Why do all the Tone Junkie rigs I recently bought sound the same to me?
What I am doing wrong?!
Before spending any money I would suggest going through M Britt & Top Jimi's rig packs. If you can't get a great sound out of those something is definitely wrong. Not a fan of Tone Junkie rigs.
Will we ever hear it in the mix? No. Will we hear it as tone chasers? Probably. Will an audience ever care? Absolutely not.
I certainly would not understand what would be more important than if you could not tell it in the mix and if the audience would ever care. Really, if the audience can't hear the difference what's the fuss? I think the goal of many musicians is to make music that people like and want to make you a rock star over or at least money. They couldn't care less if you have the latest quad neuralizer or whatever.
Like I always say how much better can it get than sounding and feeling exactly like the app that's profiling? A proper profile will do exactly that and I proved it so many times to meticulous ears and tube amp snobs it's ridiculous .
My opinion: It's really just that people can't stand having the same old thing for a long time and have to have the latest greatest so they have something to talk about on the forums. Nobody wants to talk about your Fender hot rod deluxe or Kemper I anymore, they wanna talk about how their new nuroverb myplex custom, or the nutrix biomec is so much better and how the big new touch screen on it is wonderful or whatever. Anything the majority of people don't have everybody likes to say is the best thing ever. Similar to people that love to run out, wait in line to see the new movie that's out before anybody else does. Then they get to say "yeah I saw it".(comparable in context to been there done that) also like: "Yeah I played a Fender hot rod deluxe and a Kemper one".
I think with a lot of all these new modelers people try to get you to buy what they did by making it sound so good so they don't feel all alone in buying one & want to convince you to join the club, only to leave yout behind when the next new Dervish Whirlwind MKIII comes out and that's the thing you should get.
I agree that profiles can vary all over the place. There is an "art" to making them indistinguishable. If you look on Youtube you can find a video With the guys from Anderton's trying to tell the original from the profile and in most cases they ended up picking the Kemper thinking it was the original because it sounded better. I will agree with Mr Britt that the Kemper does something to the sound to makes it more presentable to consoles, & P.A.s
It doesn't change the tone, it just does the same thing you would want to do to the sound to have it go down on a recording or out to the audience. To my ears, it "professionalizes" it and stabilizes it. And not in just a way by compression, More like it takes the randomness and the bad parts about the amp & speaker and leaves the good parts that you want.
If it is impossible to tell the profile from the original on a recording/through a P.A how much better can it or does it need to get? I have had Fender Tweed amps, "Plexi" Marshalls, 800's, ENGL, EVH, Blackstar etc. etc. and I wouldn't trade my profiler for any of them that I have or no longer have if I had to use it for performing and not just as a collector piece.
It's confusing to me because that YouTube video that I'm guessing you're referring to shows a picture of a Kemper with nothing close to what the profile is. No mention is made of the author (Marko) so I was never sure which YouTube video that preset by Marco was referring to. (1971Marshall Golub Crunc) The one on rig exchange and the one that came with the Kemper have different names but they look the same settings wise.
It puzzles me why they would have different names.
Marshall Golub Crunc vs 1971Marshall Golub Crunc
I have seen this profile recommended many times throughout the decade and I may have tried it once, but passed it because I was probably so into the stuff that I paid for.
There is a (famous) profile On rig exchange named Marshall Golub Crunc by Marko. Is that the same exact AMP profile that was included with the Kemper "stock" programs named 1971Marshall Golub Crunc ? (by Marko) I loaded them both and switched between them with the amplifier on and I didn't detect/see any difference between the two on the Kemper, and since this has been around for a while I was wondering are these two exactly the same or not? ( I loaded the one that was originally in the Kemper "stock programs" and it has been keeping me up at night with the awesomeness. I am really late to the party on this one.
I always use a 12" cabinet live speaker even in the studio. Turn it up a bit and it feedsback beautifully like a tube amp should. IMO direct guitar without a live cab is never as good to play because there is nothing working the strings and helping. I experimented and recorded direct with no live cab and direct with a live cab loud. The one with a loud live cab sounded better likely because of the speaker interaction with the strings. No feedbacker can do what a live cab can as God intended. I think a lot of people struggle with their tone going direct and say it isn't "amp in the room". Of course not, and electric guitar was not intended to be used that way.
Responding to Paul's post addressing the return policy in this mail order market.
I was going to buy pickups to fix the les Paul that took me longer than sweet waters return policy to realize I hate so couldn't return.
