Posts by meambobbo

I completely agree that the Kemper doesn't need nearly as much EQ tweaking compared to the Pod. And I actually relaxed my EQ'ing on the Pod quite a bit once I found some good cabs to mix in parallel.

But I'm curious about how one EQ will change how another works. I mean I understand that if I cut in EQ #1 then boost in EQ #2 I shouldn't expect neutral output - I would have reduced the SNR of the cut frequencies at # 1 and would be reducing the SNR of all other frequenies in #2 and thus getting a worse tone overall. But aural artifacts or differing functionality... would you mind explaining?

I would like a version of the Studio EQ with high/low pass instead of high/low shelf, and instead of parameters for frequency and gain, I would like frequency and Q. But I think I can manage without this

+1 on both of the OP's suggestions

Quote from bigHF

confused

when you dial the "headphone amp in the room" sound in - do you still use that profile for recordings?
I am having a hard time understanding how adjusting a profile to make it sound good on your headphones would not interfere significantly with the sound on my studio monitors (for recordings).
For now I have adjusted profiles to my guitar monitor (L6 Stage source) or studio monitors (kh 120), depending on the intended use (playing/recording) and simply accepted (more or less) how it sounded through my headphones.

What am I missing here?

I think this would be more for demo'ing "dry" rhythm tones by themselves, in acticipation of how they will sound live, not recorded.

For recording I find I like my rhythm tracks to have a very mild touch of reverb. But if you double-track and pan L/R then you also get that stereo widening "space" effect which makes the reverb less important. And with a full mix, it's not usual that you're listening through headphones and think, man that rhythm guitar track sounds too dry but switch to speakers and then you don't.

Another point - a touch of reverb goes a long way when using headphones, but for speakers in a room, it's difficult to tell whether that mild reverb is on or off. Try it - set everything up in headphones, and use a lower mix, then change to speakers and toggle the verb on/off - is it really hurting the tone being there?

Quote from Will_Chen

An Audio Technica pair, can't remember the model. I think they were around $70. Nothing too fancy. They were a huge upgrade over my Sennheiser HD 280 Pros though...

Been looking to replace my HD 280 Pros - thanks for the advice.

Yes, indeed. I've actually been kind of avoiding some of the Pod HD circles since I got this thing. I don't want to dog the Pod, but I'm afraid there is no other conclusion at this point. I haven't turned the Pod on since I got the Kemper. I eventually want to use it as a midi controller and possibly for some effects the Kemper doesn't have or I can't fit on the Kemper. But my first priority is to get some good sounding Kemper rigs and A/B Kemper vs. Pod HD. Gonna be a sad day for L6 fanboys.

Good to see your name again as well. I remember you talking about the Kemper I guess about a year or so ago. Your satisfaction spoke a lot to me, especially since you, like me, aren't the type of guy that's going to dump a ton of money on gear that doesn't absolutely blow you away.

Now we can fight about EQ'ing the crap out of your rigs! Hehe, actually, the Kemper is much, much, much simpler in that regards. It is not limited by crappy cabinet simulations that have to be used in parallel, but also adjusted for phasing issues via EQ block latency. LMAO - what a disgusting little hack that was. So now, you just find the right cabinet, make some small tweaks using the BMTP tonestack, and maybe add a Studio EQ to lop off the extremes and tame any problem areas or get just the right emphasis on some part of the mids.

EDIT: see my post on Page 3 - after some extreme testing, I do not believe the EQ's were clipping. I think I was creeping into Output clipping without realizing it. There may be some additional weirdness going on, but I was not able to replicate my initial issue while keeping my output levels clearly in the "safe" zone.

I have a couple patches rigs where I am using a few Studio EQ's (one patch rig has 4). I know how everyone says "try to make cuts only". Yeah, yeah, I know. But if EQ's weren't meant to boost ever, there would be no option to boost. Anyway, I found my tone was getting a bit harsher than it should be, particularly on the high strings in the middle of the neck. At first I thought it was the profile and started adjusting EQ to compensate - reducing the highs around 3 kHZ to get less crackly breakup. This helped a little but I was still left unsatisfied - something else must be going on.

I remembered another patch got nasty because I had a chain of Distortion and Compressor where they were both boosting volume and it sounded terrible. I forget which one was the offender, but the problem was that the first effect had a big volume boost going into the second, and the second did NOT like it. Once I turned the volume parameter down, the tone cleaned up and sounded smooth and natural again.

