Near done with Kemper, any suggestions before it goes up for sale?

Well it's still the Xmas hols and the good vibe I've picked up from my tradition of watching a different version of "A Christmas Carol' each year is still flowing through me and I hope amongst you guys/gals also and I put the recent bout of venting down to cabin fever getting the better of us.

Terence- I think there might be some confusion re: the help being offered - some of it are tweaks you could make , whilst the rest are methods to try and identify the root cause.

For example - does the Kemper actually "do what it says on the tin" (an advert us Brits will know)? If you have an amp and like what it sounds like recorded via a mic via an audio interface into a DAW, then profile it with same settings and see if it sounds the same.

Now I completely agree with you, as I also didn't buy the Kemper to profile my Vox AC15 and/or my Fender Princeton, but instead to have access to all the other myriad of amps out there profiled by others; however, this is a way of checking if the Kemper works by comparing apples with apples.

The other thing to remember is that the sound of the Kemper is the sound of a mic'd amp, not the sound of an amp/cab as heard by the player stood near it Does the Kemper sound bad whilst you are playing, or just when you play back what you've recorded?

Damian has provided some useful clips (via the Sinmix website) to show how a single recorded mono guitar track could sound a bit 'meh', but when multi-tracked and added to the mix of the full song it can sound OK.

I think ultimately people are trying to see if:

1. They can help you with a few tweaks and the magic of the Kemper will be revealed;
2. There is something wrong with your Kemper (and if so, you should send it in to be looked at); or
3. There is nothing fundamentally wrong, but you just don't like it

If you go through stages 1 and 2 and you end up at 3, then I ain't gonna get butt hurt if you sell up - in the end playing guitar is meant to be fun, not more hassle than the day job.

Happy New Year to you all - especially to all those helping fine tune the public beta, whilst I just sit and wait for the first full release!

Terence T , that clip sounded awful. There most be something wrong.

I agree that doesn't sound right to me. It sounds like a fuzz pedal. Sorry it's been such a bummer for you. Hope you can try out another one to establish if yours is faulty.

Are you using a Strat bridge single coil pickup in the clip? Does it sound great through other amps? Most of the Strats I've worked on had the pickups set too high, especially if the owner was going for high gain sounds with vintage pups. Just another potential avenue to explore.

I'm at the beach, but will try to post my own sample of that profile with a Strat when I get back to civilisation.

Quote from Terence T

All my guitars sound fine through my amp. Even checked them through a POD.

The Les Paul I never put through the Kemper, as it sounds worse than the clip I posted.

Could try profiling the pod?

Quote from Terence T

I'd rather profile my backside.

Cool. Let us know how that sounds.

Quote from Terence T

I'd rather profile my backside.

Might sound better than what you've got now.....¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

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Concern trolling involves someone opposing an idea or viewpoint, yet acting like they're an advocate for the cause. A concern troll offers undermining criticisms under the guise of concern. Their goal is to sabotage the cause being discussed, and to inspire doubt among group members.

7 pages of feeding the Concern troll, yeah -no.

Quote from Terence T

sample.zip

Done with a Highway one strat, topjimi Jubilee profile, spdif to RME Fireface.

No post processing.

That sounds like there is no cab.

Pretty awful.

Quote from Terence T

Done all the above Per, but thanks for the suggestions. No active pickups.

Didn't buy it to profile my own amp, but to get profiles of amps I don't have access to.

Hi, the point about profiling your own amp is twofold.

Firstly yes it’s what the Kemper was designed for. You get a nice tone that you like the way you like it and then capture it so you don’t have to deal with the issues of recreating it live or for going back to do redo dubs, or just for archival purposes so that you can reuse that tone without waking the neighbors.

But secondly and more importantly in your case so that you can compare and see that the Kemper really isn’t like a Line6 Pod, but is actually very accurate to the source.

Until you do a profile yourself you will never know how accurate it is and therefore you may jump to erroneous conclusions about things like “digital fizz” and so on, based purely on assumption and prejudice.

I know this from first hand experience myself. Knowing that the Kemper is accurate and is a professional tool allowed me to both relax and also helped me train my ear for recording far better than before. I am now able to pick better profiles for my mixes from the exchange, know when and where I might use a real amp instead (and exactly why, and it’s not digital fizz or anything like that, but rather when I want specific room reverb, both power and preamp distortion and when I want to use highly colored mic preamps). It allows me to trouble shoot with a much higher degree of accuracy what is wrong with my signal chain.

I suggest you try it, learning how to profile also brings a new edge to knowledge on micing up your amps, using your signal chain efficiently and effectively.

