The Kemper thread

WiresDreamDisasters

TeleMaster said:

Yea the ticking noise is finally fixed. Yay!

Did they say what was causing it?

TeleMaster

WiresDreamDisasters said:

TeleMaster said:

Yea the ticking noise is finally fixed. Yay!

Did they say what was causing it?

Well, a support guy hinted that it might be an internal clock, but other than that it’s been a closely guarded secret...

Freebird

TeleMaster said:

Yea the ticking noise is finally fixed. Yay!

It would have no doubt been fixed sooner if the engineers hadn't gone on their summer holidays  By all accounts they were behind schedule, and rushing to get things finished things before they left. That's why the editor release was put on hold. Anyway, all's well that ends well, enjoy your Kemper!

Wazmeister

My Kemper Stage is working fine - well, perfectly. It is a remarkable device.

TeleMaster

That’s great. Mine too. 

Dog ran into a table and knocked my sons cup of milk all over mine yesterday. I panicked and struggled to get the thing off the pedal board, but it seems absolutely fine. The buttons were a bit sticky at first but they’re all working fine. So to all those who are worried about beer, I think it’s quite sturdy. 

FarleyUK

Bollocks.

My Kemper didn't turn on at the gig on Friday; a hard reset seemed to work though, and thankfully got through the gig.

However, I'm now getting a 'flash failure' error when booting. Sometimes it loads fine. Kemper have stated this is a hardware failure... so back to Andertons it goes.

I'm hoping we can swap it out, as I have gigs all weekend!

cbellanga

FarleyUK said:

Bollocks.

My Kemper didn't turn on at the gig on Friday; a hard reset seemed to work though, and thankfully got through the gig.

However, I'm now getting a 'flash failure' error when booting. Sometimes it loads fine. Kemper have stated this is a hardware failure... so back to Andertons it goes.

I'm hoping we can swap it out, as I have gigs all weekend!

Was that one of the newer stage models? Mine has been flawless so far

FarleyUK

cbellanga said:

FarleyUK said:

Bollocks.

My Kemper didn't turn on at the gig on Friday; a hard reset seemed to work though, and thankfully got through the gig.

However, I'm now getting a 'flash failure' error when booting. Sometimes it loads fine. Kemper have stated this is a hardware failure... so back to Andertons it goes.

I'm hoping we can swap it out, as I have gigs all weekend!

Was that one of the newer stage models? Mine has been flawless so far

Nope, an unpowered head.

FarleyUK

FarleyUK said:

Bollocks.

My Kemper didn't turn on at the gig on Friday; a hard reset seemed to work though, and thankfully got through the gig.

However, I'm now getting a 'flash failure' error when booting. Sometimes it loads fine. Kemper have stated this is a hardware failure... so back to Andertons it goes.

I'm hoping we can swap it out, as I have gigs all weekend!

Wow - hugely impressed with Andertons!

I purchased it August 2018, and explained the situation to them; they're collecting it tomorrow and sending a loan unit! Legends

Jonathanthomas83

That is great news, mate.

Seziertisch

TeleMaster said:

Yea the Kemper slays the Helix for amp tones. The drive pedals not so much, but the modulation is comparable, but not always.

I’ve wondered about this. How much if any outboard processing of the recorded signal happens in the making of the commercially available Kemper profiles?

I presume that there is some hardware eq and compression happening on nearly all of them. From my own experience of what enhancement outboard eq and comp can add to the signal coming from a mic or mics on a guitar cab, I wonder it this is what people are actually picking up on when they talk about the Kempers amp tones being better.

Even certain preamps without adding any other processing have that quality about them. A friend of mine has a couple of Chandler Germanium pres wich can be pushed in a very musical way and add a certain extra something to a guitar recording. Same deal with lots of other stuff - Neve, API etc. Adding a bunch of extra transformers and/or tubes to the chain gives a weight and harmonic richness that is a lot of fun.

WiresDreamDisasters

Seziertisch said:

TeleMaster said:

Yea the Kemper slays the Helix for amp tones. The drive pedals not so much, but the modulation is comparable, but not always.

I’ve wondered about this. How much if any outboard processing of the recorded signal happens in the making of the commercially available Kemper profiles?

I presume that there is some hardware eq and compression happening on nearly all of them. From my own experience of what enhancement outboard eq and comp can add to the signal coming from a mic or mics on a guitar cab, I wonder it this is what people are actually picking up on when they talk about the Kempers amp tones being better.

Even certain preamps without adding any other processing have that quality about them. A friend of mine has a couple of Chandler Germanium pres wich can be pushed in a very musical way and add a certain extra something to a guitar recording. Same deal with lots of other stuff - Neve, API etc. Adding a bunch of extra transformers and/or tubes to the chain gives a weight and harmonic richness that is a lot of fun.

I reckon EQ yes, compression almost certainly not. IIRC, the Kemper manual tells you to turn off anything that would screw the dynamics when profiling.

Most tones are probably RAW though. The Kemper sounds great to me, I'm thinking of buying one to use at home and just leaving all the amps at my practice room.

I've got a toaster on loan at the moment, with custom profiles and it does sound great.

crunchman

I did one or two profiles of my Lazy Jwith just an SM57 direct into the profiler.  They didn't turn out too bad.  To my ears, they were better than the Amp Factory versions of the Lazy J 20 - although that was probably because they used an amp with a 15" speaker and not a Celestion Blue.