I tried the same approach with the EQ's - reduce the volume parameter of any EQ that feeds another EQ. Voila. Tone completely cleaned up. EDIT: this was probably due to lowering the output levels, not due to the EQ's. I did tweak to compensate for that initially, but I probably didn't tweak to match the initial output level.

Another thing that helps is if you are ever daisy chaining EQ's, make sure the first one has your cuts. If you have to boost there, only do your mildest boost.

A good setup is Graphic EQ (easy to maintain the sound you want with cuts only) into Studio EQ (to use the parametrics to boost/cut those specific areas that need work still).

"Why so many EQ's?" Because I like to party. No, actually I find EQ'ing is the crux of a good distortion tone. Normally, people use OD stomps or boosts to pre-eq their tone. This works great, but these units/models often do more than simple EQ. In some cases that's good, but sometimes it changes the tone too much. Also, their EQ'ing abilities are usually quite limited in comparison to the dedicated EQ blocks. On the other end of the spectrum (post-eq), bass, mids, treb, presence are great, but often not enough for me. I like bass but not boominess, treble and presence but not fizz. You want to lop off the ultra-high and low end, you're going to need one of the dedicated EQ's. And sometimes you want to get "between" those BMTP controls, or make boosts/cuts that are narrower or wider.

Don't fear the EQ. Just know the pitfalls.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a metal guy. I don't discriminate - Dokken, Maiden, Periphery, or Hatebreed. Anyway, I haven't demo'ed a huge amount of cabs yet, but after doing a good shoot-out with a few different cabs last night, including Till's Recto (not sure which version), one cab emerged the clear winner.

From Lasse Lammert's recent rig pack, the Mesa Rectifier cab on the LL ChugChug rig is head and heels above all the others I demo'ed.

Try it out and let me know what you think. Seems very balanced - I EQ'ed things a few different ways and it never exposed any "problem" areas. You always get a clean, high-quality tone.

EDIT: I can't tell if I'm liking Lasse's cabs or TillS more at the moment. see post 12 for more info on TillS Rectifier cabs.

you could just copy the file and rename it how you wanted and store it on your usb drive in another folder (or maybe even the same folder if that doesn't cause issues).

if you boost clean sense too high, you will get clipping with gain at 0 (EDIT: for reference, I had to set it quite high to get clearly audible clipping, and my input LED was COMPLETELY red, not just on the attack of hard strumming). i'm not sure what exactly is clipping - as noted above, clean sense is not a simple gain stage - i imagine it occurs AFTER the A/D converters.

it is not a nasty, hard digital clipping. in fact it almost sounds musical. A very mild clipping here would likely be completely unnoticeable in a medium or high gain tone.

lohworm, if you are concerned about tone degradation, i would make a copy of your favorite rig/patch, and raise the gain but reduce your guitar's volume knob until the input LED never hits red. Then compare the original patch with your guitar's volume knob maxed out vs. the cloned patch with higher gain when reducing guitar volume to compensate. i doubt you'll be able to tell the difference. note: different guitar volume pot settings CAN have an effect on the tone (which is why some people wire treble bleeds into their guitar electronics), try to roll off as little as possible - just so you are more comfortable with the color of the input LED. I wouldn't go lower than 7.5.

i lol'ed because it says "beginner" next to Lasse's name.

Great work!!!!

hehe - well i actually tried both approaches tonight. SPACE is nice if used subtly, like many other things. But Will's tipi also works well and IMO better than space.

clipping can be a strange beast in that some tones fare worse than others even if they display (and sound like) the same overall level. Try lowering the volume on the rig and see if the output LED stays green/orange instead of red. does that improve the recorded sound?

If you hold the output button, you should be able to change the SPDIF out send level.

It does this on all profiles?

to all the guys setting their tones up in X setting but wanting them to sound good in Y setting with minimal hassle, I can think of two solutions. The cheapest and simplest solution is to buy a $50 graphic EQ stomp pedal and put this in the Kemper's loop, which you assign to your "X" slot. Then you can toggle the loop in the KPA or step on the pedal depending on the scenario. Or get a fancier stereo EQ you can put post-Kemper that has a bypass so you can toggle it on/off for the given situation. The other solution is to make 2 copies of all your rigs - one for X setting and one for Y, with different EQ settings using one of the more advanced EQ effects (Studio or Graphic).

You could also lock down the cab section and change it's parameters (or even find a less boomy cab for live use). The whole concept of having an arsenal of amp/cab combinations for live use is a very new thing and not really practical anyway.