Most importantly it will clarify for you whether there is a problem with your specific Kemper, whether the Kemper itself is accurate or digital sounding and whether it’s tolerances are acceptable to you. It is the only way to determine this for yourself.

Quote from Calaban

That sounds like there is no cab.

Pretty awful.

He said he did all the checks on whether the cab section was locked, the cab output was disabled etc that I mentioned in a previous post.

That clip does not sound like cab is off. Sounds like it's clipping massively, dead batteries on active pickups or like an old cab farting out.

Quote from sprada

My first thought was.. dead batteries on active pickups.

Just what I thought and said, mate.

Quote from sprada

That clip does not sound like cab is off. Sounds like it's clipping massively, dead batteries on active pickups or like an old cab farting out.

Agreed.

I'd like to hear a clean direct-guitar sample. The fact that it sounds like a flat battery feeding actives (to me, sprada and at least one other), suggests that there may be something going on at the guitar / electrical / connector / cable end of things.

Finally suggested it could be a pickup-height thing, which would be one of the things that'll mess with that clean tone. You said that it's not just one guitar 'though, which would suggest a connector / capacitance / cable-sort of thing maybe.

At any rate, I'd like to verify that the clean signal directly from the guitar/s is kosher. If there's any distortion in it, IMHO that'd be the issue right there.

Upload a clip of a clean amp from factory ccontent. No effects, arpegios and chords. And if it was possible recorded thru spdif and XLR to see differences.

I dunno guys...sounds like cab off to me.

I have experimented extensively with cab off for certain tones.

My buddy challenged me to recreate the guitar tone from Cream’s “Strange Brew” right after I got my Kemper. For the life of me I could not get the guitar tone. I finally turned off the cab and that was the secret sauce.

For most songs it sounds like garbage. Basically like the clip the OP provided. But for that tune it was nearly perfect.

I’ll upload the file if I can figure out how...it says 1mb limit.

That sample sounds weird. But funnny enough it shows how different we are and what we consider being good sound. I’ve read the whole post and don’t want to read it again, but some here mentioned it sounds right in the sample and some, like me, think it sounds weird, wrong etc. So what is correct? Maybe it’s my preference that fools me, since I don’t like this type of sound. I’m a metal guy. But I think something is off here. I cannot recall ever hearing a profile on my Kemper sounding like this with a cab.

No, the sample sent by the OP definitely doesn't sound like the sound in the Youtube video by TopJimi- although he didn't say which specific Profile from the Jubilee pack was used.

One suggestion to Terence : to isolate the problem in the recording chain, could you listen to your output with headphones directly from the Kemper headphone out? If the output sounds the same, we can rule out the S/PDIF connection and the audio interface.

Next: once you've checked and verified this, can you re-create the setup that gave you that horrible sound (with the Strat going into the Jubilee profile) and (a) record it again (just to be sure) and then (b) switch off the amp and the cabinet block and record again? Then post the results - this would make it pretty easy to see if there's anything wrong with the signal that goes into the Kemper, without the interaction with the amp and cab stage.

Maybe you could also do the same with one of the free profiles in the Kemper rig packs - would make it easier for others to help you, since then everybody can work from the same profile. E.g. use the "TJ Mars JM100 Max Bst" from TopJimi (if you like the TopJimi vibe) or the Soldano profile by Bert Meulendijk ("BM - Sold 99 Cases Dst 2") for a heavier vibe. If you can provide samples of these profiles with amp/cab active and then with amp/cab bypassed, this could help others reproduce what's going on.

Also, it would really help to reset the global parameters of your Kemper to be sure nothing nasty is hidden somewhere. Maybe even doing a full factory reset would be helpful to create a clean slate before doing the above.

Also: what is your input LED doing when you play in this setup? Is it peaking to red or is it barely flickering? Or solid green throughout? To me, the audio clip you posted sounds like the level of the Strat you are playing is too low, so only the hard hits actually get to overdrive the amp, with a lot of semi-clean in between. You could play with the "Distortion Sensitivity" parameter on the input page to boost the level of your input - that might get you somewhere more pleasant...

If you're serious about finding out what's wrong, the only way is to eliminate possible sources of the problem one by one by isolating them, i.e. taking other variables out of the setup.

I'm sure we can help you get to something that sounds dimensions better than the sample you posted. But that means going through your setup step by step and checking results and posting clips and maybe screenshots - happy to help if you're open to that.

Cheers,

Torsten

Terence pal, not sure where you are in the UK? But I'm in west yorkshire and would be happy for you to come and A/B and help you trouble shoot.