I’ve got a Player on order. It will be my first foray into Profilers, but not into the Kemper-verse, as I’ve had an Access Virus TI2 for nearly a year and a half. If the KPP works out for me, it will be an upgrade from the Tonex pedal I already own.
For reference, I’m primarily a keyboard player who has returned to the electric guitar in the last year, after not playing that for decades. I’ve never owned a wah pedal. I do own two Yamaha FC7 pedals, which I use with my Yamaha CP4 and YC61 keyboards. They are extremely well built and suitable for keyboard expression use.
Using the modulation matrix on my Virus with the FC7 triggering MIDI CC 11 through a keyboard, I rigged up a wah effect. The FC7’s travel felt too long for an effective wah, which is why I don’t want to use it for wah on the KPP.
Now that I’ve got the KPP on the way, I want an expression pedal for wah. My order from our in-country Kemper distributor includes a Mission Engineering EP1-KP, but now I found the Lehle Dual Expression. There are some significant pros and cons to the Lehle.
Pros
- Magnetic pot - should last forever
- Dual TRS output - control 2 devices with a single pedal (I’ll never be playing both guitar and keyboard simultaneously, so this would work quite effectively)
- MIDI port for easy interface to many devices
- Configurable potentiometer range 5k - 100k
- 10k output works as a latching or momentary switch in the toe position
- Light (half the weight of the Mission Engineering pedal)
- Very robust build quality
Cons
- Costly - $100 more than the Mission Engineering at Sweetwater
- Requires power (maybe the biggest annoyance)
- Light (yes, a pro and a con as a lighter device may move during aggressive use)
- Not plug and play as a wah/volume controller and will require configuration
I’m willing (even happy) to spend the extra money to invest in better quality and higher utility. But, will the Lehle feel like a wah pedal when controlling the KPP? Will the need for power be a real annoyance, when I hoped to have just one device to power for guitar - the KPP?
Can anyone here who has used the Lehle Dual Expression with a Kemper comment on how well it works as a wah controller? Does the travel feel right? Does the light weight make it slide around (I don’t have a pedal board)?
I don’t want to over-engineer my very mini guitar rig. I’m inclined to stay with the EP1, but other Kemper users’ perspective would be helpful.
Thanks in advance!