Posts by Mateo_2006

Quote from RosboneMako

WEIRD SYNTH EFFECT

I made a pedal that takes the SINE of the signal you are playing. When you start to add gain to the signal so it exceeds 1.0, you start to get into harmonics of the original signal. So playing softly sounds similar to a normal guitar. The louder you play the higher the pitch and implied harmonics.

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I really love this.

Really distorted but still with clear 'edges'. No mud. In a few moments, the 'bloom' sounds like it is a bit out of your control like a muff does sometimes.

I always thought that Trevor Rabin had some of the heaviest sounds around combining synth sounds with harmonizers and serious hard wave distortion.

Awesome stuff.

During Covid, I went down a real rabbit hole with acquiring and flipping gain pedals.

My friend of mine who is a sound man and not a serious guitarist gave me his original Green Russion big box Big Muff. Not really my thing but I was amazed by how my Kemper behaved with that unit in front of it. It felt totally alive.

Some of the overdrive pedals, I have gone through: MXR distortion +, original TS9, Rat 2, Walrus Ironhorse, R.A.T. TACK, ARC Effects Klon Klone, original Timmy, Barber Burn Unit, Van Weelden Royal Overdrive, Honey Bee, Lovepedal ZenDrive, Vertex Ultraphonix, Ultraphonix MK2, Hotone Grass, Purple Plexi, Les Lius, High Power Tweed Twin, Joyo American Sound (Tech 21 Blonde copy), Joyo AC-Tone, King of Kings (Not recommended KOT clone), Rockett 45 Caliber, Blue Note, Box of Rock, Weehbo Plexface, Cornerstone Gladio.

I prefer gain stages using only low amounts of gain from each pedal.

When employing primarily Blackface/Brownface clean sounds I used nothing but the Arc Effects Klon Klone and a Timmy for about a year. - The Klone primarily to warm up the sound and the Timmy as a boost.

Eventually I started using warmer Tweed cleans for my basic sound and didn't use anything but the Kemper; I used the treble booster more as an EQ pedal, then I would have Green Scream and Mouse for different amounts of gain within the Kemper. - but more often I would just switch to a different higher gain profile.

I think this is what makes the most sense with the Kemper as it adds many advantages of simplicity and quietness to the rig. I would just recommend using different profiles and tweaking the existing Kemper stomps. There is tons of depth there if one is a dedicated tweaker. - but it isn't what I currently do.

For external gain, I currently go Vertex Ultraphonix > Rat 2 > Timmy into a custom warm Tweed clean sound

The Vertex gain is less than 9:00 and acts more light a smooth boost or compressor, adding almost-clean sustain to my sound. I love this. I step on the Rat which is at around 8:00 (gain almost not engaged) to add a midrange that makes my sound 'push forward' a bit and is better for rhythm, then I have the Timmy just as a 'more' button not really using its gain but as a boost that also enhances tremble.

Synopsis: One essential pedal?

Blackface core sound - some kind of Klon (I think the Tumnus version with the 3 band EQ is one of the best)

Tweed core sound - Ultraphonix (original not Mk2)

Welcome to the forum!

I am an infrequent poster but a frequent lurker. As a fellow who likes jazz tones and plays a Charlie Christian equipped tele or strat 100 percent of the time, I thought I would mention some freely available profiles that have worked for me.

- Aside from about ten "polytone" profiles which can be had through the Rig Manager, here are some profiles in order from cleanest to meanest (but not really very mean at all):

Boogiem's - "63 Vibroverb" with mids up and a Treble Booster boosting the highs (not the gain) for when I want a quick EQ change via a stomp. (My favourite free profile for years!)

John Taylor's "Blonde Bassman 6L6GC" is a nice clean tweakable sound with a bit more 'fatness' than some BF profiles.

Michael Britt's - "Old Fold Honky-Tonk" is a good Tweed Deluxe sound (Kenny Burrell/Grant Green pushed clean)

Ron Jones - "The Duke" - originally had "Redwirez" cabinet but I think I paired it with "Oranje 4*12" - Really tweakable to different levels of grit. (One of my current favourites. Think of Carlton on Fagen's "Ruby Baby".)

