Posts by JedMckenna

Been playing big outdoor festivals with a major artist since April using mostly stuff from Mbritt pack 1,2 and 3. The head soundguy that tours with us is one of the top in the country and very respected. I caught him talking with the producer saying how my KPA sounds so ballsy and fat at the same volume compared to the Marshalls they usually used on the backline. Well, he thinks it's "the KPA" that sounds like this but really it's the profiles. Actually probably my two favorite profiles ever are from pack 2 (Ecstasy ch2 and Vibroking).

I was listening to the tv broadcast and understood what he meant. I don't know what they did on the mixing board but it sounds magical. I'm feeling a bit like a fraud now because I barely did anything on these profiles and didn't take into account humbucker/single-coils etc, just loaded them in and from this recording (where I could barely hear anything while playing because my in-ears fell off), my sound now kills most of the other dudes who have been tweaking boutique pedalboards the size of my kitchen table for years.

Anyway, I know what you mean though, when I wake up in the morning and run my sets in pyjama on my Rockit 5", they all have that similar sounding mud sound that can leave you in doubt but one can be certain they'll live up to the hype next time they are going to be blasted for dozens of thousands. For your specific needs, you might need to take your profiles from another source that focuses on clarity at low volume (lots and lots of great ones in the factory content or rig exchange imo).

Most of us have wasted some cash trying to find our sound among the commercial profile jungle, I certainly did. But as far as MBritt goes, the only mistake I did was buying them before his recent price drop haha.

Quote from Michael_dk

No, not all of them - but the rig packs in the rig manager give a great overview of the "ear" of the sellers that are listed there. It's the right place to start. Also, once you find out which seller seems to be the best match for your ears, I'd advice you to just buy a couple of smaller packs of likely amps - and see if it still matches your expectations. There's usually no refund policy

This. I would advise against buying some sort of "complete pack" until you get the vibe of different commercial profilers (doing so with their free pack). Then again, no need to spend $250 to find good profiles; if you go that route, a good 50-or-so pack or a couple of amps will get you a large variety of tones and getting more of the same is sometimes redundant. And I often still find free stuff on the exchange that kills some of the commercial profiles I bought.

As the bar gets set higher and higher with respect to quality, commercial profilers are now kind of expected to be like "producers" by giving their own twist to the profiling process. Just like when using the rig exchange, I try to stick to the ones who I know share a similar conception of tone. Once you find the one whose ears you can consistently trust; then half the battle is already won.

However, it could sometimes also be eye-opening to step out of the comfort zone and check out the ones who seem to release stuff that feels completely unuseable at first sight.

Quote from DonPetersen

whenever I get asked to help someone pick a guitar, I pretty much sum it up like this:1) find a guitar with a comfortable neck
2) forget any advice and 'knowledge' about brands, tonal characteristc of wood etc.
3) find a guitar with a comfortable neck
nobody can tell you which ones are right for you, but when you pick one you like - you will know it

I disagree with this. Pretty much any neck shape or string gauge or action setup will eventually become comfortable or at least manageable after you spend a few hundred hours on it. Adapting to these variables will change your playing style and make you a more versatile musician. I'd say it would be very limiting to dismiss a specific model because at that one time where you tried it, your body wasn't used to it and felt uncomfortable. Depending what your genre is, you might want to have experience in manipulating all these iconic models because soon enough, you'll have a professional situation where you just need to go for a specific sound/look or otherwise you might not get called again after that jazz corporate gig you did on a pointy Ibanez because "the neck was comfortable".

It might be a product of the kind of society we live in at the moment but I feel we are increasingly quick to expect the outside world to "fit" us immediately instead trying to adapt to it.

Quote from AxeSlash

Why ruin their experience just for your ego trip of having a nice sound on stage?

I have to agree that when using the KPA with cab, the monitor out EQ is your best friend (I usually cut the bass and boost the mids quite a bit with a closed back 4x12 type cab). However, whether it's with real amps or Kemper, if you can't get a good stage sound to start with, it's a little naive to think it'll be great out there in spite of all the FOH magic.

