, crunch, high-gain/solo. You play those all night to your heart's delight. I have never been to a small gig or mega concert where I heard more than 3 tones. The more famous had only 1 tone/amp the whole show.

What I meant in my previous post is that it's possible to have just the same amp profile throughout the entire performance with different effects or settings on each individual slot. If you are a steady member of an original band that always play the same repertoire of 10-20 songs over and over in concerts or festivals, it's worth investing time in programming 1 performance/song instead of tap dancing to trigger effects on and off of every rig etc. Anyway, feel free to find out what works best for yourself but I'm saying this with a long history of both disasters happening by mismanaging rigs and smooth sessions with perfect sounds just at the click of a switch. 5 slots/song doesn't necessarily mean "too many sounds" nor is "overkill"; it could be the same exact sound with just a slight volume difference - having it in a different slot can sometimes make management more straightforward and less confusing.

It depends on the gig and it's actually a serious matter as having the wrong approach can get you in trouble at the gig.

Some gigs require more flexibility than others. For example, if it's a top40 cover band with large repertoire or a showband that plays lots of different stuff; for those, my performances have 5 different amp profiles usually in incremental levels of gain and effects in each that can be activated on the fly. With this approach, sometimes I can't quite get the optimal sound a part needs but what I lose there, I gain in flexibility as I can use the same patch in many situation.

For gigs with bands that have a limited songlist that is set in concrete (ie an original band on a 40 minute festival set), I use the 5 slots per song as "Slot 1: intro, Slot 2: verse, Slot 3: chorus, etc" as you describe and it works very well but is not flexible at all... I only use this approach if there is no doubt about the material being played; if the band adds or changes songs at the last minute you may be in trouble. Also in those cases I sometimes find more helpful to label the slots as something more specific like "Trem part", "Swells", "Slide part", "Chug part" because in the heat of the moment, that's usually what my brain thinks about first rather than a generic "verse" which you might not immediately recall how it's supposed to sounds. That approach can also take a LONG time to program because (every part of a song) x (number of songs) = a LOT of slots to fill in but also allows you to dial in the precise sound you need in every part of every song.

You can combine both approaches if your volumes and EQs are sufficiently well balanced across all your slots and performances.

+1

The Digitech Freqout is the only pedal I still use with the Kemper live. Last festival, there was a huge ground loop when trying to hook it up and I had to give up trying to use it. Having it inside the Kemper would make the device truly all-inclusive for many people.

I use Kemper as much as I can get away with but still find there are several situations where amp + pedalboard gets you there faster and is the better choice. But yes these Rig Rundowns are often totally ridiculous and the host must often be rolling his eyes internally.

I think Fractal has a similar idea on their pedalboard, some switch that can increase or decrease the volume of the preset incrementally by 2dB or something like that. I would find such a feature super useful on the Kemper: there is always a moment at rehearsal where you realize a certain patch is just a little too quiet/loud within the mix. I usually have a +3dB booster on every patch and can reduce volume with the volume pedal on the fly but being able to adjust the rig volume permanently mid-song with the foot would be so helpful... might just be me though; maybe it isn't a problem for people sticking to a limited number of songs/presets but when you play many different bands and rigs and types of gigs, I find it very hard to adjust everything perfectly volume-wise (and eq-wise) ahead of time when it's outside the band mix. I've had several fiascos on 1st rehearsals sessions with digital rigs due to this and that's part of the reason I'm still often partial to the trusty pedalboard + amp solution.

Bro, those thread titles kind of come across as trollish and that might be the reason why your thread was closed or not answered satisfactorily. From what I remember your last thread kind of mocked the Kemper for not offering stereo chorus (which it does, as the entire comment section pointed out in the replies):

page 224 "Vintage Chorus - When you place the Vintage Chorus before the stack, you will achieve

the well-known mono modulation effect. When placed in one of the effect modules after the stack, the Vintage

Chorus will sound lusher with less modulation, since it works in stereo"

Kemper trem isn't very sophisticated and doesn't do square wave but if you set the depth at max and crossover at minimum, no one in the audience will point at you saying you don't have a real square wave.

Quote from Kellerblues

If that is the issue, then unlinking main out from Master volume would prevent the issue (as a temporary workaround)

Perhaps, I haven't tried. But as far as I know these "knobs" are not actual "knobs" but encoders so not sure it's a mechanical issue and a shot of deoxit/wd-40 certainly isn't going to cut it.

I remember many other people discussing this issue when I looked it up. Maybe this behavior has been reported to Kemper HQ already. Anyway, just speculating about the OP's problem here since I also sometimes experience unwanted volume changes.

Like I said in another thread, there is a reoccurring issue with the value from the front encoders sometimes turning by themselves (toasters/rack) on older machines. Your problem sounds like this. Go on the Output menu, turn up or down the main and monitor volumes and release (many times) and check carefully if the value keeps going up or down when you don't touch the encoder. Mine started doing this in the last year (7-8 year old machine) and I seem to have to wiggle those knobs a lot before a gig/rehearsal to make sure they don't start turning on their own. It happens all the time at home but luckily not often at rehearsal/gigs so far (because of my pre-gig wiggle routine maybe). I know I should get on with support but it would be difficult to part with my machine for too long these days.

