Posts by Dynochrome

For a while we're doing "those shoes" by the Eagles and I was using a GSP1101 + controller with a vocal wah setting that sounded a lot like a talk box.

I'm pretty sure there's a way to get a Kemper to do that too. I think was messing with it once. I think there's a "vocal Wah" or vowel wah or something like that. No it's not exactly a talk box but it's close enough that it would probably be fine Without having to do all the stuff you need to have a talk box. I used to just use a Wha on that to get close and a vocal wah would be much much better.

Quote from GCNC8068

This is my experience as well. There are some good profiles in Rig Exchange, but the ratio of good/excellent to bad/unusable is waaayyyy too low and with 20K+ profiles piled in there, with inconsistent or nonexistent naming and info, it’s an enormous waste of time. I’d rather spend $20 on a Britt or Figg pack that I’m 95+% sure will be excellent and save the time for actually playing.

I agree. I think my favorites in order are M Britt,(Almost everything in his free rig pack & love the 69 Marshall) Then Bert Meulendijk,( His BE100 and JCM 800) Then Top Jimi.(His 74 Marshall and BE100) Michael and Bert's are both what I call the "warm" type of profile that work good for live and bright PA systems. I think there are a lot of profilers that edit their profiles later and crank the definition control. I say that because I've made quite a few profiles and rarely do they ever come out with the definition on 10 by themselves. It depends on the profile for sure but I find that I like the feel of the profiler when the definition control is around 7 ish.

Quote from musicmad

I should have said: he plays excellent sounding guitars. And some who try to replicate it might not. But you know that.

I understand, I just went off on another thing.

Quote from musicmad

Keep in mind he is playing 3000$ guitars with fresh strings.

High dollar guitars are highly overrated. I've got a Maple Kramer that cost $350.00 that has some magic wood to it. I'd put that up against any $3000+ Les Paul or Paul Reed Smith any day and I bet you money that you wouldn't be able to tell which one was better in a blind test. It's just like people make a big deal of 335's ( I have one) And there's nobody that can tell you the difference between one of those and say a Les Paul plugged into the same rig and recorded. You can't hear the hollow wood just the pickup. Now I will say they feedback different and that does affect the tone. There are minor differences between guitars mostly because of the electronics and as long as it's decent and stays in tune and has OK intonation, you can make a $350.00 guitar sound just as good as a $400,000.00 one.

Quote from Calmandweird

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.

Quote from lespauled

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.

Quote from RickWillits

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.

Quote from GCNC8068

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.

Quote from sailor

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.

Quote from waraba

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.

Quote from halipino

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.