A few Kemper Komplaints

...and some kudos! Had mine since Tuesday, finally got around to setting up midi and patches and hooking to a real amp and cab and about to gig with it at a benefit tonight for around 500-800 people. Good times!

Here's the good - I think it's the best sound modelling/digital/whatever amp. Downloaded a few patches from other users last night and some were bad, some were good, some were awesome. Ola Englund's triple rectifier sounded amazing. Two potential pitfalls with profiling your own amps - either you have poor mics or miking technique, or you don't dial it in right.

Old computer axiom applies here - garbage in, garbage out. I'm betting a lot of users don't have a way to easily isolate their amps they are profiling so they can a/b compare either. If you have a home studio setup with more than one room, it's certainly easier to do.

Another good - stompboxes work well with the amp models. I did one of my Bogner's blue channel at 75% gain, no boost - which has a little drive, and can clean up wonderfully with volume on the guitar - and I can kick in a virtual boost pedal and it's rock city.

MIDI setup was surprisingly easy. Go to system, find the patch you want, assign it to a midi #. Done. You are limited by how many CC#s they give you, but I set up mine with switches for a boost in front, two other stompboxes off/on depending on patch, a 4db boost for leads, and tap tempo. There is a full time knob on the front of the kemper for delay volume and feedback, I can turn up or down my delay volume easily if necessary.

One other really nice feature is that on the two footswitch jacks, you can use expression pedals for wah/volume/etc, *OR* take that old marshall stereo jack footswitch and use it to turn stompboxes on. Or tap tempo. Or... a number of things. Even scroll up and down patches. This is really nice, but I bet most people who buy one will get a MIDI pedal. I had no issues setting mine up with a Rocktron MidiMate.

A bad thing - the wah SUCKS. It sucks. Did I mention it sucks? Hope that gets resolved on an update. It is horrible.

Volume is ok, but it's pre fx/amp. Wish you could move it post so it affected the volume of the patch, not that AND the gain.

My monitor output was dead, looking on the board I found the solution, had to reset my Kemper. Didn't lose presets, but I have higher expectations on gear that is nearly $2k.

The sound and feel of the good profiles is amazing, and it's easy to load them with a USB stick. Each is around 4-5k, so you can store a bazillion on a 4gig stick. Was easy to upgrade software too. I really love this thing!

BTW, my backup rig for this gig (always have a backup rig kids!) is.. an Axe FX standard.

Pete

 

Gear is already packed and I'm about to head out for soundcheck, but thanks, I appreciate that.

However, what the hell! I never would have tried peak range -43% and pedal range 31% to make a crybaby. I figured it would have already been set for a 'regular' wah tone.

Oh well, I'll try it at soundcheck and see what it does. Thanks again.

Pete