The pickups return policy is 21 days. So lets see I receive the pickups and drop everything and drive across town to the music shop and drop off my guitar and the pickups to have them installed. So estimate at the counter maybe two weeks and $100 to get my guitar on the bench and have the pus installed. That's 14 days. Okay so they phone me. I drop everything and drive across town to pick up the guitar. Drive home and play guitar on my rig for a few hours oh shit theses things sound like mud. Oh no shop is closed .
So next day (15 days) I drive across town to drop off guitar to have old pickups put back in so its estimated another $100 bucks to have old pickups and two weeks . so two weeks later I pick up guitar we are at 30 days. Sorry your item is not returnable. So now I still have guitar with pickups I hate I also own new set of pickups I hate $300, and $200 for bench work. So I am a month in , have spent $500 and gotten no where.
Practice a bit with a $25.00 soldering Iron. I swap pickups all the time since I was 17 and it takes maybe 30 min total.
Thanks everyone for looking into this. Being a huge Kemper fan and believer, It bothers me when Kemper doesn't get the recognition it deserves. It's seems since it's an "old" product it's not "cool" to say you play one now even though nobody has a problem talking about their "old" Marshalls.
Looks like a Stage - can’t tell if it’s MK2.
And it sounds like he calls it a Fractal. Captions read "fractional" but what would that mean? Right now I'm thinking he thinks the stage is a Fractal.
The tour starts in February, so I'm sure he's referring to an existing Fractal product, like the FM9 or AxeFX.
But he's pointing down to the floor unit he's using when he says "I might have something like a Fractal like this". If you were right, then he would have said instead of this? (the Kemper stage) I think he thinks he's using a fractal in that video.
Listen to what he says at 1:02:50. Sounds like he says (and points to it with his foot) : "I might have something like a Fractal like this"
If he doesn't say that what is he saying there? If I turn on captions it reads: " I might have a fractional like this for IEM". The closed captions maybe wouldn't pick up Fractal. So right now I'm going to conclude he thought he was using a fractal and once again Kemper got snubbed.
See Rick Beato's new U Tube interview: The Neal Schon Interview: the Riffs, the Solos, and the Soul of Journey. At 1:02:50 does he say "I might have something like a Fractal like this" ? Wondering because I'm pretty sure that is a Kemper Stage.
I always snicker when I see people local and professionals with this gigantic three foot by three foot pedal board and then when I hear it I concur that there's nothing on that entire board that I can't do way close enough for live with my Kemper. I used to feel the same way when I used regular amps and I would just have a 1 rack space effect unit that could do anything those gigantic pedal boards could but without tap dancing all over the place not to mention the noise from cables. Some people are just so stubborn about the pedal thing and are convinced that it makes a huge enough difference to warrant that mess. I love old Echoplexes and I think they do have some magic but I can tell you I can set up my Kemper delay so that there isn't a single person in the audience that would be able to tell the difference. I also have some old script & block phase 90s That I found a way to replicate as well. I've got a bunch of old vintage petals but they're just there to look at because I can do anything they can do with the Kemper close enough to not need to drag them around.
The best part of playing a KPA is that you can try as many amps as you like, and in my case I tried hundreds of profiles , maybe thousands ...
... just to figure out that I only need a couple of princeton & JCM800 profiles to cover 95% of my tone needs.
it just took 10 years of KPA for me to undestand this
I had a similar journey. At first I was making performances with all kinds of different amps in them and that would cause ear vertigo when switching between them. I worked like crazy to get everything to sound good with the right levels when I switch between them. Because they were so different tone wise it was really hard to do that and I was constantly adjusting them. After contemplating it a bit I realized that in the past I had amps that would have just a couple different basic sounds and I could do everything with that. I found the best thing to do is just like you I have a clean amp (/13) that I have set from Strumming Acoustic Light Clean to crunch and then maybe a little more with a pedal, Maybe a fender type amp set in the middle and then another British style amp for my heavier stuff that I can go from classic rock distortion to Metal to leads by adjusting the gain and adding a pedal. I found that using just a couple amps and adjusting them makes it way easier to keep things consistent and more like I have been used to doing for years. It took me awhile to get there because I'm bad with choices and I wanted it all, only to find out too much is too much.
Greetings, what power amp do you choose to employ if I may be so bold to ask?
Not at all bold, I'm glad to answer any question that I can. I used to be one of those people that thought that tubes would add some kind of magic, and while that was true with non digital preamps, you really just need to have enough power to push the amount of speakers that you want to use with enough headroom that there is no distortion.
