Hello fellow Kemperians! Not sure if I picked the right category, feel free to move it.
So, I wanted to share my impressions of the Kemper after 9 months. I have always owned a tube amp at the same time, right now as well (but not for long). I started out with the unpowered rack, even though the entire idea of the swap was to move away from racks and my Axe FX Standard... I got the Helix at first, but I just could not get it to sound the way I wanted even with 6 hours of tweaking for 7 days.
I returned it for the Kemper, which they had to get from another store. I was so sick of tweaking that I did not even care for or touched one single parameter for several months, but there was no need to! It sounded great through my Atomic CLR, but running the EVH 5150 through the matching cab or even the Kemper through the poweramp of the 5150 was a much more rewarding experience!
I quickly figured that I craved for a traditional cabinet setup, sold the CLR and got a Zilla Modern 2x12" as well as a Matrix GT1000FX and a 4U rack case.
The rig sounded great, all of the thump and push of a cranked tube amp at every volume level! However, after some time I figured that the rack was as big, bulky and almost as heavy as a tube amp head. I could certainly live with it, especially considering all the other benefits, but I wanted every advantage I could of running digital.
I sold the rack eventually, and bought a PowerHead with the Kemper bag. When I got it and set it up, I just could not believe it! An amp head that clocks in at 6.5kg that blows away a 100w tube amp head regarding volume (at 4 and 8 ohm) with a built in high end pedal board and state of the art DI (studio profile to the FOH)!
Compared to the Matrix it sounds just as good, and produces a fraction of the heat. The Matrix had a defective fan, which the Powerhead does not require. One less thing that can go wrong! Someone on the forum have stated that the poweramp is made by Bang & Olufsen, but I have never seen Kemper confirm this. It is great nevertheless!
My last three tube amps and some others in the past have had issues. The EVH 5150III started to produce loud crackling noises out of nowhere. The Fargen Mighty Plex MKII suddenly lost all of its volume, but it came back by itself shortly after and have not occured again. The newest addition, a Marshall Silver Jubilee 2553 which I expected to be a great amp, only sounded good with one particular speaker/cab combination. Very shrill, fizzy and overly bright tones from an amp I was told should be quite dark sounding.
This is not a tube amp bashing post, at least it is not intended to be. Tube amps sound great and the Kemper would not have a job without them, but I think tube amps are an outdated an unreliable design. The Powerhead running beta firmware is ten times more reliable, never had an issue except the rare beta crash. I would never run a beta version for gigging either, and the 3.3 is rock solid! The Kemper is also much lighter, smaller and sounds great independent of volume.
One other great thing about the Kemper: if you have a Marshall DSL for instance, which has two channels and two modes per channel. The two modes are not footswitchable on the amp, but if you profile both of them they are on the Kemper!
One, and the only downside of the Kemper: does it have the mojo of a Marshall stack? Certainly not, but what does? Other than an actual Marshall stack of course! It kinda looks like some NASA space ship stuff from the 70's, which has its own kind of mojo!
Like I shortly mentioned earlier, I do not consider my Kemper a modeller. I see it as "the amp head of the future"! I highly respect people who still run tube amps, but in my opinion and for my use the Kemper is superior in every way. The Silver Jubilee will soon be for sale, but I will probably buy another amp for profiling causes only, and then sell it