kemper rack arrives on wednesday and i have a gig on saturday!

[jb70]

my kemper rack will be here on wednesday and my first gig with it will be this saturday! thankfully, i only need about 4 patches for this particular gig (motown clean, funk clean (compressed with chorus), slightly overdriven, and fully overdriven. i've already downloaded the rig manager and plan on downloading a couple of the michael britt profile packs. i already have a liquid foot 12+ midi footswitch and 2 boss expression pedals (for volume and wah). does anybody have any helpful hints or suggestions to get me up and running by saturday? thanks in advance!

jack

 

[SteveO]

For what you need to get through the night you can easily run just one performance bank. That won't take much time at all to set up.

 

[jb70]

what do most people consider to be the essential clean profiles? 95% of my gig will be spent playing clean, rhythm guitar mostly in the funk, r&b, motown, and top 40 genres (michael jackson, steely dan, chic, tower of power, james brown, daft punk, stevie wonder, aretha franklin, 4 tops, temptations, bruno mars, prince, earth wind & fire, chaka khan, etc....)

 

[SteveO]

what do most people consider to be the essential clean profiles? 95% of my gig will be spent playing clean, rhythm guitar mostly in the funk, r&b, motown, and top 40 genres (michael jackson, steely dan, chic, tower of power, james brown, daft punk, stevie wonder, aretha franklin, 4 tops, temptations, bruno mars, prince, earth wind & fire, chaka khan, etc....)

The Morgan 20 profile that comes as a stock patch is pretty well universally loved, though it might not be the "right" clean for what you're after. There are some really good clean profiles on the Rig Exchange if you poke around, but be prepared to wade through hundreds of super high gain ones. There are also a lot of profiles on the exchange that really aren't all that great.

 

[jb70]

The Morgan 20 profile that comes as a stock patch is pretty well universally loved, though it might not be the "right" clean for what you're after. There are some really good clean profiles on the Rig Exchange if you poke around, but be prepared to wade through hundreds of super high gain ones. There are also a lot of profiles on the exchange that really aren't all that great.

thanks steve! yeah, i already downloaded the morgan (i didn't know it was a stock patch). i also checked out the rig manager and downloaded the profiles that got the highest ratings (although 95% of them were high gain profiles)

 

[SteveO]

thanks steve! yeah, i already downloaded the morgan (i didn't know it was a stock patch). i also checked out the rig manager and downloaded the profiles that got the highest ratings (although 95% of them were high gain profiles)

What I did to streamline the rig selection process was to use Rig Manager to transfer all of the stock presets into the Local Library folder, then I wiped them all out of the Kemper itself, so I was starting with it empty. Then I just started scrolling through them with a guitar in hand, and transferred the ones I liked back into the Kemper. I did a bit of this with the Rig Exchange profiles as well, but with so many on there it has been rather laborious to say the least!

 

[jb70]

What I did to streamline the rig selection process was to use Rig Manager to transfer all of the stock presets into the Local Library folder, then I wiped them all out of the Kemper itself, so I was starting with it empty. Then I just started scrolling through them with a guitar in hand, and transferred the ones I liked back into the Kemper. I did a bit of this with the Rig Exchange profiles as well, but with so many on there it has been rather laborious to say the least!

wow!!!! that must've taken a while. that's a great idea though. i'm guessing i won't use the majority of the profiles that are already in the KPA

 

[SteveO]

wow!!!! that must've taken a while. that's a great idea though. i'm guessing i won't use the majority of the profiles that are already in the KPA

It started out looking like it would take FOREVER, but I quickly came to the realization that certain people created really good profiles, so I focused on searching out profiles submitted by those people instead of going through everything one at a time.

 

[jazzfromhell]

what do most people consider to be the essential clean profiles? 95% of my gig will be spent playing clean, rhythm guitar mostly in the funk, r&b, motown, and top 40 genres (michael jackson, steely dan, chic, tower of power, james brown, daft punk, stevie wonder, aretha franklin, 4 tops, temptations, bruno mars, prince, earth wind & fire, chaka khan, etc....)

I have two clean profiles I use, both from MBritt. Princeton (embellished with various stomps like boost, comp, phaser) handles 90% of all my cleans; from country to funk, pop, jazz etc. The other one is a Diezel that is heavily compressed and has chorus, delay and reverb on it and that is used for 80´s Luke/Landau-type cleans. Then the MPacheco AC20 is the next step up in gain and it does everything else up to AC/DC levels of gain. I ride the volume knob a lot and it works great. Then I have another three patches with more gain, again all by MBritt (Marshall IMP, Friedman, Marshall Solo).
If I could only use three profiles they'd be the Princeton, AC20 and Friedman.

 

[TheAmpFactory]

I'd suggest you not to pay for anything, there are "Free" Rig packs that Kemper released from many people. they all have a "taste" of whats to come from many vendors, and this will soon enable you to short list what your preferences are. - we all have our idea clean, crunch and rock tones, its just a case of if one (or more) give you that feeling. - but a good place to start is the kemper website under downloads > rig packs, NOT the Rigexchange, NOR vendors websites where you have to pay for things.

@creative360, hey no problem : ) - and I think you might be referring to the profile "Teeny Tiny Feet" - This one here..

 

[wedewer]

I would definitely set it up for performance mode to do the gig. I used the Kemper at a gig after having for about a week, set it up with basically 5 rigs in bank one and had no problems.

 

[flyingheelhook]

I'd suggest you not to pay for anything, there are "Free" Rig packs that Kemper released from many people. they all have a "taste" of whats to come from many vendors, and this will soon enable you to short list what your preferences are. - we all have our idea clean, crunch and rock tones, its just a case of if one (or more) give you that feeling. - but a good place to start is the kemper website under downloads > rig packs, NOT the Rigexchange, NOR vendors websites where you have to pay for things.