I've known people that use one of those little power amps that are the size of a stomp box (EH.44 cal) and it worked really well. I think a lot of the suggestions that people have made on here sound good it all just depends on how loud you need to be and how many speakers you want to drive. Of course more power is better than less but size is a consideration most likely also and you don't need a huge power amp for it to be enough. The one that comes in a powered Kemper is about 160 watts continuous and is way more than enough to do any gig with. If you had something like that outside of the Kemper in a box I bet it would hardly weigh anything or take up that much room. Just make sure it is responsive and has enough power to stay clean and punchy.
I wonder if a comparable tube based option exists? Small and Practical.
I don't know why Anybody would want a tube based option. Any coloration to the Kemper output is generally detrimental to the accuracy of the profile. A profile done correctly will already have the tube coloration "built in" And from my personal experience any tube distortion added changes things and not for the better. Not only that but you're dealing with the fragility of tubes, heat, weight etc. People have it in their mind that the tube sound will somehow make it warmer or more magic but all it really does is make things more distorted and fuzzier, So some hear that as "warmer".
Solid state amps are generally more reliable and with nothing to gain by having a tube option I can't see why tubes should be considered.
I am still exclusively using the Marshall jmp1 preamp profiles i made when first buying my Kemper. I’ve tried other stuff but they’ve never gained foothold within my setup.
Very easy to make, since i just profiled from the emulated outputs of the JMP1. I’ve been a direct into the desk guitarist for 30 years, so no reason to even have a cab and a mic figure in to my FOH sound.
That's so awesome that you've been using the ones that you made when you first got the unit and never found anything to top it. I think I own around 17 "professional" packs which have a lot of good stuff in them, but I have always said that if I had to do it all over again I would probably only own two or three of them. When I made this profile, I didn't even really do it "right" and compare back and forth I just got a sound that I knew went on tape good and plugged it in, profiled it and it turned out really good (for me)
I used to buy around $3000+ worth of amp gear on average a year the problem being if you buy an amp you had to make it work and then when you got tired of it sell it for a loss and buy another expensive amp you thought would be better and then be stuck with that for awhile. Now that I realize that there is no perfect amp for me and my taste changed so much the Kemper has saved me tons of money because I can be as finicky as I want and go from thick to thin, grainy to tight distortion etc with the turn of a knob.
just tried it...a bit too much gain for me but I dialed it back a bit and it sounded great
Yes many of us have found that it seems more accurate to dial the gain back some more than it does to dial it forward. I was using some pretty hot pickups so I thought that I would leave the gain pretty high and let people just dial it back a bit to get where they wanted it if they were using cooler pickups. To me it's a little too much gain for rock rhythm and for leads I might just need a teeny bit of front end TS boost from if I wanted it super sensitive like to do easy touch harmonics etc, I thought I kinda put it in the upper middle of that range.
Thanks for the feedback! it's really fun to hear what other people think. Everybody's system and how /what they listen through is so different that it's very intriguing for me when people play profiles that I have a good idea how they sound on my stuff.
For most things I agree it is too much gain for most of the stuff that I would do, but that's what it just happened to be with the Gain set at 11:30 with the internal pot about 10:30. It is thick. If you compare it to some things that professional profilers have done like say BHP Warren Marshall or something it's way thicker than that.
If you listen to some of that awesome 80s metal guitar tones that some people consider top of the heap, there will be almost zilch bottom end to it. Compare to Dokken "kiss of death" ( that a lot of people consider a pretty good 80s tone ) and be surprised by how much bottom end you have to remove from the guitar tone to get there. The profile I have here would never work for tha it has way too much bottom and is way too fat. Sometimes thick doesn't really work in the mix.
I thought this profile just did a good job of standing on its own and with a little bit of EQ will cover a lot of 80s style "modded" type high gain. It's something that I would use in a three piece band when there wasn't another guitar player to fill things up.
Thanks again for taking the time to critique it no matter what is said it's not going to hurt my feelings, I didn't spend any time capturing this profile at all, I just got a sound through the amp that I liked stuck the mic in front of it and hit profile. I'll bet if I would've spent 15 minutes on it I could've dialed in something "better" but that would likely be subjective. I'm just amazed how fast and easy the Kemper could achieve capturing this tone that I thought was pretty fun to play. I almost feel like I could have borrowed the pedal spent 10 minutes profiling it like this and then taking it back. I like the Kemper profile I made of it better than using it through my Marshall because I can use the effects I'm used to with my Kemper.