Someone who has played with real amps for a while will know what sound to look for out of the Kemper. These are generally not the sounds that provide "instant gratification" when noodling on your own. In my experience, even some of the big commercial profilers' material or some stock profiles are often not very well suited for live performance.

At first I recorded my (smaller) gigs and listened back to find out what worked and what didn't. For example, I'd put 3 or four slightly different profiles of crunch in one night and by listening back, find out which one works best and why. Rinse and repeat until you know what to look for. A year later I look back at my first performance profiles and usually they feel compressed, have too much gain and bass/treble. Still figuring out the perfect settings for reverb and delays. Now I stick mostly to one commercial profiler that I know is going for the same sounds I do.

I think lots of experimentation is beneficial, so even if you think one patch is good enough, you can try another one slightly different another night. If you can make it shine in an unfavorable environment, you'll also shine in bigger festival/stadiums with a top notch sound crew.

Some weird stuff can happen when building performances, this has been going on for a while. The company is aware of the issue. In the meantime, we need to figure out a "workflow" that is foolproof.

What I do that works all the time now is first bring the 5 rigs I want for my new performance into the profiler's library. Then you can do all the tweaks in the world and save every time, either by replacing the old tweak or creating a new when you press "store". When all your rigs are good to go, still in browse mode (although it shouldn't matter) go create your new performance in the profiler and carefully copy/paste your rigs individually without messing around with the order or anything else. Once it's done, save that performance in the Local library as a backup. Then if you need to make additional tweak, do them manually by saving on the profiler (use the arrows buttons instead of the remote knob when navigating). Whenever I deviate from this method, I run the chance of getting into trouble.

Reply for the original author of this thread. Depending on your setup it can take a while to understand what and how each component influence the end result, many of us are still learning. In the touring circuit, a lot of folks are now switching to KPA and there is a reason: it's somewhere in there but you might just need a bit of patience and research.

A little backstory in my case, it sounded terrible in my practice room through the bad PA/speakers the first time. Then I made it work for stage sound with a 4x12 during a tour but needed to tweak the monitor out EQ. I finally started to be happy and knew I was on the right track when I got good studio monitors and switched to good and sonically consistent commercial profiles. I prepared my sounds loud and then sound guys stopped complaining I have too much treble, etc. Listened back to recordings and figured I don't need reverb on that one, too much gain on that one, etc. Recently I got a new guitar that makes the input light clip to red in a lot of profiles and threw everything off balance again so I have to address that, probably something with distortion sense, pickup height and get different profiles more suited for that guitar. Just do your homework and don't give up, it's all somewhere in there. Good luck.

Quote from andygeedot

I have a question for you guys.

I tried the PT100 profile from Pack 2 at a livegig and realised that there was much low end going on there.

Do you guys engage a lowcut in the EQ in the X slot for playing live?

Sorry to reanimate this thread but I must answer this. Been playing with a pop star here all summer and tweaked my profiles after every gig (almost all from MBritt pack 1/2). We have that one song with heavy riffing where I decided I'd try that PT100 profile (from pack 2) you are talking about in spite of it feeling extreme and scooped in the mids (I used his 5150 before that). I was a bit afraid so I initially lowered the bass and cranked the mids a bit but then the next gig I turned off the eq and gave it a try as it was profiled and I was blown away! Probably a bit of a one trick pony but definitely a killing profile.

Another great finds from this summer: I had trouble finding that Nile Rogers kind of strumming sound for pop out of MBritt before (talked about it with Mike earlier in this thread) but I think I got closer with the "Assman SF1" from pack one, where I lowered the gain to almost 0. definitely better than all the Twins I had found on RE. Also, honorable mention to the "Marshall 72 NEW" (pack 1) which came up on top of every A/B comparison I ever did for a Marshall sound.

