So with all these interesting and informative points of view here, is the kemper kab/kone the best of both worlds?
I would like to try one sometime to see if I dislike it just as much as I dislike playing my Kemper through every other guitar speaker cabinet I have tried.
Curious, which ones do you use?
Yamaha DXR10. Mine are the original ones. They now have a MKII series but I don't know what the difference is. They look identical to mine and I think the specs are the same except for the price. Mine were $600 each. The MKII sells for $795. They got rave reviews across the board on the interwebs but Ingolf's in depth review and recommendation here in the forums led me to pull the trigger. Bought the first one and loved it and immediately bought a second to spread out the sound stage a little. I use them as floor wedges angled up at me. This is the rig and the tone I have been seeking for over 40 years.
So what have we learned from this exercise? Probably nothing. Some people like FR and some like speaker cabs. The FR crowd can't even agree on one particular FR solution that sounds best. The speaker cab guys split between the Kemper Kab and traditional guitar cabs. The traditional cab guys are all over the map as to which speaker sounds best. The Kone guys split between the Kemper Kab and putting Kones in a regular guitar cab.
Just like pickups, strings, guitars, tubes, picks... even Kemper profiles. This is something you just have to sort out for yourself. Try your Kemper in as many different scenarios as you can until you find something you like or find the tone you are looking for. If you purchase something without having heard it try to buy from a retailer that allows returns if it does not suit you. There is no one size fits all in the "off the rack" world we live in.
I chose FR and chose the particular FR unit I purchased (two of them, actually) based largely on the glowing endorsement of a well respected member of the Kemper forum. He has since moved on to another FR unit and then to the Kemper Kab, if I recall correctly. Luckily, he was spot on about the first option. So, there you go.
Correct, Performance mode has his own memory. Though I think I read somewhere that the Factory Content is embedded in the OS and can't be deleted
I deleted all the factory content on mine. I only have commercially purchased profiles and few that I downloaded from the Rig Exchange. Good question. I was wondering the same thing last night.
I got this info from this link:
https://www.kemper-amps.com/factoryrigs
"This is a list of all factory rigs that are available for the PROFILER™. A selection of these has been preinstalled in your PROFILER. Any Rigs in this list that are not part of the current factory content can be installed by either downloading the Rig packs from the download section download section of our website or by importing those Rig packs via KEMPER Rig Manager™."
I do know people that have specific effects that they have grown close to and love.
I'm pretty happy with most of the Kemper's onboard effects. The only pedal I really miss is my Dunlop Rotovibe. And I really miss it.
I use the Kemper strobe tuner.
I use the bridge pickup which is usually a Duncan JB.
I pluck the string (D'Addario XL110 set) with a pick (Dunlop 1.14mm Tortex) and tune on the attack, always tuning up from flat to in tune, never from sharp.
Years ago (decades, really) I always used the neck pickup simply because my old Peterson 450 seemed to prefer that. After I switched to the BOSS TU-2 I started using the bridge pickup. One thing I have noticed is that not only do I need to warmup before I play so does the neck of my guitar. I usually warm up a little bit to let the neck and strings to warm up a bit before I tune up. If I tune it cold I usually have to retune a little after I play for a few minutes. Then it stays in tune. My primary guitar is a 1984 Gibson Explorer. I cannot stress how important it is to have properly cut nut slots that are clean, polished and lubricated a little bit. Big Bends Nut Sauce or plain Chap Stik are my go to lubricants. A little dental floss works wonders to polish things up smooth.
I prefer FR. I have a powered toaster but I have never liked running it into a guitar cab. It always sounds like I am throwing a blanket over my tone. I did that for the first week or so that owned my Kemper. I thought it sounded okay and had potential. Once I switched to FR there was no going back. I run the monitor outputs to powered floor monitors. I dig it.
Until i bought it, installed it and boom...instant disappointment.
So...what the f$#@ am i doing wrong?