While obviously you have to tweak Gain and EQ a bit to be optimized for your own guitar's output and touch, these may get you into the ballpark quicker than some others.

Dialing in the right reverb sound will also be of big important to approaching what you are used to hearing through your Princeton reverb. I pined for spring reverb for a long time (I had an old Ampeg with a great spring reverb for many years) but got so used to some settings with the Legacy Reverb that by time Spring was available on the Kemper (or when I used my Spring pedal), I found my taste had changed and I now often prefer plate and other varieties of ambience.

My most frequent used Tweed Deluxe, "clean with hair", late-50s sound is a profile I made myself and roll back the volume on the guitar to clean up a bit, but have some grit on hand - just like you might on a conventional amp. Don't discount the power of dialing in your own sound on your Princeton and profiling it. Then you can take it any where with you - along with a host of others.

In the spirit of choosing "the right horse for the right course", it is probably useful to know how people use the profiles they like. I tend to look for sounds in the range between, say, Grant Green and Larry Carlton. (Not many truly high gain profiles)

I choose many profiles for their ability to deliver fat single note melodies rather than sparkly chords. The neck pickup of a Lollar Charlie Christian pickup is where I am most often at home. I have a definite preference for Brown and Tweed era Fender amps. When going into higher gain I have a tendency toward D-Style amps which are not too far afield from Fenders anyway.

Lately I have been using fewer profiles saved with more variations of gain and EQ whereas in the past I would use 5 different amps in a Performance to get a variety of choices of EQ and Gain.

Boogiem's - "63 Vibroverb" with mids up and a Treble Booster boosting the highs (not the gain) for 'real clean'. (My favourite profile for years!)

Michael Britt's - "Old Fold Honky-Tonk" is a good Tweed Deluxe sound

Ron Jones - "The Duke" - originally had "Redwirez" cabinet but I think I paired it with "Oranje 4*12" - Really tweakable to different levels of grit. (One of my current favourites. Think of Carlton on Fagen's "Ruby Baby".)

Heater's - "DP Kingsley DL30" - set to different levels of gain, satisfy most of my medium/ higher level gain needs.

To this I add my own very idiosyncratic profiles of Tweed Deluxes and Champs that I use to play along with Grant Green's "Idle Moments" and Kenny Burrell's "Midnight Blue" and that is everything I am really using.

Honorable mention goes to:

Cleans:

John Tyler's - 1962 Blonde Bassman - A great Profile that works well with the stomp overdrives as well

Bert Meulendijk's - Fan Showgirl 1962

Pino Supertino's - Line 6 Pod Pro (for a more compressed clean for jazz - pretty similar to my own)

ZAP's - Polytone MB IV (for jazz and more middy sounding cleans)

Giacomo's - Mesa V Twin - 6L6 (for fat low end)

Medium Grit:

Luckbad's - Ethos Overdrive

There are good Trainwreck, Boogie, Marshall and Bogner profiles in the rig exchange as well but I am not really using them any more.

The first year I had the Kemper (several years ago), I continued to use my Klon Klone, my Timmy and I actually bought a Line 6 M5 so that I could use the Spring Reverb and a few other effects I was used to hearing. (Kemper didn't have the Spring option then).

I also found that I wasn't totally sold on the Kemper when using these effects in front of a clean profile and wondered if I should have bought the Kemper.

Then I spent more time looking for basic profiles where the amp profile was already close to producing the sound I was looking for without pedals. I started using the banks of Performance Mode to save amps with varying amounts of gain instead of using the pedals to create the bulk of the sound and maybe just tweaked them a little using the Green Scream or the Mouse if needed.

To me it sounds way better, in terms of different gain structures, going from "63 Vibroverb" profile to "The Duke" than it ever did stepping on my original TS9 in front of my real Ampeg VT40 (like a Fender Super Reverb with more control of the mids). - Sure I miss the swirl of the sound between those 4 x 10" speakers but in terms of the quality of the gain sound, I am way happier.

If I have to go to a more distorted sound which is very close to the original cleaner sound then I will use one of the Kemper's drive options and it also sounds more organic (closer to the original sound profile) than sticking a real pedal in front.

