Posts by bsd512

Quote from Karl_Houseknecht

Excellent profile! Tame the reverb and delay on it and it's good as is with my Tele. I have a DSL40C sitting here with a Creamback in it which I hadn't bothered to profile. You've inspired me to give it a go, but your results are great. Mind if I ask the settings on your amp?

Thanks!

Sure, I used the Lead 2 channel with the Tone Shift button in the "out" position. Gain was on 5, Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence were on 10. Resonance on 0. Reverb and everything else turned down to zero.

The volume for that channel was moderately low, around 3 or 4, and the pentode switch in the back was at half-power. EDIT: even so, it was still pretty darn LOUD!

I used an MXL-144 ribbon mic positioned 2 inches away at the cap/cone edge. With headphones on listening to the mic, I positioned it laterally across the speaker to where I thought it sounded best - that's very close to the cap/cone edge if not precisely there - it's really hard to tell the precise exact position, but it's 2in from cap/edge cone is what I'd do if I were going to try and reproduce it, and then I'd shift a half-inch to the left or right to find the best location.

I fed the mic into my Line 6 Helix mic input with the pre-amp gain set to 18dB. That seemed about right. Then direct on out to the Kemper reference input.

If I was going to do this profile again, I would probably drop the Presence and Treble on the amp a little bit. I'd have to experiment with that, I tried that on a prior profile and it didn't come out as well, even though I thought it sounded fine to my ears "in the room". So I just dimed everything except the resonance.

EDIT: Oh, btw, if it makes any difference, I did this profile in my attic office/amateur studio room/electronics workbench, all things with clutter and stuff. There's nothing in there at all to try and reduce reflections or anything or any kind of sound damping. Right now I don't have any way to do all that stuff, but figured I'd give it a go anyway. Seems like the Kemper compensated for my poor room conditions pretty well!

Excellent, glad you're liking it! And I'll try some other cabinets, too. I also have a bunch of OwnHammer IR packs from another modeler I own and I'll some of those a try, too.

Quote from stratocaster

Hi,

Thanks for sharing Your profile sounds real good !!! To make it sound good for my gear/taste I lowered the bass -1.8 , got rid of the noise gate which opened up the sound a bit , lowered the gain to 6.2 defenition 7.3 compressor

within amp ( pushbutton) down to 1.0 Now it sounds killer to me (I used to own a DSL40c so I know how it sounds)

I play a powered head through JBL's 305 with a '79 Strat.

Thank you very much for the feedback, this is great! I'll try your suggestions.

I'm playing through a Les Paul with humbuckers. Good to hear it sounds good through other gear, too. Thanks again!

Hi. I'm a new Kemper owner and have been working on profiling my cheap overseas made Marshall DSL40C combo amp. Not a high end amp by any means, but my main goal was to get a decent profile of it and learn the process. I took a lot of care with the mic and mic placement to get try and get it to sound the best I could.

This is my first upload to Rig Exchange - Author: BSD. Rig name: Marshall DSL40C Lead 2

Please try it if you are so inclined and I'd be happy to hear any feedback so that I can improve the process.

Also, I'd be interested in whether I filled out the relevant information about the profile in the profile information pane. Consistency is good! Helps people find what they're looking for.

Here's a quick sound sample I did so you can hear what it sounds like:

Pay no attention to the lame playing, more the focus on the sound of the amp. I tried to get some rhythm stuff in there, and a little lead'ish stuff to show what it sounds like in different conditions. Note this was all one take, so the rhythm and lead are all on the same track - all I did was increase the delay and reverb a bit for the lead.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Personal note - mic'ing cabs is new to me, so I experimented a lot with mic placement and distance. This is all using the stock speaker in that amp and a rather cheap'ish MXL-144 ribbon mic (all I could afford). But I thought it came out pretty good. Please either confirm or rip it - better to know what I did wrong so I get a better one next time. Thanks!!

Thanks!

Sorry for the dumb question, but I am not only new to the Kemper, but also new to guitar cabinet mic'ing. I've read a lot, experimented a good bit, and am basically drinking from the fire hose on getting a good cabinet mic'd setup that in order to produce the best Kemper profile that is as close to mix-ready as I can.

I've been experimenting with a little Marshall combo amp, DSL40C using an SM57 mic, higher gain tone. I know mic placement is critical and I have a lot of work and learning to do there. But lets just consider the simplest case - mic on the grill, on axis, directly in front of the cap.

Just going direct from the mic into the Kemper reference input, it's obviously very bright and harsh in the very high frequencies. Seems pretty harsh and bright to my ears.

I've found that I can compensate for that after it's profiled by using some hi-cut in the "X" block of the Kemper.

But ... instead of doing that, is it standard practice to apply some pre-EQ between the mic and the Kemper to filter out those nasty frequencies before they ever reach the Kemper for the purposes of profiling? I do have a Helix and did that and it produced a tamer profile that was more pleasant without any Kemper post-EQ. But I don't know of I'm breaking all the rules or anything by doing this. I reasoned that if I got a really good nearly mix-ready sound out of my headphones for the amp profile setup by filtering out nasty frequencies before they reached the Kemper, that the profile itself would be better as a result. Is that the case? Do people do this?

