After a long long tone search, I finally pulled the plug and bought a Kemper.
I live in Belgium (Geel) and I’m from 1967 (damn time flies).
Playing guitar for 35+ years, but gigging seriously only the last 10.
http://www.oplosseschroeven.be
First I used an Engl E670 Special Edition. Great amp, but way too loud and heavy.
Afterwards I used a Line6 HD500 with a Mackie SRM450, very portable but lacking a bit in tone quality.
You need to tweak the hell out of the HD500 to find an acceptable tone. I was quite happy with the clean ones.
Overdriven tones were always sounding raspy, scratchy and definitely not authentic.
Finally I got so sick and tired of all the tweaking, so I decided to look around for something new.
I learned about the Kemper and Axe FX and decided (after reading for a month this forum) to buy a Kemper.
Axe FX looked like just another tweaking machine and the Kemper looked like a playing machine…
After owning my Kemper for a month now (Non-powered Rack with Koch ATR4502 hybrid power amp), I must say that I’m totally happy with my decision!
I seriously doubted between the powerrack and non-powered with power amp and decided for the Koch after hearing it.
This green thing is so AWESOME! Very easy to use but still so powerful in output modes (though I wished it had a stereo monitor out).
But the best feature is the ease to get a great sound. Just select a rig and start playing, add an effect and it will sound gorgeous.
No hours of tweaking, just playing!
At first I was a little disappointed with my guitars equipped with EMG’s (Steinberger, Schecters, LTD’s).
It sounded OK but not fantastic and I always had to dial out presence (-1, -1.5), until I tried some MBritt profiles.
Now I can’t get that grin from my face. These “darker” profiles really make it happen for me and get better the higher the volume goes.
I was also really surprised that a lot of profiles will sound great on all pickup settings, never ever experienced that before!!!
Thank you Mr. Kemper, finally my gear search is over. Unfortunately a new search has started…profiles