To me I could never get exactly the same sound as I got sticking the real Klone in front of the clean Fender profile - but I think I got better sounds going to a more distorted profile - that I could tweak - to say tighten up the low end as the gain increased and lower the reverb setting and save them in performance mode than stepping on a real overdrive pedal in front of the profile with the same settings. - But I always used analogue pedals to simulate the sounds of a more overdriven amp, I was never thinking "Man I really want the sound of a Klon!", and maybe that is why I am happy without the pedals.

Other people may be looking for something quite different and really WANT the sound of that real Marshall Bluesbreaker or that Way Huge Camel Toe pedal. They should probably keep using those pedals.

As far as Fuzz Face type pedals and the response you get with them and volume on your guitar, I am not sure you are going to find that in exactly the same way with the Kemper. It will clean up but I am not sure it will sound the same. Actually because of the way Fuzz Faces react with the input on a tube amp, I am not sure you'll get it to sound the same with the Kemper at all. - I will leave that to people more knowledgeable than myself. I haven't had a fuzz face since I bought the Kemper.

I also found that even using the old Legacy Reverb I was able to find settings that I found more subtle than the external pedals Spring settings I had been using that I prefer when listening back to old recordings i made.

Now Kemper has the new reverbs and the new drives and things are even better I suppose - but to be honest I am already getting the sounds that I want with tools that were already available.

There also two other factors:

1) Having no real pedals in the chain really makes for a much QUIETER signal path with fewer things that can go wrong like bad connections and dying batteries.

2) When I was using a tube amp and pedals I would often find the "magic settings" one night only to return to them the next day and find that it sounded different to myself and others on another day. (I am told Fuzz Faces can sound different on the same night as they warm up!) Since going to strictly Kemper my sound is extremely CONSISTENT. This is especially good if you need to go back and edit a recording you made earlier - but it is also just generally a good thing!

Quote from waraba

Place the verb pre-amp , not post.

Check my settings post and pre amp on my rig ex rig ' Boogie on spring' , but be sure to disengage all your FXs before.

"Boogie On a Spring" is nice Waraba. Thanks for that. Four reverb choices on that rig. You are certainly a reverb enthusiast! Nice to hear the different options that you were thinking about there.

I also like the settings on CHuckC's "ANDYS VIBROLUX" profile, with Spring and a Legacy reverb choices in the post amp position but the Spring pretty tame there.

Of course, I had tried the presets but they didn't do it for me at those settings. None of them sound a bit like how I would set up my Ampeg or my Twin.

The thing is it is dead simple to get great reverb sounds out of a Fender or similar amp. Even stand-alone Fender tube reverb units only have three controlls: dwell, mixer and tone. I guess it is nice to have greater control over the reverb sound but having so many parameters also makes it more difficult to dial in.

Of course, once I have a few of the right recipes down, I am sure I will no longer be able to live without the extra options!

Thanks for the suggestions.

Quote from kevinduren

First of all, I try every profile named tweed-anything (or champ or princeton or deluxe for that matter).

I had even wanted mention them in the Hidden Gems thread, but didn't want to try to explain my tweaks. If you haven't already, maybe you should mention them in that thread Mateo_2006.

Absolutely, Kevin. If see the words "tweed" or "blonde" in the description there is a pretty good chance I'll take an aural "peek".

Perhaps "Hidden Gems" is better for this post than a thread of its own.

I just wanted to send a shout out of appreciation for Zoltan1957's "1955 SUPER TWEED" profile.

I usually have to tweak most profiles a bit to get the kinds of sounds that I am after from a particular amp. Not so with the Super Tweed!

This baby is good "right out of the box" (or Rig Exchange, in this case)!

If you are like me and didn't grow up with a lot of Tweed era amps lying around the house, when you think of a "Super" it is a blackface Super Reverb that comes to mind. And for good reason, as that amp has one of the most iconic sounds ever. It was so popular it had many imitators. My main amp as a teenager and in my twenties was Ampeg's take on the Super Reverb formula, the VT40.

The 1960s Blackfaced Super Reverb formula was:

4 x 10 inch speakers

Accutronics made reverb units

45 watts

Awesome cleans

Singing sustain up loud.

But the tweed era, Fender Super, was totally different from the later era Blackface and Silverface amps carrying the name "Super".

