I suck at dialing in tones...

Always start with a rig that sounds good or close right off the bat. Adding a little more gain or EQ to that will be better than trying to modify a clean rig by adding a pile of gain.

Yes, you'll find many rigs with certain/various effects already applied. Change them at will.

Also, what are you listening with? Headphones? Studio monitors? Guitar cab? FRFR?

Hi,

I suck at dial in tones as well (that's also why I found the Kemper better for me than real high gain tube amps which are very hard for me to dial in and sound good).

I almost never touch the gain in profiles and since starting I was looking for profiles that will require minimum tweaking if any. If not, it goes to the trash.

After a few months with the Kemper and probably ~$350 spent on commercial profiles, the best I found are in:

Josh Middleton HEAVY TONES BUNDLE 3

I was amazed by the profiles out of the box for both playing live and recording.. and I use them as is or some with just a bit more Amp->Clarity (0.5).

I also set Output low cut (90-120) and high cut (7500-9000) but that's probably depends on your room and taste.

I realize it sounds like an ad ? but that's really my experience by now..

I got the Choptones Bogie JP-2 Just Play Pack (John Petrucci's Mesa stuff), and it is amazing! I had to get used to it at first, and almost gave up on it, but man that pack is pounding!!

Quote from BERNARDIJ

... the problem is that I add too much gain ...

This

BERNARDIJ EMGHZH4 pickups are not known for being the best pickups. Like some of Ibanez less better pickups, even on some of their more expensive models, eg. v7 and v8. They're made by Dimarzio anyway. The EMG 's are the same, less good and cheaper pickups. Swap them out for something better. If you can't find a profile you really like that means it's not the kemper or profile that's wrong with. I bought two used Dimarzio Crunch Lab. I installed one in my Ibanez and whooo what a great sound! I installed one in my Schecter and...yuck! I will put back the pickup I had in it before. But you got to try and see if you like something better or not. My point is a pickup can sound killer in one guitar and in the next not. Do you like the sound of your guitar unplugged? If you do you're fine but if not, it doesn't matter what pickup you install. You will never like the sound. I know. Been there, done that.

I found it really hard to get tones I like. I've been spoilt by playing marshall jmp 50watt, fender blackface and orange for years in good settings at decent volumes. Took me an age to get tones I liked.

My advice if you can is to:

If you have a good amp you like, profile it.

Work out who has your guitar and sound that you like, find out what their rig is and go on rig exchange and find the corresponding rig.

Realise that within one amp there are hundreds of tones, so when trying rig packs step through them all to find the gain and tone you like using rig manager.

Some packs, like the full petrucci pack mentioned above has loads, I went through all of them and found only2 di profiles I liked which worked well with my own cab, but ended up using profiles of dumble, jmp and orange.

Michael britt packs are wonderful

I've found using a treble boost pedal, wampler tunmus (no drive) and les paul gets a bit closer to the tones of real aamps.im not metal though.

Quote from bobbyodell

I got the Choptones Bogie JP-2 Just Play Pack (John Petrucci's Mesa stuff), and it is amazing! I had to get used to it at first, and almost gave up on it, but man that pack is pounding!!

Quote from mbuteux

Some packs, like the full petrucci pack mentioned above has loads, I went through all of them and found only2 di profiles I liked which worked well with my own cab, but ended up using profiles of dumble, jmp and orange.

That's actually the first pack I've bought and I really really liked many of the profiles there when playing with headphones..

The Boogie Lead profile is still my go-to for solos and the cleans are also good.

However, when I started to play FRFR (4 kones in a 4x12 cab) the rhythm profiles didn't sound as good as with the headphones.. like not clear and defined (compared to the JTM pack I've mentioned above for example)..

Do you guys have any suggestion on possible tweaks that may help? I think I should try again to make them fit my FRFR setup..

For the OP - If you don't want to buy commercial profiles yet, try high gain profiles packs from Free rigs and profiles

I never use the distortion effects. I don't see the point honestly (just my point of view with my little few months experience with the Kemper)...