Again, sorry if this is a dumb question, I've had my Kemper for less than a week, and I don't generally mic guitar cabinets for stage sound to FOH or for studio use. But it seemed reasonable to me that for live sound that signal would be EQ'd at the board before heading on to the FOH PA's. So why not apply that EQ between the mic and the Kemper so the FOH signal is pretty much ready to go as-is? Or nearly studio recording ready as-is? Depending on how the profile is used.

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Quote from nightlight

Welcome to the club! Could you post some Helix vs Kemper comparisons? Maybe even profile the helix and post your results!

Glad to have you here!

Thanks, and will do. I've had my Helix for almost 2 years, though, so I think I should get some more experience with the Kemper so I know it as well as the Helix in order to do a more fair comparison.

My initial reaction is that the Kemper is *extremely* good at duplicating a particular setup - where so much depends on the quality of the mic'ing and of course the dialing in of the amp itself to where you want it. Kemper will duplicate that very precisely, I certainly can't tell the difference between the profile and the real thing.

Whereas the Helix is extremely good at modeling the full amp and all the interactions between its controls at a very deep level. And with the Helix, you don't have to worry too much about mic'ing especially if you use impulse responses which were done professionally. Conversely, you don't have much control over that aspect aside from selecting the right one out of many for the tone you're looking for.

Of course, the Kemper can utilize impulse responses, too - but my initial preference leans toward the actual cab used to make the profile vs substituting an impulse response. I'm just learning the Kemper and best practice, though, so all that may change as I get more experience with it.

I did get a chance to profile a custom one-off amp. This is my guitar teacher's amp, which started out life as a Sovtek Bassov Blues Boy bass amp. It was modified by Carr Amplification to have a clean channel, a drive channel, a lot of rewiring and tube work, and I don't know what else. This profile was made through a Marshall 4x12 cabinet with greenback speakers, as mic'd by my guitar teacher using an MD-421. I didn't know anything about this 100 Watt beast of a head, so I suggested he set it up like he would at a gig or something. You can probably get close to this (assuming you want a tone like this) with the Helix or Axe using one of the existing amps and dialing in the tone. But it wouldn't be the real thing.

When Carr modified the amp, I'm not sure if they named it or my guitar teacher did, but it has a plate on it - it's called the VodkaSonic. I love that name! Here's a little riff I did with it to try it out in a mix. The real amp is painfully loud. Fortunately, it was in an isolation booth when we profiled it.

Quote from Finally

Congrats and enjoy!

You should have a go at profiling your favorite Helix patch just for fun!

Ha - I was kind of surprised to see AxeFX and Helix profiles up on Rig Exchange. I thought that was hilarious! And an old Rockman, that brought back some memories.

I did naively try to profile my SY-300 with a very simple patch with a couple of oscillators running, but no effects or anything. It didn't work of course. I think the SY-300 needs a waveform of some type as it's input which it analyzes to find the fundamental frequency to apply to its oscillators. With the Kemper injecting what is essentially a noise source, there's nothing for the SY-300 to lock onto, and thus it can't set the oscillators to anything, and the resulting profile essentially just sounded like my dry guitar. Interesting, fun, and kind of obvious after I thought about it.

Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm very happy to be here, and having a lot of fun with my shiny new Kemper. This thing is so cool! Though my wife is not too happy with me cranking up my amp in the house profiling it again and again trying to work out my quirks. Come to think of it, my neighbors probably aren't too happy either.

Greetings - new guy, here. I just got my Kemper power-head and remote a few days ago and have been having a blast with it.

I'm a Helix owner for nearly two years now and love it. But the Kemper was just so fascinating in the way it works that I couldn't resist getting one and trying it out. It's a very different species than the Helix, of course. I didn't get the Kemper to replace my Helix. I find I can get great tones from the Helix, and it's tough to beat in terms of usability especially with the latest firmware update, editor, Helix Native DAW plug-in, ease of dialing in tones, and just about any routing option you can dream up - Line 6 is really on their game with it.

But with the Kemper, I'm just learning it. And so far so good. I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface right now, just like the Helix when I first got it. I did profile my little Marshall combo amp and I was pleasantly surprised at well it turned out! I thought it would be a lot harder. I do have some questions about certain aspects of that, but I'll save that for another thread.

I'm looking forward to learning the Kemper as much as I can and making good use of it. And with having a Helix, I can use them together. One thing I did today was swap in my profiled Kemper amp into a Helix path using a Send/Return block, essentially patching the Kemper as an amp-block in a Helix path, along side a similar Helix amp. With a Helix snapshot button, I toggle between the Kemper amp and the Helix amp easily, while keeping the rest of the signal chain identical. That was pretty cool for evaluating the differences.

I've quickly learned that the quality of the profile, and of course, the amp settings at the time of the profile, mic(s) used, placement, etc, makes a huge difference (duh!).

So far I'm very happy with the Kemper and while I could live with just the Helix, the Kemper adds a whole new dimension to my tonal possibilities, not to mention making an already enjoyable activity even more enjoyable!

Just browsing around, this looks like a great forum with a lot of helpful folks - similar to the Line 6 Helix forum. I'm happy to be here, happy with my Kemper, and looking forward to learning a lot and eventually contributing once I learn my way around more.

-Brian