I bought a real amp for the first time since I have joined these forums in early 2017. I love the Kemper and it has been used on several recordings. I love having everything in 1 box and the way the foot controller only requires a single cable.
Last night I went to an old rehearsal space to jam with some friends for a benefit project they have going on. I brought my rack: Kemper, Power Conditioner, Fryette Powerstation. I bought the powerstation right at the end of my last project and it seemed to fix most of my issues with the kemper live ( I have never been a fan of the power amp).
I set up my rig at home and dialed in some sounds using some Omega Granophyre DI profiles (DI profiles also got me closer to what I have wanted over the years). I thought it sounded pretty awesome. When I arrived at the lockout the other guitarist had a 5150 and a Laney Ironheart 120 (which also sounds pretty incredible...). He plugged into the Laney and we played a song. I was completely absent in the mix. The Laney was roaring, present, and dominating. Even the bassist's wimpy SVT3 pro with a 4x10 was poking out in the mix more. I eventually turned up, and turned up again, and adjusted output settings to give more signal to the Fryette. In the end the volume on the Fryette was 3/4 the way up. That was it for me. I went home and ordered an amp that I have played several times, but always told myself I could just profile.
The first argument people make in this situation is "you need to tweak" I understand light tweaking, but outside of that, I'm not willing to butcher my tone to help crutch the sound of my rig out into the mix.
The second is "Use the right guitar,cab,etc" I have had powered gemini cabs, orange cabs, V30 cabs, 2x12/4x12 etc. All with variances but with the same overall lacking feeling. In fact, the Mission Geminis simply couldnt handle the raw output required for rehearsal. This was back when I was playing in a band with reasonable volume, in a padding walled studio...
In the end, the only time I was happy with the Kemper live was with legitimate FOH support, and in those circumstances it was praised by nearly everyone.
This brings me to the real irony of this story. I am paying more money for older technology to play less shows.
Smaller venues sometimes barely have enough PA for vocals. This isn't helped by playing loud and fast punk/metal. In these situations I think ill ditch the bells and whistles for pure grunt.
Im not sure what lies ahead for my Kemper. Im tempted to use it for an effects unit for a while and see how that goes. Hell, I might even slave it into the new Orange if I absolutely need something from a Kemper profile. As far as keeping it around for recording, the DSP market is full of some pretty amazing stuff nowadays. This is even more tempting considering I am engineering a lot fo these projects. Sometimes its faster to edit a DI than wait for someone to try 100 takes.