What are you doing wrong? Maybe nothing. My experience has been largely the same as yours. I have purchased profile packs from at least a dozen different commercial profilers. Most of them were "one and done" as in I installed them and tried them out and deleted them. Maybe I didn't spend enough time with them. The only profiles that I really like are from MBritt. They are plug and play for me. Sound great right out of the box with no tweaking. Of course, that's just personal preference but I figure if those sound great on my setup (Kemper toaster into two Yamaha DXR10 powered monitors on the floor facing up as wedges) the others should come pretty close and they don't. Not at all. I've stopped buying profiles from anyone else mostly because I have all the tones I need but partly because I am tired of being unimpressed and spending money for the privilege.
I love love love the "Fender Dual Pro CLN" in the Rig Exchange by author N8. Great, full bodied Fender clean tone. It's the only profile from the Rig Exchange that ever made the cut and stayed on my Kemper.
Instead of transposing the guitar I transpose or fine tune the track I am playing along to using Transcribe! From seventhstring.com It is a fantastic little software app that makes learning and playing along to track super easy.
Why not just use transpose on the Kemper? Because I can still hear the guitar strings at their natural pitch along with the transposed tones from the KPA. Having everything doubled a semitone apart can be a real pain in the backside ?
My music is entirely on mp3 these days. Before I got my Kemper I either changed the key of the mp3 with Pitch Switch or switched guitars since I always kept one guitar tuned down a half step (still, a hassle to switch guitars). At the volume I play you cannot hear the strings over the din. When I listen to AC/DC so do my neighbors. I will check out Transcribe for those songs that aren't exactly in standard or exactly one half step down. Pitch Switch does not offer any fine adjustment that I can recall.
1. I have only one Electric guitar which is tuned in standard and in one band we use a lot of down tunings (1 tone - 2 tone down) . How is the transpose effect in Kemper? it works well or will i have to use an external pedal like Digitech drop?
I primarily play along with songs on my stereo at home. I use the transpose function when I play all the time to play along with songs that are tuned down a half step and I love it. I have it built as a stomp in a few of my profiles so I can just tap a button on my foot controller and go.
I have a Fender Powerhouse Strat with the same mid boost circuit only limited to 12 dB boost. Works great. I like the boost circuit as it is always on even when set to minimum and gives the tone a little body. Its sounds great with everything - clean, slightly over driven or high gain profiles. I installed the same 12dB boost circuit in my other Strat since I liked it so well.
I'm running the latest firmware and latest Rig Manager on a Windows 10 computer. I have a button at the bottom of the screen that says "Store Performance in #X" with X being the performance I am working on. I press the button and it saves my changes. I am running two monitors - that is why you see two sides, one with rigs and effects on the left and one with my performances on the right. Two monitors makes working on performances so much easier. You have to have the Kemper rotary switch set to "Performance" when you are working on performances in RM. I think you are set to "Browser". I just switched mine to "Browser" and it behaves like you describe.
I see them now. I didn't realize you could select an effects slot and then right click and see all of the effects. Your screen shot was quite helpful. Thank you.
Thank you for the explanation. I have also been wondering where all the effects went in Rig Manager. Luckily, my effects needs are pretty basic and I stored all of the basic effects that I use so they show up in Rig Manager. If I was a tweaker who liked to experiment with different effects on a regular basis I'd be pretty disappointed. Still an amazing device.
Also, while some see them as "enabling people to get cool stuff" it's not hard to view them as exploiting people to get themselves into debt and then chasing them for extortionate interest and penalties. I personally view them as the latter.
I agree. I hate how my internet browser reroutes me to retail websites against my will and forces me to purchase things on credit that I cannot afford.
The only pedal I currently use is a Digitech FreqOut at the input. My effects needs are pretty basic. I get by with the Kemper flanger, phaser, chorus, rotary speaker and delay due to the simplicity of the all in one package. They are all adequate but none of them sound as good as real pedals to me. I really miss my Dunlop Rotovibe. The Kemper wah (once I got it dialed in to taste) sounds really close (and much quieter) to my vintage Thomas Organ Cry Baby pedals.
There's no such thing as "vintage" when it comes to electronics.
There are legions of musicians using vintage Fender guitar amplifiers that would strongly disagree with that statement.
Fender Dual Pro CLN, OD1 and OD2 profiles by author N8. The clean profile is exquisite. Best clean profile I have heard for the Kemper free or commercial. Those are the only three profiles I keep on my Kemper from the Rig Exchange. Check them out.