Also, after listening to my tv broadcasts, I realized my own delay settings were a bit weak at the FOH so I took Mike's (but I set them on the same note interval left and right) and they have better balance of "mix" and "feedback".

Keep up the good work. Cheers.

Quote from Klappy

Agreed, or at least an output level bar graph so you could get pretty close without having to dial up reference rigs and go back and forth. Ideally with different ballistics and peak hold times to get a feel for RMS vs peak.

Yes I was also wondering if there would be a system to facilitate this. Now with the new "morph" function, I find it increasingly hard to adjust the volume of the new morphed rig due to how many variables now affect the final output (raising the gain, adding compression, putting a pre-stack pure booster, etc).

Also, I would love if some effects (notably the Green Scream and compressor) be completely transparent at 0% mix so that we could use it in "morph" from totally transparent to something else.

Ha, interesting thread!

That's pretty specific but as a teen, I was really into Gentle Giant (prog rock band from the 70s) for some time. Their writing was far out and they had wicked arrangements. I liked the guitar playing too, however the thin, fuzzy and dry overdrive in some songs on Free Hand and Power and the Glory was driving me nuts. If I'd listen to it again now I'm sure I'd find it somewhat appropriate but back then I thought I could get better tones from my Peavey Bandit.

The other one that comes to mind was this one Prince concert where he does this "blues" segment.

Hey Scary Groove, while the KPA is likely to be able to cover what you want to go for with these effects (except if you go crazy with the Strymons), I'd suggest not selling them because what you listed are both flexible and "staples" sounds that one will be able to use regardless of the setup (ie. if you have to use a backline instead of KPA). While the KPA is great, it's good to not be 100% dependent on a single machine. I also have a smaller pedalboard made out of similar boxes I carry around for short rehearsals or times I have to use an amp.

On another note, I feel the survival of the music gear business partly relies on convincing us we need lots of gear (and preferably the latest ones) to get the job done but from my experience unless it's for a very specific application, effects are really just the icing on the cake. I might have used a flanger twice in my career so far so take this contribution for what it is but for me it's all about being practical and if the KPA has these effects it's redundant to carry the same sounds in stompbox format and then busting my luggage allowance during check-in. That being said, I am pretty happy with the Kemper effects I do use (mostly delay, reverb, compression, occasional wha and the magical "transpose" effect to learn songs in my singers' keys) and to those who aren't satisfied, I suggest spending some more time tweaking because for the most part, it's somewhere in there. I think PaulTs, or those who contributed to the Wah settings etc... lots of generous users around who explored different effects and I give them all a thumbs up. Also another way to approach this is to take effects or settings from commercial profilers who did explore them and apply them to your own rigs (ie. MBritt/TAF compressor/delay settings etc). Cheers.

Quote from sanders4617

So I'm loving these profiles by Michael, but I'm having a hard to getting everything setup for live use. Being so comfortable with an amp + pedal setup... I feel overwhelmed. I have all these profiles that I want to use, but it almost seems easier to only use a few. Then I begin to question having a Kemper, haha. If I'm going to only use a few of them, why have this? Although no matter what, it makes the perfect practice setup at home.

Do you guys have any tips on using this live and how to set it up? Do the profiled amps react the same if I ran my normal pedal setup out front?

Hey sanders4617. I play live for a living. I think it depends what kind of gigs you do but for anything big now, I prefer by far using the Kemper + cab than amp + board now (smaller venues is another story). Here is my two cents, have been going through high risk situations lately (first gigs with pop stars in festivals and learning the Kemper as I go.) I've been super anxious going through all this but now what I'm saying comes from an intense period of research and trial and error and I'm happy it's been mostly successful so far, I am grateful for MBritt and bought lots of his packs (#1&2 have the most use). Hear me out, at this point I think that unlike most other profilers out there, his are just "safe" to use live, by that I mean that once you have the volumes balanced out, you can trust that you can load pretty much any of his profiles with appropriate gain and they'll sound somewhere from good to awesome in a big venue/outside. I think that choosing the right profile is a bit counter-intuitive unless the user has some understanding of the physics of sound and how they sit in the mix and MBritt does because he's a guitar player before being a profile salesman.

