just played out last night for the first time with the kemper running into real cabinets. i did a quickie 45 minute set a couple of years ago straight to FOH and hated it.
i'm a feel junkie, it's gotta be accurate for me to be comfortable. i gave the ISP stealth a try, but i felt like there wasn't enough juice on its own for me. i also do not think i like the totally transparent power thing. i ended up with 2 quilter tone block 200s running into EVM 12Ls. sounded good. i had 3 hours and 30+ songs to tweak, and here's what i discovered...
first of all, i used a gordius little giant to control from my feet, with one exp pedal hooked up to volume. at first i decided to set up performance mode and assign individual performances to each song, with effects loaded in place for each spot pertaining to the song, yadda yadda. took a bunch of time, and it's just not how i play! i'm used to having one pedalboard with the stuff i need on it, and then grabbing what i need for when i need it. i like to experiment even live, so i tend not to do the same thing twice. before the gig even started perf mode was out. when 3.0 came out, i profiled 3 of my favorite amps and went to the gig.
the quilters are loud. i play with another guitarist and an 80s infested drummer with 9000 drums. i did not mic myself. the quilters did well for me - the transparent thing didnt seem to give me the 'oomph' factor i'm used to feeling when playing a tube amp. also, i can run the quilters full out and have them be silent enough to just use the master volume on the kemper to keep things dialed in. i like simplicity, especially with all these lights. there was a top end thing going on at first for me, but it was quickly relieved by some tweaking at the tone block's contour setting.
speaking of which, the contour knobs on the tone block have a 'middle of the road' bit of the dial that is supposed to be closer to transparent. i have not AB'd them against one of my flat response power amps, but i will very soon.
i was VERY apprehensive to play out all night with no real amp. it turned out much better than i had anticipated. the last time i tried the modeler + power amp + cab thing was maybe 4 years ago, with an axe ultra -> mesa 50/50 -> v30s. sounded great at home - did not cut live. ironically enough, having a solid state amp this time was definitely better in the 'feel' department, though i did have to move my second cab around to hear myself after a bit (the crowd thought levels were fine, so i didnt want to mess with that!).
the real trick is getting the gain to power ratio right. all of these modelers are doing a great job perfectly replicating (profiling?) amps in the studio. now we have this direct profiling stuff, and we know its very very close to how the amps react to begin with - so why does it tend to turn to shit live? i think it's because we're used to our amps pushing a certain amount of air depending on how angry we need them to sound. i'm learning you need tons of headroom out of solid state preamps to achieve this - and that i need to figure out how to utilize every bit of this headroom to make it really work!
other comments: the EVM12Ls are not really my favorite speakers in the world. yes, they are fantastic, but they are a little dated sounded in the midrange department for me. i only used them because i have 2 1x12 cabs, and the wattage capacities made me feel safe about my first gig with 2 200 watt solid state things that i have no experience with! will try a seventy/eighy and v90s next. cheers.