Kemper OS 8.0 Beta - Kemper Drive and OCD

Sonnyducks

Sonnyducks

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223
As a new Kemper users when I first got a Kemper I was a bit shocked about how few drives the unit has. This is offset by profiles having drives baked in. But the ones the Kemper has do work for me. Actually I like what the "gain" knob does on the front of the unit. In all honestly on most multi-effect units I gravitate toward only 2-3 drives despite them having 20+.
 
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Viabcroce

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Messages
2,667
TommyGuitar said:
This makes me realize how good the Kemper sounds. If you can’t be satisfied with those tones I don’t know what to tell you.
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:D



Quoting the man Himself :)

From ckemper

Hi guys!
Thanks for your feedback.
As some of you mentioned, the Full OC is not part of the Kemper Drive, because it does not belong to the family of overdrives, but to the family of distortions. So are all the other distortion models, except the Green Scream and the Fuzz DS.

It is a bit disturbing that the the guitar world in the past decades failed to tell the musicians which devices are overdrives and which are distortions, and to find a clear distinction.

Same with the story of the choice of clipping diodes and their symmetrical or assymmetrical configuration. It sounds like nice marketing to promote different diode choice or topology. Some overdrive pedals even allow to change the setting with switches on the fly. Those differences can be well analyzed analytically, by using sine as a test tone. But once you play guitar, the only change is the headroom, perceived as a significant change in Drive and Volume. Once you re-adjust Drive and Volume, the sound is the same again, no perceivable difference.
You might not find a single person on the internet, who shows the true sonic differences of diode configurations in ODs, while keeping all surrounding aspects neutral.

We could have added an additional switch or selector for these aspects, if they were significant.

We are here in a beta test, so we would be happy to be proven wrong ...

...

The difference [between a distortion and an overdrive pedal] is simply, that on overdrive pedals only, a good portion of the clean signal (undistorted, uncompressed) is mixed to the distorted signal, preserving some uncompressed playing dynamics in parallel to the distortion.
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So, whomever knows or believes otherwise, you are on time to suggest modification to the algorithm (I am serious!).
 
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T

telecast

Member
Messages
470
These do sound pretty darn good for my money. I (thankfully) was able to load the presets that came with the beta download from my pc to my stage using a USB stick with no problems. The Kemper instructions were pretty clear on how to do it. I think the drives are very good. I actually owned a gold horsie Klon back in the late 90s/early 00s, and I wouldn't say the kemper klon nails that sound. However, it does give you a good idea of where that pedal was coming from and it certainly sounds better to my ear than the tube screamer and other od's/distortions that came with the stage to begin with. To me those really sounded like the way pedals sounded back in the 80s when I first started playing. The kemper drive presets and the 'full OCD' sound much more like current generation pedals. I've never played an OCD, but the kemper variation is very impressive. I need to figure out the timmy presets a bit better. They sound a little dull to me so far, but I didn't have time to play with it too much. I was too busy playing the OCD!
 
dickjonesify

dickjonesify

Member
Messages
7,967
Man, the “King Clean” preset in the Kemper OD reminds me soooo much of how I always used my JHS Morning Glory. So good.

The most surprising thing to me about both drives is how good they sound on clean profiles where before, I wouldn’t even bother trying.
 
Blahfingers

Blahfingers

Member
Messages
561
Does anyone know how long it's likely to be until this comes out of beta? While I'm tempted to try it now, I'd rather wait until I know it's a stable release.
 
Ingolf

Ingolf

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Messages
780
Blahfingers said:
Does anyone know how long it's likely to be until this comes out of beta? While I'm tempted to try it now, I'd rather wait until I know it's a stable release.
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Why wait and miss out on all the fun? I suppose you’re not gigging, so...
Kemper public betas have always been quite stable, and in case you get a bug that’s unacceptable for your workflow you just roll back to the latest stable release.
 
ljholland

ljholland

Gold Supporting Member
Messages
2,717
I've been messing with the Kemper Drive since it was released. I am impressed and hope they finish out this beta with a bunch of new presets based on the KD. (it's a nice start)

After using it, I'm starting to think the KD may change the way I use my powered Kemper. I've always loaded 3 profiles in a performance and then used morph to get some extra gain. That effectively gave me 6 gain levels. With the KD, I'm wondering if I'll just use 2 profiles (clean/dirty) in a performance and use the drive like I would with a tube amp. Then, I could use the other remote slots for different varieties of effects. Anyhooo....just thinking.
 
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Viabcroce

Member
Messages
2,667
Blahfingers said:
Does anyone know how long it's likely to be until this comes out of beta? While I'm tempted to try it now, I'd rather wait until I know it's a stable release.
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By definition, sw is raised to release status when no relevant bugs are reported any longer. This is not something you can plan :)
 
Blahfingers

Blahfingers

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561
Viabcroce said:
By definition, sw is raised to release status when no relevant bugs are reported any longer. This is not something you can plan :)
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Yes, I know, but I imagine with other Kemper beta releases there would be an average time someone might know. It's easy enough to google and discover it's 15.4 days for Apple, for example.
 
V

Viabcroce

Member
Messages
2,667
Blahfingers said:
Yes, I know, but I imagine with other Kemper beta releases there would be an average time someone might know. It's easy enough to google and discover it's 15.4 days for Apple, for example.
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IME this is not the case for Kemper, I've seen everything in the years... even two days or two months :)
 
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