So the way I have it set up now: I keep it down to just 2 performances of 5 profiles each, roughly organized in gain: the first slot is always clean twangy Fender-like for Prince/funk-type strumming with a bit of compression (I think MBritt lacks a bit there but I use his Carr from pack 1 with gain lowered to very little, other is Bert Meulendick (sp?) Showman - there's also some decent clean Supersonic and Bassmans I got on the RE). Slot 2 is clean with little breakup (ie. I think I use Mbritt's Matchless, Morgan or /13), slot 3 is rock territory (one of MBritt Marshall/ 3rd pwr Plexi), slot 4 is modern heavy/compressed big distortion (I think I use his Bletchley/5150), slot 5 is solo (I think among others, I use his Trainwreck with a mid boost eq). Well, he has a ton of great profile to fit all these categories (except the first imo). Add to all this some effects on each patch and you can cover pretty much any application. I also always have a post stack 3 db pure boost available just in case the band gets loud unexpectedly or something is not balanced. I might add an extra performance just for specific sounds like an acoustic simulator or U2 like delay or some pitch shifting, but I haven't been needing these much. Now for practice at home, I have other another "practice" performance for low volume with more definition/highs and gain (and the "transpose" effect which is a godsent to practice stuff in the singer's keys)

Now the other performance may be more "voxy" or something for example (depending what type of band/repertoire I play for), you might want more performances to "tone match" more accurately but to me its a moot point. I try to get 5 tones that are somehow "homogeneous" at various gain level - that's a bit subjective. The fact that he's using the same cab for most amps makes that easier; for example, lots of the profiles from the 3rd Power unsurprisingly are voiced similarly and go well together. When I first got the Kemper I thought I'd also use pedals up front but I realized the internal green scream blended even better than my Xotic BB up front so it eliminated the need of outside effects which is very welcome when I take the plane/train which is almost every weekend these days. Sorry for the long post, good luck.

Have been playing big festivals all summer so far, always running the Powerhead into whatever backline (usually a Marshall/Orange 4x12) with cab off. Have sounds going from super clean to big distortion and coming off these cabs, tone always goes from great to amazing and if it isn't because of a particularly shitty cab, I just adjust the monitor out EQ.

The sound on stage is a combination of this cab and the monitors from FOH. The sound you send to FOH is straight from the master out and therefore, independent from this so even if your stage sound isn't stereo or 100% identical to the cab, it really doesn't matter as long as it doesn't distract you or your band. The bulk of the work is done at home/studio to make sure your sounds are good and balanced at gig volume. We're here to make music in the end and this has never been easier and effective for me than since I've started using this setup with the powerhead. All the stage technicians drool at it after soundchecks. Don't want to sound like an advertisement but no kidding, this piece of gear single-handedly changed my life.

La version officielle est toujours 3.3

Toutes les versions en haut de 3.3 sont "betas", à utiliser à tes risques. Ils recommendent de ne pas jouer live avec un OS beta. Pour avoir acces à celles ci (4.03), tu dois selectionner l'onglet "Operating System Beta".

Quote from skoczy

@JedMckenna - how did you solve this? just by lowering volume?

Yes, that time I lowered the volume. However after rebooting a few times, I haven't been able to replicate the issue, that might have been a one off glitch. I love this machine to death but I find there are is some weirdness occurring sometimes. I went back to 3.3 for that reason, but still, might be because I'm doings tons of patch editing/performance mode stuff these days. Has never happened in front of 5000 people yet, knock on wood.

Yes. Not to name some commercial sellers in particular but I find some of them aim for a sound that is very pleasing at low volume, usually by cranking up the definition very high or applying specific EQ's... this seems to translate into the bad effect you describe in live playing.

