I’ve recently been messing about with ambient style delays and reverbs and sounds with a lot of chorus (think Michael Landau/Dan Huff and the likes or like an LA session rack style clean sound from the 80’s that Mats Nermark did a tutorial on).
We are talking a hyper chorus and vintage chorus/detune etc (to try and emulate the tri-chorus sound) running into the ping pong delay then into the reverb on the Kemper.
Through my headphones or through studio monitors these sound outstanding to me. The issue I had come about when playing these tones back through my Marshall 1960A cab. Now I know I’m never going to recreate the crystal clear high fidelity ambience through a guitar cab when compared to a FRFR speaker or a PA, neither am I going to get the stereo effect through this one cab. This got me thinking about messing about with a WET/DRY/WET or WET/DRY setup.
Whilst trying to keep in mind what equipment I can realistically take to gigs in across Europe dependant on the transport situation (we aren’t Metallica no promoter is going to pay to let me take three 4X12’s on a plane for instance haha) and also use at smaller gigs back home.
I settled on the following WET/DRY setup: (See diagram attached)
Guitar → Kemper Front Input
Monitor Out (MOD MONO) → Right Side of Cab
Main Out (DELAY/REV WET) → Power Amp
Power Amp Output → Left Side of Cab
Direct Out → Delay → Kemper Return
The difference running my Marshall cab in stereo, one side taking the PRE, STACK and MOD via the MOD MONO setting and the other side taking just the wet DELAYS and REVERB is night and day compared to having it all come out all four speakers through the MONITOR OUT. Plus with the ability to dial in exactly how much wet signal I want depending on the venue.
The clarity is improved tenfold. I’m getting much closer to how I hear the articulation on the delays and the “height” and brightness of the reverb that I hear through monitors or headphones. When I use the traditonal real cab setup using Monitor Out the delays and reverbs especially sound much more muffled in comparison this way, now that I have got used to hearing it through full range equipment.
So far so good this does exactly what I need.
Now the issue I have is I want to take it to the next level. I really want to buy a Strymon Timeline for the excellent ice and swell delays seeing that the Kemper doesn’t offer this in their delays currently or the much asked for second/stomp delay. I plan to put this in the loop and use either in conjunction with the Kemper delay or by itself feeding the Kemper reverb as the included delay does.
The issue I have is I can’t seem to find a way with this setup to get the delay in the loop to the MAIN OUT running the DEL/REV WET. I can only get it to route to the MONITOR OUT that is running MOD MONO setting, which sort of defeats the point of WET/DRY.
I know this is a very long winded post to get this this point so thank you for anyone who has stuck through reading it all haha! Does anyone have any suggestions regarding my setup on how I can make this work or is this impossible unless Kemper add in the firmware the ability to allow the DEL/REV WET output setting to include a loop.
I know it might seem a strange way to do things but really it's no different to how a rack set up would work and I think being able to route an external delay pedal set 100% wet on the unit in the loop and send it to the Del/Rev Wet on the Main Out and have just the delays sound through the same as the built in delay works would be excellent. Not sure if there is a technical reason it couldn't be done with a firmware update so if people think this would work or should be available I'll open a post in the requested section.
PS I know an easy option would by to buy a FRFR solution but at the moment I really love the direct profiles I use with a real cab behind me, combined with this method of splitting if I didn't want to add the delay in the loop it would be perfect for what I want to hear live on stage.