Best. Advice. Ever.

I bought my KPA three weeks ago +/-. I can't tell you how much time I waste because I get caught up trying out different amp profiles instead of just learning the interface, controls, etc. Mostly because I splurged on two profile packs before I was really ready and now I get so caught up in exploring the different profiles instead of learning the KPA itself. Yesterday I had set myself the task of setting my Clean Sense and finding 4-5 profiles for my next gig. While I wound up getting Clean Sense partially there, I wound up spending about 6 hours testing out different profiles - time that would have been better spent getting Clean Sense set all the way.

Also, I've only briefly touched upon the stomp boxes, and while I recently acquired an FCB1010 and installed an EurekaProm, I barely know how to use it. I had a gig friday and did not use the KPA. I have another this saturday and I might, just might, try to use it if I can spend a bit more time getting a few Performances leveled out with a stomp box or two, and comfortable with the FCB - enough to get through the night. But maybe not, I would rather wait than bring it out too soon.

 

[MKB]

I found that quite a few of the profiles on the Rig Exchange as well as some of the factory ones are quite good without any tweaking except effects and overall volume. But even though I found a bunch of very good presets and have a few nice Performance setups, the last few gigs I ended up using only one profile for all songs, a profile I made of my ODS #102 clone. It is so responsive to dynamics and to boosts in the input, I didn't really need anything else.

So maybe one path to consider is think of amps you believe would work well on your gig, and seek out factory reset or Rig Exchange profiles of those amps. Also it is worth signing up for Michael Britt's newsletter and downloading the sampler pack, there are some terrific profiles in there. Another vendor to look for is Top Jimi, he sells great profiles of individual amps for cheap ($7.99 IIRC). I am greatly enjoying his Bluesbreaker collection.

 

[themightyjay]

My personal tip is to lock cabs or use very similar cabs in your performance. It's a nice idea to have a massive variety of sounds live, but too much variety can be jarring, especially on overdriven sounds.

In this respect the M Britt stuff is great, as they all use the same cab and compliment each other tonally.

 

[jb70]

thank you ALL for the great advice and suggestions!

 

[jb70]

I'd suggest you not to pay for anything, there are "Free" Rig packs that Kemper released from many people. they all have a "taste" of whats to come from many vendors, and this will soon enable you to short list what your preferences are. - we all have our idea clean, crunch and rock tones, its just a case of if one (or more) give you that feeling. - but a good place to start is the kemper website under downloads > rig packs, NOT the Rigexchange, NOR vendors websites where you have to pay for things.

thanks andy! i've been noticing that both yours and the m. britt profiles are very highly regarded and i plan on purchasing some of them after this weekend

 

[jb70]

One approach would be to get something like the TAF 63 Vibrolux—great for the music you're playing—choose which two or three clean, pushed or cranked snapshots you like from the set, clear all the efx (no offense TAF) and then line your choices up in a performance, maybe by ascending levels of grit, adding your own custom boost/tube screamer, eq, comp, modulation, delay and reverb settings. You could also do all that with one profile, meaning build a performance around one profile with various efx settings—maybe that Morgan AC20 from mpacheo that so many love. I'd leave the liquid foot at home and connect two expression pedals directly to the Kemper for volume and wah, or use the second jack for an up down switch to go from rig to rig if simply switching manually isn't an option. Nothing but an exp pedal on the floor is a good look, a simple and free way to go.

interesting. i've been using the liquid foot with my axe fx for the last 3 or 4 years and love it. are you saying to leave it home because it would be too confusing to use on this gig with the kemper or that it would be overkill?

 

[jb70]

Best. Advice. Ever.

I bought my KPA three weeks ago +/-. I can't tell you how much time I waste because I get caught up trying out different amp profiles instead of just learning the interface, controls, etc. Mostly because I splurged on two profile packs before I was really ready and now I get so caught up in exploring the different profiles instead of learning the KPA itself. Yesterday I had set myself the task of setting my Clean Sense and finding 4-5 profiles for my next gig. While I wound up getting Clean Sense partially there, I wound up spending about 6 hours testing out different profiles - time that would have been better spent getting Clean Sense set all the way.

yeah, i hear you. i've already been down the rabbit hole with the axe fx. i'm a player, not a tweaker. i'd rather find a handful of incredible sounding profiles and work with them rather than auditioning everything under the sun and wasting valuable time.

 

[jb70]

I have two clean profiles I use, both from MBritt. Princeton (embellished with various stomps like boost, comp, phaser) handles 90% of all my cleans; from country to funk, pop, jazz etc. The other one is a Diezel that is heavily compressed and has chorus, delay and reverb on it and that is used for 80´s Luke/Landau-type cleans. Then the MPacheco AC20 is the next step up in gain and it does everything else up to AC/DC levels of gain. I ride the volume knob a lot and it works great. Then I have another three patches with more gain, again all by MBritt (Marshall IMP, Friedman, Marshall Solo).
If I could only use three profiles they'd be the Princeton, AC20 and Friedman.

is the princeton profile the "stubborn prince" in the profile pack 1?

 

[FusionRock]

1) Properly set the Clean Sens and Distortion Sen controls. (Clean Sens more so than DS)


2) Lean about the Definition and Clarity parameter controls in the Amp section. IMO, they will make your profiles come to life and get rid of the mud.

3) IMO, it's better to have a more gainy patch and reduce the guitar volume for less dirt than to take a patch and increase the Gain control which sounds more artificial to my ears.