I’m sorry, but this is the worst-looking tuner I’ve ever seen !
Edit: I mean the graphic design.
Not sure what this whining is about, design is perfect; streamlined and unobtrusive. It can stay on all the time without it being annoyingly flashing or colorful.
Love my Kempers but I personally had a lot of reliability issues with my 2 machines (bought new - Stage as well as a remote were DOA). Buying used, I would be very wary and would check for these possible issues:
- The 4 big rotary encoders at the bottom: try adjusting the volumes on the output page and make sure they don't keep moving by themselves once you release them.
- The RJ-45 port behind (to connect the remote) is a weak point and breaks very easily: on used unit, make sure it "clicks" properly once you put the jack in there. When it's broken, the unit/remote will still be functional but can lose connection easily just by touching the cable.
- Make sure both L and R of the stereo out output the same signal level and work properly.
- If you have the powerhead/rack, make sure there is no white noise leaking in the signal when the power amp is turned on.
- On the Stage or the remote, make sure all the footswitches work well mechanically when you press on them.
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Edit - Just realized you got one already, congrats and hope all is well.
I suffered 3 herniated discs in my cervix.
Not a doctor, but surely you don't mean "cervix" !
Nevertheless, as a fellow member of the herniated disks club for most of my life, I empathize and wish you good recovery. At this point, I am convinced the human back/spine is somewhat of an evolutionary flaw.
Yes, I added up the cost of my old board, pedals, power and cables and I came to over £4k. It still wasn't as good/flexible as my PowerHead and it was a lot more hassle to set up/trace ground loop issues/troubleshoot power and cable problems. I still have it in the container but haven't used it since I got my head in 2018.
Indeed. While I've been using mine more and more... we don't notice how SO much more expensive pedalboards are because the things on it are being purchased individually. Sure this paid upgrade business model isn't cool, but put it in perspective and put your emotions aside: at the end of the day it's like the price of one or 2 pedals to basically turns your device into the next tier up. People have been whining for years on endless threads online about how they just want a small portable Kemper with everything but the profiling and now that it's out for like a grand and a half, the outrage is hard to understand. I think it triggers some psychological aversion we have about paying for software vs paying for hardware (sales of boutique pedals aren't slowing down). Still not for me thought, I need the footswitches!
Lots of people seems to be building pedalboards around the Player and the rig often end up being bulkier, less capable and more expensive than a Stage so unless you plan on carrying the Player as a standalone (therefore having very simple requirement in flexibility), I personally don't see the point. I'm sure many of us have thought of using the Player and adding some dedicated external effects but the truth is that at the end of the day, the Kemper effects are good enough to get the job done and then some (and getting better) so the all-inclusive option (stage/head) simplifies everything.
Yes please... rig name in big font. I'm sure that would be the most popular option, not sure why it hasn't been implemented already.
The Tone Junkie guy has a workflow that I follow:
You have to be careful though, manipulating rigs and performance can get quite buggy though if you mess around too much (still a huge improvement from before though). In my experience, if you start swapping the order of the rig blocks, you're likely to run into trouble at some point. Once the rig is loaded and saved at the right place though, then assigning effects is easy and very stable.
Hi, looong time Kemper user here. I just bought a Stage (also have a Powerhead for 10 years).
When I boot it, I sometimes have this problem: the Input and Output lights are full on green and there is apparently no sound getting in or out. The worst part of this problem is that it doesn't happens everytime, so this behavior doesn't happen to be "reproductible" in the eyes of the repair center I dealt with.
I opened a ticket and it was answered very dismissively by the KPA team in the US, as in "go back where you purchased it", which I did (BTW, the German team is much more cooperative in my experience.) After examining it and doing an USB reboot, they concluded that it was solved after booting it a few times with no issue. Next time (rehearsals for huge gig), I had to fly someone to bring my Powerhead as a backup in an emergency situation, costing me literally the price of a new Stage - I would have just bought a new one but there was no music store nearby). I came close to losing my job and had a panic attack.
Anyway, now this problem is considered "not reproductible" by my repair center, yet I have several videos of my Stage doing it on startup. Anyone else has had this green light/freeze experience? I don't know what to do as after this last incident, I can't trust this Stage unit ever again on those types of gigs... it happens once in a while and the unit feels cursed. The morning of my panic attack, even re-booting it many times or doing a reset never solved the problem, that entire morning the lights were full on green no matter what.
Anyway, sorry to vent but I really resent buying this particular unit now, I seem to be the only one that experienced this. What are my options?
Yes, I'm on the latest OS release 10.2.something... with nothing connected to it, please don't tell me to try changing cables or whatnot. Thanks!
At this point, those designers are trolling the public with their crap. Thousand dollars audio cables, etc... that "new era of electric guitar culture" seems to be about throwing stuff at the wall and looking what can stick. I'd be ashamed of bringing this monstrosity to a gig, it's like the antithesis of rock & roll. Also, putting 12 mics in front of your speaker cones is not the flex you think it is. From the clip sounds, it doesn't even seems worth profiling, ha!