Two slanted 10 inch speakers

18-20 Watts

Classic tweed breakup

Tubes: 5U4, 6V6 (2), 12AX7 (2), 12AY7(2) 1955-1958

(The Supers before and after the late 50s sported 6L6s)

So the version of this amp profiled is a world away from a Blackface era Super Reverb.

I love playing this profile through bridge position of my Lollar Charlie Christian equipped strat. (Output similar to a humbucker but breaks up later). A nice break up and focused tone without excessive "honkiness". A real winner and not just a sound for those nostalgic for that 50s sound either!

Thanks to Zoltan1957 for posting such a great profile!

I rename everything according to something that means something to me. The name of an artist or a tune that the sound evokes and just put a prefix for what guitar I tweaked the sound with so I have stuff like:

"CCC Soulero brighter" - denoting that I tweaked it for the strat I have with 3 Charlie Christian pickups, that it reminds me of Kenny Burrell's Tweed Deluxe on the edge of break up on that early 60s Blue Note recording. "Brighter" refers to the fact that I have another tweaked profile saved with a darker EQ.

or

HUM Carlton Vibroverb - denoting humbuckers, Larry Carlton's clean sound on the Sleepwalk album, and the amp which be different from another profile like "Carlton's Tweed Grit". I also use "Clean", "Hot Clean", "Grit", "Brown", "High Gain" etc as I might have multiple tweaks of an amp saved with different amounts of gain.

The prefix is handy because is gathers all the profiles for specific guitars together in the same place. A standard strat is my default and so gets no prefix.

In the Rig Manager, I sort my saved profiles into files built up more around amp names like "Blackface Bassman" or "Tweed Deluxe" or "Dumble-esque", although I do have some file which denote sounds also. So I have files like "Marshall Lo" "Marshall Mid Gain" and "Marshall Hi" but also files named "Gnarly" and "Old Tyme".

If you call up a profile in RM you can always see all the details of what went into the profile, amp, cab, mike etc., so I don't feel I need to record it in the name. You can often see the original amp on the screen of the Kemper too, like "1950 SUPER TWEED" or whatever, so there is no trouble retracing your steps and finding the original amp profile it came from.

I focus more on the "outcome" of the sound and an image it brings to my mind rather than the "parts" that put it together for naming the rigs I save.

So "CCC Sultans Darker" is better for me than preserving the oblique name the profiler gave a profile like "Fan Show Girl" or always using the amp in the title (although I often do). Rigs are collection of sound snapshops rather than being "just the amp" or even being "the amp in its entirety" as you might have 4 profiles of that amp with different gain stages and EQ settings profiled. I am going to name those individual sounds rather than just name the amp and it is easier for me also to have a file in Rig Manager marked "Pushed Clean" than to have to look through all files I have saved under "Twin", "Showman", "Deluxe", "Dumble", or "Vox" and look through all the various profiles I have saved in those files when what I need is just a great clean profile, so I will organize them that way as well.

The Spring is especially tricky. I don't really have 3 or 4 go to Spring settings yet. ...But you have to do the work to get the results and I haven't spent enough time with it yet.

Still I don't hear a lot of the new profiles on the Rig Exchange sporting beautiful spring reverbs settings either ... so I must not be alone.

Quote from MrJacobHansen

Funny thing about uploading rigs, I haven't for a moment considered that my stomp and FX slots are uploaded as well! Goes to show how new I am to making my own profiles, I guess!

Oh, for sure. I get lots of ideas from the way other people are setting their effects up with certain guitar sounds.

For example Boogiem has a great "63 Vibroverb" profile and he uses the Legacy Reverb to great effect to get a nice atmospheric reverb. I save that reverb set-up into my effects and just modify the Mix settings to my application. I call it up for a lot of my cleaner Fenderish sounds where I will have parts played unaccompanied or without dense keys and other guitars playing or it might be too muddy.

So if you take your Deluxe profile, -1 on Gain, +3 on Treble, Treble Booster at 3.1/Tone and -1, 10:00 for compression in the AMP section and add Boogiem's reverb settings you get a tone somewhat reminiscent of Larry Carlton's tone on "Last Night" on the "Sleepwalk" album.

