Howdy!
As the title states I'm confused and I'm really, really frustrated and I'm asking you to help me sort things out. Thing is, I'm way to audiophile, respectively I got those "dog ears" if you know what I mean. What sounds great at first is not a blessing but a course when it comes down to be satisfied with a tone. If I wanted (and sometimes also if I don't want to!) I can listen to a loop until the very point where I just hear a annoying pick noise and interfering frequencies but almost no amp at all.
Of course you just give your ears some break and start over again and of course this works for a certain amount of time.
This was just to explain how my ears work and I don't need advise with that. What I need advise with is the following. Due to me being able to focus on things I hate
I'm not satisfied with most of the profiles on rig exchange and also most of the profiles I bought are not that good sounding to me until I tweak and tweak and tweak and tweak.
I think most profiles got way to much low end and without cutting them around 8 kHz the are to fizzy while the mids seem to be scooped.
Yeah, I don't play metal and maybe my guitars doesn't even Djent.
With some changes in cabs some of them get better but the don't go where I really want them to be.
I'm need four basic sounds to play my music. I need a vintage clean tone, a vintage crunch tone I use to play open chords with a slightly distorted amp and I need a vintage distorted sound for country punk/ punk/ punk 'n' roll plus a vintage fuzz.
What is vintage? Well, there we go ... I'm into Social Distortion and bands like that and I'm of course also totally into everything that sounds a little like the Stones etc. What I think is a vintage tone is maybe a tone with over-pronounced mids, not that much low end and not that much treble. I cut around 85 to 95 Hz and around 6500 to 8500 Hz.
Always and really always there is something that bugs me. Playing without a capo with the slightly overdriven/ distorted amps and open chords often leads to some sparkling way to bright tones at the high end that I hate but most often cannot get rid of. Playing with a capo often tames things a bit but that's not what I want. I want my tones to be killer without cheating. The distorted and fuzzy sounds work most of the time but there is often to much pick noise (I of course know the pick parameter but that's not what I mean/ hear). Vintage clean tones work more or less. That's ok.
So what I did was taking the profiles I like best and send them through my DAW, EQ'ed them again and reprofiled them with a second Kemper.
I thought it would be ok. Still not perfect but ok.
The last two weeks I was on holidays - I got my ears a huge break so to speak. On holiday I read about the the Helix and they got me curious. So I downloaded Helix Native as a trail and tried dialing in a slightly distorted tone for my open chords. I used the DAW to compare that to my Kemper's sound and now I hate both of them. The Helix doesn't feel that real to me while I like the sound a little better as what I got out of my Kemper right now. My Kemper's tone sounds almost unreal or whatever to me. And I'm so confused.
Thing is: Since a tweaked, tweaked and tweaked my Kemper's tones that much and even reprofiled some of them as I said I'm not even sure if all this still has anything to do with a real amp.
How to overcome that? How can I trust in my ears and tones again? Have you been where I am right now?
Don't get me wrong. This is in no way a Kemper vs. Helix kinda thing. Not at all. I was never completely satisfied with my guitar tone and right now I feel like I have hit a dead end.
Thanks in advance, dudes!
Cheers