OneEng1 Master

Hi Dave,

What digital desk are you using?

When you say the sound through the system is "awful", can you describe what you mean?

Also, can you let me know the FOH speakers the band is using (tops and subs if you have them)?

One of the biggest things I had to get used to was from hearing the "amp in the room" while on stage to hearing the microphone picked up version of my amp after going through the board and the speakers. One thing I noticed right away was that the Kemper's stereo effects sound WAY better though headphones than through the PA (which is likely mono output since stereo doesn't make as much sense for a PA .... since the people on one side will only hear half of the stereo image if you set it up like that). If you set your headphones up for mono, you can hear this even with headphones.

If you already have a convincing sound through headphones (even in mono), then it is likely a problem with the channel eq on the board for your PA system.

While you will hear lots of people talking about FRFR speakers to use as a monitor for your Kemper, many (almost every one of them) is not setup to be flat response at all since this doesn't sound good to our ears. Instead, the mics, speakers and even some digital mixers favor the eq away from "flat" and toward something more people like the sound of.

This is great for your overall FOH sound, but not so great for your guitar tone as frequently the eq that is "pleasing" is to scoop out the mids in the PA (the exact frequency that guitars thrive in). Sometimes the FOH sound is deadened in the highs to try to tackle HF feedback ..... which takes the sizzle off of your guitar.

The good news is that all of this can be overcome with most digital mixers processing through a combination of channel eq and insert processing that can be put onto your guitar channel(s) on the board.

Depending on your mixer, you can get a multi-track recording on it, then play JUST YOUR GUITAR back through the mixer to the speakers. Doing this lets you stand out front with a tablet or laptop and fiddle with the channel eq until you get the same (or damn close to) the sound you were hearing in your headphones.

Also, depending on your headphones, many (most) of these aren't flat response either ..... so if you have setup your sound to be good through the headphones, you will have to do adjustments on the mixer to make it sound good through the PA.

Hope this helps!