Last Night

Boogiem's Legacy Reverb setting:

Mix ( reduced to 16.4) Delay (3.78) Room Size (Hall) Predelay (20 ms)

High damp (2.2) Bandwidth (4.5) Mid freq (-1.4) Ducking (0.0)

Thanks for sharing man! Good profile.

Good stomp and reverb settings too.

I made the following tweaks for my set up using a 3 Lollar CC pickup equipped rosewood fretboard strat

Neither humbuckers nor strat singles coils but closer to humbucker output and tone than to that of a conventional strat.

- I bumped down the Gain from 4 lights to 3 or 8:00 (sounds less like speaker break up to me.)

- I put on compression in the AMP section to about 10:00 o'clock (I just tend to like that compression.)

- Liking what your Pure Boost did to the amp, I replaced the second stomp with a my go-to Treble Boost setting -Tone 3, Volume 1.5

- Increased the bass to 2:00 as this guitar seems to have a hole there with these settings.

This gave really nice note definition (too much for a lot of people) and some more brightness.

I was raised on Larry Carlton's tweed sound in 1970s/80s and this is what I have in mind when dialing something like this Deluxe up. He definitely had no fear of compression.

I think everybody needs to tweak their settings for each guitar and application. These settings wouldn't make it with my pine-bodied maple-necked CC equipped tele. Same pickups but different brightness between those two instruments for sure. The great thing with the Kemper is you can just save different EQ settings for different guitars!

Thanks again for the profile.

Quote from kevinduren

Thanks. That spring reverb setting is MUCH better than anything I was able to come up with and sounds good on it's own.

Here is a Legacy Reverb setting that I have used prior to the existence of a Kemper Spring Reverb that has worked for me to good effect.

Mix - 25.5% Decay -1.910s Size - Large Room Pre-Delay - 106ms

High Damp - 2.4 Bandwidth - 0.0 Mid Freq - 1.8 Ducking - 0.0

I think reverb is a really personal taste. I was in my teens in the 80s when people were applauding the existence of these new digital reverb/delay units which came into fashion (Lexicons were king!), so even while many of my heroes might have used spring reverb sounds, their engineers were definitely using digital reverbs for specific instruments and for the mixes as a whole. When I think of great reverb sounds on guitars, I think of the early Dire Straits albums and Larry Carlton albums from that era. I think Steely Dan's "Gaucho" and "Donald Fagen's "Night Fly" were often put on the turntables to check out people's stereo systems in that era. ( We also used Seiji Azawa's "Four Seasons" as it got a very high rating in audiophile magazines of the time.) Anyway, the stuff we listened to coming up often establish what we are looking for in a reverb so it can really vary.

Here is an interesting history of reverb that I learned stuff from: https://www.musicradar.com/tui…-history-of-reverb-602421

I also think that the above reverb sounds real good on a solo guitar or a sparse mix but you are going to want to tame it down if there are lots of instruments in the same frequency ranges.

I use that reverb sound with fender guitars with single coil pickups and a clean sound. Gain increases your perception of your reverb levels too and I think this might make for a 'soupy' mix if you did not make some adjustments to it.

One sound I use it with a lot is John Tyler's "1962 Bassman" with 6L6s - a clean bassman sound which I add compression, treble boost and mids to. Once again showing that 80s influence.

Studio ace, Carl Verheyen wrote an article in Guitar Player warning guitarists not to record their tracks with reverb as they may not fit in with the overall mix and the Kemper gives us lots of options for a 'dry' / 'wet' rig or even reamping to make sure our parts fit, so we are pretty lucky in 2019!

Actually I have tried that, to give it that "stand alone reverb unit in front of a tweed amp" sort-of-thing.

(A Vibro King also works this way.)

But if we are thinking of blackface amps like the 67 Vibrolux in the video, I believe that the reverb comes between the preamp stage and the power amp stage just like in a modern effects loop.

However, if it sounds more authentic in the Kemper that way I will keep my efforts focused on placing it there.

So on another thread posted recently someone was speaking of difficulty in getting good Spring Reverb sounds.

I had assumed that I was the only one but didn't want to speak up as I didn't think I had spent enough time decoding the Spring Reverb's parameters and to be honest I have been getting good sounds out of the Legacy Reverb and so it wasn't such a high priority for me.