You have to appreciate the global EQ's on the different outputs, even if they aren't powerful. At least they match most mixing boards. Better than the Pod which has no global EQ.

that sounds like a bug (or someone is playing a trick on you). what firmware version are you using?

I think ultimately everyone should stop worrying about a glimmer of red until they understand the tonal implications. So set your gain to 0 and start strumming hard while adjusting clean sense. Use your ears to identify the threshold where clean sense starts digital clipping and see how the LED responds at that setting. Try chugging mutes and open chords and single notes. Now, turn up the gain and see how a digitally-clipping input sounds when distorted. Then, turn down clean sense and compare the LED behavior and tone.

Words on a forum won't likely help you. You need to either watch a video or do the above experiment yourself to get a grasp of the tonal impact and where the true "danger zone" in relation to the LED behavior lies.

This is a good solution. Eventually, I think I'd like to make a librarian, as well as possibly a kipr <-> xml converter.

for the time being, you may also want to check this thread:

"Starting Pack" for Beginners: Maurizio70 RIGs, PRESETs and BACKUP (updated to September 5th 2013)

The presets and rigs are named according to a specific convention that makes finding specific amps or rigs easier.

not to resurrect a dead thread, but has anyone compared this approach to using the "space" parameter on the output menu? i haven't tried it yet but it sounds specifically designed to reduce the artificial sound of using headphones, which as mentioned is very off-putting when listening to close-mic'ed tones (double especially when mic'ed with a 57 on axis).

also, if you're not using any delay, you'd be wise to set your delay/reverb balance to center (0).

and as to what exactly character does:

Use this parameter to change the overall character of the cab. Turning the knob to the right of center will
enlarge the peaks and notches in the frequency response curve. This will emphasize the character of the
cabinet, and may sound too penetrating at extreme values. Turning it to left of center will smooth the differences
between the peaks and notches in the frequency response curve, and flatten the character of the
cabinet. Towards the leftmost position, the sound will resemble that of analog cabinet simulations (which
often have a very simple frequency response and little character).

oh and as for delays, I like to keep things simple. I tend to use a small room reverb with low mix (~8 %) for rhythms just to add a little air, but for leads I prefer a large room or hall. If I'm using just reverb and no delay I set the mix a bit higher (20-30%) and time slightly longer (5 s). If I tend to use mild delays when I use them - 20% mix, 600-800 ms (audible separation between delays), and just enough decay time so that it doesn't trail off so fast it sounds artificial.

Keep in mind the Kemper has an incredible parameter on the reverb (i think its on the verb, not the delay...but i could be wrong) that determines whether the reverb applies more to the delay trails or the signal without delay. Setting this to the middle (i think that's 0) will be even. I think the default is a bit to the right, which applies more reverb to the delay trails, which I find sounds more natural. However, it might not be what you are expecting, which leads you to boost the reverb mix to compensate. That's where you can get into trouble because it'll sound like you're not getting enough reverb at the same time as there's a lot of ambient noise to the tone. If the reverb mix just won't set right, try moving the delay/reverb balance more towards the middle position.

Here's some quick advice that has helped me (but I've only had mine for less than a week, so take with a grain of salt):

The first thing I'll do to soften up a tone is reduce Treble on the tonestack (bass, mids, treble, presence on bottom of the unit). If this makes things too dull, try compensating by boosting presence a bit. Mids, Treble, and Presence will all have a ratio that makes for a really, really sweet spot, but you gotta play around to find.

If you still can't get there, use a graphic or studio EQ in the "X" slot. That should give you that last bit of control you need to get your EQ sweet spot.

Once you have that basic sound, you can start trying to tweak the distortion sound. There's many good ways to do this on the Kemper. My bread and butter is to add an EQ before the amp. I find a boost around 250-500 HZ can fatten up the sound and get it a bit smoother. Reducing the very high end (> 3000 HZ) can also makes things smoother, but can take the life out of the tone if you overdo it. I like to set the Studio EQ's high shelf to -4 db and move the frequency from around 8000 HZ to 3000 HZ and find the sweet spot where things get smoother but still have life. Then maybe reduce the cut size - I usually end up between -2 and -4 db.

Definition is a good parameter to mess with - turn it down a little to reduce the djenty chugga chug to the tone which will make it a bit more open for leads. Also, tube shape - the higher you go, the "softer" the distortion, but again you can lose some "life" to the tone.

Of course expiriment with different amps and cabs. As far as the cab controls, I leave everything at 0 except maybe MILD tweaks to character. Things can get digital/artificial fast here.