Played a gig once with some violinist that had this apparently famous, uber-tacky Swarovski crystal-covered violin or something. The stupid violin was actually the selling point of the show, more than the artist itself, yet it stayed on a rack the entire time with a spotlight towards it until halfway through the show where he or she (see, I can't even remember the artist) finally used it for like one song. It sounded like literally any other electric violin through a DI. The room kind of shrugged their shoulders, and the rest of the show went on with the normal violin. 15 years later I still wonder what the hell that was about.
Take a deep breath, you already have enough technology in your hand to write a few hit songs.
Which effect is being assigned to which button is literally indicated on the remote display already.
But even without this, just having a consistent way of assigning certain effect to certain footswitches makes scribble strips pointless on the Kemper.
Indeed, what a strange way to market this thing. People commit suicide over tinnitus.
BTW: not even at a festival like Rock am Ring you need/can use 140dB (that would probably destroy your heardrums).
"I only play in my room for my enjoyment now" - I'd say you can totally downsize to just the Player then, no need for anything fancy. I have tons of equipment for the different sessions and tours I do but when playing in my music room, I never get fancier than an HX Effects plugged in a cheap, tiny combo amp: in those situations, I play with the volume so low that the sound quality pretty much doesn't matter: as long as I'm in the ballpark... Soundwise, even a Player would kill my practice rig but like I said it doesn't matter at this volume hence why unless I need to tweak or run the material, I usually don't even bother taking the Powerhead out of its bag between gigs. That being said, if you have bigger ambitions like recording etc, keeping the full size KPA is definitely a better choice.
Whenever I think of a pedalboard idea like this, I come to the conclusion that a Stage is pretty much the same size, has way more options, has no cables prone to fail/have ground buzz and all things considered is probably cheaper... but good luck.
Maybe your drummer friend doesn't quite get the idea behind it because nowadays there are tons of those small-size modellers filled to the brim with modelled drives and stompboxes but unlike the latter, the Player is meant first and foremost to play profiles.
Congrats to Kemper for this cool product! Still happy to be rocking my powered head for almost 10 years but if that were available 10 years ago, I might have made a different choice. I already have an old school pedalboard as my 2nd rig, but might still get it. I think bass players will love this as they probably won't be affected as much by the limitations with respect to multiple effects/rigs/performances etc.
edit. Wow, reading the comments, it's kind of baffling how entitled some people have become nowadays...
You need one of those:
There is a simple rule here in Texas. You pick no more than 3 tones; clean, crunch, high-gain/solo. You play those all night to your heart's delight. I have never been to a small gig or mega concert where I heard more than 3 tones. The more famous had only 1 tone/amp the whole show.
What I meant in my previous post is that it's possible to have just the same amp profile throughout the entire performance with different effects or settings on each individual slot. If you are a steady member of an original band that always play the same repertoire of 10-20 songs over and over in concerts or festivals, it's worth investing time in programming 1 performance/song instead of tap dancing to trigger effects on and off of every rig etc. Anyway, feel free to find out what works best for yourself but I'm saying this with a long history of both disasters happening by mismanaging rigs and smooth sessions with perfect sounds just at the click of a switch. 5 slots/song doesn't necessarily mean "too many sounds" nor is "overkill"; it could be the same exact sound with just a slight volume difference - having it in a different slot can sometimes make management more straightforward and less confusing.
It depends on the gig and it's actually a serious matter as having the wrong approach can get you in trouble at the gig.
Some gigs require more flexibility than others. For example, if it's a top40 cover band with large repertoire or a showband that plays lots of different stuff; for those, my performances have 5 different amp profiles usually in incremental levels of gain and effects in each that can be activated on the fly. With this approach, sometimes I can't quite get the optimal sound a part needs but what I lose there, I gain in flexibility as I can use the same patch in many situation.
For gigs with bands that have a limited songlist that is set in concrete (ie an original band on a 40 minute festival set), I use the 5 slots per song as "Slot 1: intro, Slot 2: verse, Slot 3: chorus, etc" as you describe and it works very well but is not flexible at all... I only use this approach if there is no doubt about the material being played; if the band adds or changes songs at the last minute you may be in trouble. Also in those cases I sometimes find more helpful to label the slots as something more specific like "Trem part", "Swells", "Slide part", "Chug part" because in the heat of the moment, that's usually what my brain thinks about first rather than a generic "verse" which you might not immediately recall how it's supposed to sounds. That approach can also take a LONG time to program because (every part of a song) x (number of songs) = a LOT of slots to fill in but also allows you to dial in the precise sound you need in every part of every song.
You can combine both approaches if your volumes and EQs are sufficiently well balanced across all your slots and performances.
+1
The Digitech Freqout is the only pedal I still use with the Kemper live. Last festival, there was a huge ground loop when trying to hook it up and I had to give up trying to use it. Having it inside the Kemper would make the device truly all-inclusive for many people.