I'm just looking for high-gain profiles that have the amp+cab distortion that sounds good to me.

I've ended up leaning towards my own profiles and di profiles. I found Tilis cablab pack on here for the cab section. One of the cabs sounds exactly like my own favourite marshall 4x12.

The cab makes a huge difference.

I've locked that cab and out of 1000s of profiles have 20 I use, maybe 6 different amps with varying degrees of gain. Some work well with all guitars some with others. I find the kemper very fickle. But after years I've managed to get the tones of my cranked amps at low volumes and via a power amp and my 4x12.

Quote from BERNARDIJ

I can't seem to dial a heavy overdrivenn tone that sounds good yet.

Hi, my name is Chris, and I suck at dialing in tones... [Hi, Chris!]

Seriously, that's the biggest thing I love about the Kemper - I really do suck at it, and with a Kemper I just let others who are better do it for me and then dial up their profiles. If you're coming from the amp modeling world it's a different perspective. With Line 6, Fractal, etc. you build a tone from scratch by picking an amp, speakers, positioning mics, adding pedals, etc. You can certainly fool with all of these things on a Kemper, but for my own use I've found it unnecessary.

A profile is a snapshot of a finished product. Imagine you're in the studio, you've dialed in your amp, have the perfect speaker cabs, the engineer has worked with mics and placements, and when you hear it in the control room you say yeah, that's what I want on the record. This is what you get with a profile - all of those decisions have already been made and baked into it. You can go in and tweak, but what I find is it's usually easier to just move on to a different profile if the one I'm listening to doesn't work.

Another thing to keep in mind (and I may be mentioning the obvious), but an amp model in the world of Line 6 tries to give you everything the real world amp can do. A Kemper profile is one single set of choices. You set up for a gig, turn your knobs to where you want them, position the mics, and then go play guitar. It's that kind of thing. Want a different set of knobs? You can twist the ones on profile A, but you'll probably have a better experience just looking for the appropriate profile B.

One other thing to note is that "heavy overdriven tone" means different things to different people, so context is everything. A story I often tell is getting discouraged after listening to a ton of Marshalls on Rig Exchange and not liking any of them. That turned out to be about expectations. I'm a classic rock guy, and most of what I was listening to were tones dialed in for metal. Sure, it's still a Marshall, but apples and oranges nonetheless.

I would suggest that you give examples of bands / songs that constitute a good heavy sound. Then everyone would be able to say, 'Oh, for that you want to try the xyz profile!" There's a lot of good free stuff on Rig Exchange, but sadly the organization is by amp and not genre of music, so that makes it a little more challenging. Ted Nugent can take a Fender and melt glass with it. Bonnie Raitt would take the glass, pour some wine, and dial in a nice, clean rhythm & blues tone with it. And yet, the label on the tin still says Fender.

I'd definitely try the free stuff before spending money, but the people here are extremely helpful so if you can give them specifics on the sounds you're going for I think you'll get a lot of great advice.

I tend to dial in my tones too bright while at home, then lower the treble and presents when at rehearsal.

The Kemper is very, very tweakable and as such there are many variables. So what works for me, might not work for you. As you've already seen, there are different answers to this question.

I'll give you my solution, which may help. I;d advise trying out many suggestions to find one that works for you. Maybe you'll find your own.

None of the stock profiles worked for me, I use a topjimi head and Mix Berlin cab. I subtlety tweak the tube bias, the direct output and power sagging. I always raise the pick level in the input.

I'll then do a few takes, with the eq and reverb in my DAW. I tend to switch off everything in the Kemper apart from the amps, no reverb, effects. Just delay.

In case you haven't miked an amp before, bear in mind that you're hearing a digital imprint of a miked cabinet. That will feel and sound different to a real cab by itself.

If I get 'lost,' I'll go back to a real tube amp to reset my ears.

Like I said, there's no right or wrong method. I would recommend trying out some topjiki profiles, plus others that have been recommended.