Quote from pippopluto

Well, I sure as hell hope not!

Just because it's practical, and helps you remember what goes with what.

Recalling one preset from the device doesn't just take one click, you have to select the section of interest and scroll through the presets. If Stomps' are separated from Effects' you

• will have to repeat the procedure
• will have to recall which Effects preset would go with which Stomps preset in order to rebuild that specific "pedalboard".

As I wrote you can get the same result by saving a rig (maybe with no Stack section), then apply the Stack you intend. But IMO/IME this is a sub-optimal use of the concept of presets in the Profiler, which is very powerful although - again - quite poorly implemented IMO

Display More

The workaround for this is quite easy. Just name your stack section preset in a similar way than your effect section preset so that you know the two go together. I get that the extra 3 seconds it takes for loading 2 preset strips instead of one are an inconvenience to some, but there are so many other things to improve and features to be implemented, is this really the hill we want to die on?

A hardware problem I've noticed and has been reported from many users are on the aging Kempers toasters, the encoders knobs on the face sometimes go out of control and start slowly increasing/decreasing at random the values of things on the front panel (ie master/ monitor volume, etc). Never seen it happen to the gain knob though and the performance swap you describe implies something else is happening, but make sure it's not just the first problem I describe.

I need to kind of twist those knobs up and down often before I play and pray they won't start randomly rotating during the rehearsal/gig.

Not possible

Fender is huge and could efficiently and successfully R&D their way through anything they want to focus on. With all the current modelers, the pulse has long been taken among the community so I wouldn't doubt this release could be something truly amazing that checks all the boxes.

However, the industry standard has already been established so I think it's too little too late for Fender (let alone the bad reputation they have at supporting their digital products). I think it would take something truly revolutionary for a new machine to take the top spots (ie. more than just a touch screen, bluetooth connection, cosmetic stuff, etc).

There is lots of awesome rigs that comes stock with the Kemper nowadays. If you just got your Kemper, I'd say explore those rig packs first for a few months and figure out which profiler is up your alley. Then check the Rig Exchange, unless you have very niche needs, you'll find everything you need without having to buy any commercial packs. I get the excitement and desire to splurge more upfront but by doing so you're just likely to end up with a bunch of packs that don't get used.

Not in your choices but the main mic I use for acoustic is an AKG C451. Neumanns are awesome too but quite $$$. I might be stating the obvious but I'd say the room acoustics, the mic placement and the guitar itself are probably more influential on the final result.

Depends on the material to record, but probably not.

Quote from breu

Yesssss

OH MY!!... We love you Bert! I didn't expect much from my lowly request but I'm so grateful it's been answered! Can't wait and sending you good vibes for the profiling sessions.

Hi Bert,

I was on an arena tour this summer and used your Bogner XTC pack a lot, most of my main sounds come from it now. Of course this amp is amazing in the first place (I had not used the XTC in that context before), but perhaps more importantly your profiling expertise makes them that much better. It was a surprise to me that even the few clean channel (green?) profiles often sounded more balanced and appropriate than most of my other clean amps profiles (Fender, etc). Prior to that, I had waited and hoped for 2-3 years that you would profile the XTC specifically so I am very grateful.

For very hi gain, I used profiles from your 5150 and Friedman pack. Those amps seemed to sit better in the thick mix EQ-wise than the Bogner red channel, but I was running out of time for experimenting with the red channel and dropping the 5150/Friedman in my Kemper pretty much at the last minute before rehearsals seemed to work quite well right off the bat. Anyway, just wanted to say thank you and good luck with your new IR pack.

If you need an idea for the future, I think a detailed profiling of a Soldano SLO (with liquid profiling in mind?) would be a hit. I use one of your earlier SLO profile for my lead sound because on recordings of live performances, it seems to cut through like no other amp frequency-wise.

Right now the differences between profiles of the same amp is pretty vast depending on where it comes from and amounts to so much more than just a different position of the amp's knobs. Liquid profiling won't magically make all the different profiles of the same amp able to achieve the same tone.

Profilers seems to be walking on eggshells a lot and are quite afraid to mention the name of companies... not sure it's even justified as I've yet to hear of one lawsuit that stemmed from this (but I might be wrong). It gets in the "wtf" territory quick (ie. from Guidorist: Vendra, Love 69, Sun - ??) The names alone are offputting. Then you have to change the name in the Kemper settings as those names that make no sense like Fuelz or CustOdian+ (Diezel, Custom Audio) usually appear on the patches themselves and in the details. A reference sheet is handy and all, but I kind of resent how dumb and borderline dystopian it feels to browse, navigate and get used to recognize profiles under weird made-up names and being unable or afraid to call an apple an apple for fear of being sued. Anyway, sorry for the rant, might just be in a bad mood.