Then I was watching guitar builder/modifier and Peter Green expert Larry Corsa playing:

Larry Corsa

Whoa! What a great sound through that 1967 Vibrolux! (1:30 - )

That heavy reverb may be consistent with some of Peter Green's recordings but I was instantly brought back to listening to B.B. King's late 60s live recordings - No fear of reverb there and sounds are not at all clean!: Night Life

So I was wondering if anyone has had success using the Kemper's "Spring Reverb" to recreate this kind of heavily reverb laden sound?

Recommendations for profiles or settings?

Cleans:

Cleans are my thing and I have a propensity toward Fender Blonde/Brownface era sounding amps with 6L6s

John Tyler's - 1962 Blonde Bassman

Boogiem's - 63 Vibroverb

Bert Meulendijk's - Fan Showgirl 1962

Pino Supertino's - Line 6 Pod Pro (for a more compressed clean for jazz)

ZAP's - Polytone MB IV (for jazz and more middy sounding cleans)

Giacomo's - Mesa V Twin - 6L6 (for extra low end)

I usually put in the following stomps on clean amps to make these clean profiles flexible for many sounds from clean to grit to grind. :

[ Comp - TrebleBooster - Green Scream (low gain) - Green Scream or Mouse (medium gain) ]

I use the Treble Boost set up for brightening the sound not increasing the volume.

Medium Grit:

Luckbad's - Ethos Overdrive

Heater's - Heaters Kingsley DL30

M. Wienstroer's -Fan (65 Bassman)

Joptones' -Trainwreck Express

Brown:

Joptunes' - JTM50BF (Bridge pickup)

And44's - Brown+Timmy D/13

Actually I think there are dozens of great vintage Marshall and 5150 profiles. People don't seem to have much difficulty making profiles of these that I like.

It is the cleans that are tricky and combining them with the right reverb makes all the difference to me.

Whoa! Seems spot on. Nice work.

I feel your pain.

I am new to the reverbs and am still feel it may be my lack of understanding that is preventing me from getting Fendery sounding reverbs without the harshness I am currently getting from the Kemper spring.

I am actually quite fond of spring reverb as it exists in Fender, Boogie and Ampeg amps (My Ampeg VT 40 had a great spring reverb and I was used to hearing that for 20 years.) however my experience with spring reverbs has been confined to one and two knob options in amps.

I also quite the enjoy the plate reverbs within the Kemper.

If you go on to the gear exchange you can find under "ANDYS VIBROLUX" that, like you, rig author "ChuckC" has two reverbs settings set up which are pretty nice with a "Spring" which could be used going in the "Legacy" reverb - both are post amp though.

But the Spring isn't very overt. The Legacy would be doing most of the heavy lifting for that one combined with a fatter blackface-ish clean sound. (Actually a Divided by 13 into a Riviera Cab).

You might take a look at the settings there.

It may not sound like a Vibrolux's reverb turned up (It doesn't.). But sounds pretty good to me and might give you some ideas of how someone else has dealt with using the spring combined with another reverb in a musical way.

Sounds awesome!

Nice, clean and warm. Obviously that Milkman Profile is a nice match for a pedal steel. Nice choice.

I like the way those harmonics really "pop" out of the mix around 3:35.

Quote from V8guitar

With the Kemper, we are not restricted to one amp but a multitude, so I'm just asking if actually the same effect is possible using different amps rather than stomps. In the case of the Fender, you could choose a HotRod deluxe for extra grit or a matchless blah blah.

But as I said, I'm not a stomp guy ( I'm not anti stomp either ). I've always just used the the Amp gain structure and eq. I've never got on with pedals in the front...but that's just me..maybe there is a big world I'm missing

I feel the same too.

Why put a Wampler Pinnacle in front of your Plexi Profile when you can use a 5150 profile set where it is cooking? Rather than placing a Dude Pedal in front a Vox profile, I'd rather use a Kingsley Profile. No contest - for me, that is.

On the other hand, if you normally play with a Klon in front of your JTM 50 and you want exactly that sound for your boost and the ability to change the settings then you should probably buy a Klon.

If you haven't already been using one, I can't see you 'Jonesing' for one with a Kemper. There are already endless gain stage options with profiles.

The Klon was made to solve a problem that a Kemper owner doesn't have.