I had that happen to me at a gig and the night before the next one, I got some MBritt and glad I did. At high volume, they sounded ballsy, balanced and amazing. Not sure what to use the other commercial profiles I bought for now, I might give them another shot later by turning their definition way down or something.

Dear folks,

Today I got a new pair of JBL 305 speakers and noticed the sound was clipping/buzzing. After first thinking the speakers were at fault, I did some troubleshooting and realized it only happened when the KPA's master volume goes above 6.5 / 7, particularly on profiles with more gain. No light goes red though. I thought the master volume wasn't supposed to affect the quality of the sound so I'm wondering what could be the cause of this. The main out and monitor out both sound the same.

Prior to noticing that, I just downgraded to 3.3 because I have a string of important gigs coming up and felt that some funky stuff sometimes happens with my performances since I've been running 4.02. I think I haven't changed my distortion sense, but maybe I've raised clean sense a little.

Thanks.

Cheers mate. Just made a thread last week describing that exact same situation happening to me on my first gig.

So here's an update on mine: had a pop star gig this weekend at an outside festival and the Kemper aced it again, even more. I remember finding it a bit fizzy the previous "trial" gig, therefore I changed some profiles to just a string of 5 MBritt profiles that I bought literally two days before. With no tweaking whatsoever, I was very nervous to say the least but I went with it knowing it would sound better than the backline anyway and probably better than my old profiles as well. The stage sound was outstanding at soundcheck, so I knew it was at least going to be ok out there. After the gig, I went to speak to the FOH guy (super experienced), he said he didn't touch the eq and it sounded amazing, he just wished I had given him stereo instead of mono out - note to self for next time. And oh damn, these MBritt profiles whoah!!

Only minor thing is that for those nights where we can't leave our gear on stage (there was another band before so we had to run on stage setup our stuff), the Kemper takes a few minutes to power-up which feels like hours when all the band/techs are watching you waiting for your cue. Mind you, setting up a pedalboard would probably take longer anyway.

Quote from andygeedot

Did you use merged profiles or the studio profiles with cabsim off?
Greetings
Andy

I used standard profiles with cab sim off. Still need to experiment more with merged/direct profiles and get a grip on how to fix in the mix better but everything I need is there, just a matter of tweaking. I realize the guitar cab approach is very forgiving whereas I have to be careful when running through the PA, maybe cutting some highs or lowering the definition (some commercial profiler more than others).

Quote

No joke, at my first gig the sound guy took one look at the Kemper rack and stared at the front panel for like three minutes. He could not figure out where to put the microphone. This was after I showed him the direct outs on the back and told him what they were for. Halfway into the first song he suddenly realizes there is no guitar coming out of FOH, so he runs up on stage and puts a microphone in front of the bass cabinet sitting next to my rack. Of course this has no effect. It took the guy three songs to realize he had the channel muted at the board.

Ha! Well, I'm not going to poke fun at confused soundmen especially in the part of the world where I am but am sure in a few years they'll be like "oh I remember when I first saw one of these!" In my case the younger stage tech who seemed to know what was going on however looked pretty excited to come across one.

I've started playing bigger venues this year and finally got a Kemper after a few big gigs, including a stadium, with less than adequate sound with my pretty small pedalboard and questionable backline. I had been waiting since March to use it live, a little bit afraid of running into problems with tone and volume balance. I am new to digital and I feel it reacts in a way I'm not used to.

Had an outdoor event this weekend and thought it was time. Almost no time to soundcheck, plugged in the 4x12 cab on stage, told the confused sound guy to forget about his microphones and just give me an XLR to run to front of house, disabled master volume link and monitor cab. Boom, I was set up in 3 minutes!

Can't comment on how it sounded out there yet (although I had compliments) but I never had a better stage sound on a big venue. I used 2 rigs, Top Jimi's JTM45 and '74 Superlead and a clean Fender from Rig Exchange. Still need to make some tweaks for next time but now I pretty much feel like life has just changed.