I've since got the Brian Carl Lazy J profiles, which are good, and some of the Michael Britt Divided by 13 profiles are in the same ball park.  I think Michael Britt uses some nice preamps, and possibly uses combinations of mics mixed together.  I'm at the point now, where I've got a good selection of profiles, so I'm not chasing my tail to get a slightly better profile of my own amp, when there are plenty of good profiles in the same ballpark for not a lot of money.

Seziertisch

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Seziertisch said:

TeleMaster said:

Yea the Kemper slays the Helix for amp tones. The drive pedals not so much, but the modulation is comparable, but not always.

I’ve wondered about this. How much if any outboard processing of the recorded signal happens in the making of the commercially available Kemper profiles?

I presume that there is some hardware eq and compression happening on nearly all of them. From my own experience of what enhancement outboard eq and comp can add to the signal coming from a mic or mics on a guitar cab, I wonder it this is what people are actually picking up on when they talk about the Kempers amp tones being better.

Even certain preamps without adding any other processing have that quality about them. A friend of mine has a couple of Chandler Germanium pres wich can be pushed in a very musical way and add a certain extra something to a guitar recording. Same deal with lots of other stuff - Neve, API etc. Adding a bunch of extra transformers and/or tubes to the chain gives a weight and harmonic richness that is a lot of fun.

I reckon EQ yes, compression almost certainly not. IIRC, the Kemper manual tells you to turn off anything that would screw the dynamics when profiling.

Most tones are probably RAW though. The Kemper sounds great to me, I'm thinking of buying one to use at home and just leaving all the amps at my practice room.

I've got a toaster on loan at the moment, with custom profiles and it does sound great.

I found this https://www.tonethieves.com/faq

No idea whether people rated these guys profiles, but it would seem that outboard compression still gets a look in.

TeleMaster

I’m on Stage number 4 now. My third one stopped getting an input signal. I drove an hour yesterday to swap it, and GuitarGuitar did. They’ve been amazing. 

I get it home and it’s doing that ‘bootnorm error’ thing.

Luckily I found a fix online and sorted it out pretty quickly. 

WiresDreamDisasters

Seziertisch said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Seziertisch said:

TeleMaster said:

Yea the Kemper slays the Helix for amp tones. The drive pedals not so much, but the modulation is comparable, but not always.

I’ve wondered about this. How much if any outboard processing of the recorded signal happens in the making of the commercially available Kemper profiles?

I presume that there is some hardware eq and compression happening on nearly all of them. From my own experience of what enhancement outboard eq and comp can add to the signal coming from a mic or mics on a guitar cab, I wonder it this is what people are actually picking up on when they talk about the Kempers amp tones being better.

Even certain preamps without adding any other processing have that quality about them. A friend of mine has a couple of Chandler Germanium pres wich can be pushed in a very musical way and add a certain extra something to a guitar recording. Same deal with lots of other stuff - Neve, API etc. Adding a bunch of extra transformers and/or tubes to the chain gives a weight and harmonic richness that is a lot of fun.

I reckon EQ yes, compression almost certainly not. IIRC, the Kemper manual tells you to turn off anything that would screw the dynamics when profiling.

Most tones are probably RAW though. The Kemper sounds great to me, I'm thinking of buying one to use at home and just leaving all the amps at my practice room.

I've got a toaster on loan at the moment, with custom profiles and it does sound great.

I found this https://www.tonethieves.com/faq

No idea whether people rated these guys profiles, but it would seem that outboard compression still gets a look in.

I wouldn't buy their profiles based on that tbh.

FarleyUK

Loan kemper arrived.... And it's the powered head! Nice upgrade while mine is repaired

WiresDreamDisasters

So we're tracking guitars right now for the new album. My engineering cohort owns the Kemper, it's the one that I have been borrowing for the last few weeks.

We've been tracking the other guitarist using his Hagen and Mesa Boogie Recto OS 4x12 cab.

SM57, 421, and SE Electronics SE3A, each on their own speakers. Pretty much dead centre, and a finger away from the grille cloth.

So we tracked yesterday and today, and did some profiles at the end of the day. Our other guitarist had never used a Kemper before.

He was very impressed with it. He could spot a difference between the profiled amp and the real amp, as could I. But both of us agreed that the differences weren't that important and that it still sounded great. He was particularly impressed by the ability for a distorted rig to go from clean through to massive super high-gain, and he started fantasizing about using an expression pedal to get all the range of gain-tones. So did I.

We want to try two Kempers at loud band rehearsal levels with drums and bass to see how it feels and sounds within the band.

Freebird

WiresDreamDisasters said:

So we tracked yesterday and today, and did some profiles at the end of the day. Our other guitarist had never used a Kemper before.

He was very impressed with it. He could spot a difference between the profiled amp and the real amp, as could I. But both of us agreed that the differences weren't that important and that it still sounded great. He was particularly impressed by the ability for a distorted rig to go from clean through to massive super high-gain, and he started fantasizing about using an expression pedal to get all the range of gain-tones. So did I.

Are you talking about the amp in the room sound or the recorded sound?

WiresDreamDisasters

Freebird said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

So we tracked yesterday and today, and did some profiles at the end of the day. Our other guitarist had never used a Kemper before.

He was very impressed with it. He could spot a difference between the profiled amp and the real amp, as could I. But both of us agreed that the differences weren't that important and that it still sounded great. He was particularly impressed by the ability for a distorted rig to go from clean through to massive super high-gain, and he started fantasizing about using an expression pedal to get all the range of gain-tones. So did I.

Are you talking about the amp in the room sound or the recorded sound?

recorded