Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

[Dark Order Lord]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Seriously...if you think a lot of "tube" fans haven't dumped their perfectly fine older gear for the latest and greatest tube models at some point, you're kidding yourself. Someone's buying those $3K Marshalls and it isn't your average high schooler who just picked up the guitar!

Plus, if you're regularly swapping tubes, pedals, speakers, etc, looking for a "better" sound, then you're giving in to the same follies being claimed of Kemper fans.

Pick your poison and stick with it. Stop assuming that you know the "secret" to tone and no one else does. People who like modelers/profilers/solid state amps are not a lower form of life and neither are people who stand by tubes. Good music has been made with all.

Most of what has been said in this thread is pure rubbish from a real world standpoint. I know the arguments will go on, but there's no point to the black and white way of looking at things...the fruit of life exists in the gray areas in between

And then, in the 90's they woke up. You have no idea how many customer came into my shop, Guitar Crazy (Coogee) buying up on valve heads, Combos and trying to sell the rack mounted units, because of the sound, not because of convenience.

Some people mis interpret me with my post because they don't read them thoroughly enough and make fine counter points.

I NEVER said that Amp Modeler users are low life or idiots. I DID say that if you like your Kemper (etc) and are happy with its sounds, then good on ya, in other words, more power to you.

I mearly pointed out my EXPERIENCES with Kempers, and why they fail me, I hate propaganda hype about a technology that claims to 'Profile amps' when it only profiles a signal chain, to a certain extent.

To the dude that says he saw bands with valve amps sound terrible, and a band with modelers sound great, I don't doubt him. My experience has been the complete opposite, 6 times now with just the Kemper. I have not added my experience with LIne6 Helix, ATOMIC AMPLIFIER and Bias Grid.

My ear don't lie. Simple.

[Archer250]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

>Rackmounts
>Convenience

Yes. I'm sure a half stack + pedalboard is so much less convenient than a refrigerator sized rack full of buttons the average musician couldn't care to understand.

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[Sirion]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

>Rackmounts
>Convenience

Yes. I'm sure a half stack + pedalboard is so much less convenient than a refrigerator sized rack full of buttons the average musician couldn't care to understand.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6003 using Tapatalk

Seriously, though, as somebody who has run both, I've found each to have their pros and cons when it comes to practicality. If you want to do one of the things that racks do the best with a pedalboard setup, you're in for quite a ride! Parallell routing is the big one, but even running something in the effects loop feels like a dream in a rack-based rig.

The big difference is that most racks demand that you do your homework, and I'd wager that most musicians become musicians precisely because they don't want to do that!

EDIT: How could I forget stereo setups? That is so much easier with most rack rigs!

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

To the dude that says he saw bands with valve amps sound terrible, and a band with modelers sound great, I don't doubt him. My experience has been the complete opposite, 6 times now with just the Kemper. I have not added my experience with LIne6 Helix, ATOMIC AMPLIFIER and Bias Grid.

My ear don't lie. Simple.

Got to go see Dhani Harrison & ELO last night. My company rents a suite in the hockey arena where they played. Dhani Harrison, who I'd never heard prior, sounded surprisingly good. It was kind of dark, moody prog rocky stuff, lots of heavy guitars, aggressive bass, a keyboard player, and sparse, echoey drums. Still have distinct hooks (musical and lyrical) of his in my head.

I hear ELO songs approximately 95,000 times a day on the radio station we play at work. I'm not really a big fan, but they're obviously a good band. ELO had what looked like half a dozen people in the sound/lighting control area. It was clearly an extremely expensive production, including two cellos and a violin. Aside from groaning at one of my most hated songs ("Don't Bring Me Down"), my memory of ELO is the super cool laser show and saying to one of my friends, "This would sound a lot better if they weren't twice as loud as the opening band."

I just looked up and found that Dhani uses a Twin reissue live, though he records with sims. He and his band sounded great. It was a hockey arena, so I won't pretend that it sounded perfect, but apparently if you play at the appropriate volume, even people sitting halfway up won't get lost in an echoey mess. ELO had myriad combo amps that looked like Vox, and it was a mess.

I've been to three big shows in the last couple weeks. Everyone was using a tube amp. Of the 7 bands I saw, one of them sounded good, and I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that the good sounding one was a son of a Beatle

My ears also don't lie. Playing at an appropriate volume for your venue makes WAY more difference than your amp's guts. Simple.

[Masta' C]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

The funny thing about the way this thread shifted is that no one is claiming tube amps don't sound great. For the most part, both profilers and modelers are attempting to recreate/profile the sound and response of tube amps. No one is shaming those who desire to continue using tube amps or believe they sound "better", which means something different to everyone.

I simply take issue with some of the more blanketed assumptions that are being made...that Kempers always sound bad in a live setting, that modelers can't replace tubes in the ears of the general public, that digital gets lost in a mix, etc. There's SO much proof to the contrary for nearly every point made in this thread, on both sides.

Like what you like, love what you love, play what you want to play.

I can make a Marshall and a Kemper sound equally terrible if I don't spend time to dial either in correctly and, even then, I'd be at the mercy of many other factors playing live. Live settings are as distinct as fingerprints and far more complex when it comes to size, acoustics, sound guys, etc.

Heck, even as an audience member, where you are in a room or arena can totally change your "tone" experience and that rig that ultimately sounded like "crap" when you heard it may have sounded epic in the next venue!

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Heard a cool Kemper tip from Keith Merrow the other day. He profiles amps at a very low gain setting. He says if you do it this way, when you add gain on the Kemper, it seems to bring out more of the amp’s positive qualities. Said it usually ends up sounding better than the actual amp with the gain up high.

[GuitarStv]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Heard a cool Kemper tip from Keith Merrow the other day. He profiles amps at a very low gain setting. He says if you do it this way, when you add gain on the Kemper, it seems to bring out more of the amp’s positive qualities. Said it usually ends up sounding better than the actual amp with the gain up high.

So one if two things is going on here:

- the Kemper doesn't work well profiling the amp at high gain
- the Kemper works great, and he's profiling amps at high gain that he doesn't like the sound of

[Demanic]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

So one if two things is going on here:

- the Kemper doesn't work well profiling the amp at high gain
- the Kemper works great, and he's profiling amps at high gain that he doesn't like the sound of

Or, Kemper profiles high gain just fine, but gain being what it is, if you start with a lot, and then add more, it's always just going to descend into complete chaos the more that you continue to add.
If you profile at a lower initial gain, you have more room to turn the gain up later.

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[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

So one if two things is going on here:

- the Kemper doesn't work well profiling the amp at high gain
- the Kemper works great, and he's profiling amps at high gain that he doesn't like the sound of

By that same logic, anyone who uses an overdrive pedal into their amp bought an amp they don't like the sound of.

The Kemper takes a digital picture of your amp/signal chain set a particular way. The controls on the device are not necessarily going to behave exactly the same way they do on your amp. Earlier, I posted that it's not accurate to call it a modeler. Someone said I was splitting hairs. That guy does not understand what each device is doing.

Even if the Kemper sucks at modeling high gain devices, or Keith doesn't like the sound of his amps at high gain, who cares? The guy has an arsenal of tools, and figured out a way to make one of them do something cool that the others don't do.

[67Mopar]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

What's a Kemper?

[chadd]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

What's a Kemper?

Twenty bucks, same as in town

[Aceman]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

The Kemper takes a digital picture of your amp/signal chain set a particular way. The controls on the device are not necessarily going to behave exactly the same way they do on your amp.

See - this is what I find odd. I'd think you had to model the amp by setting every knob at every level, etc....

A treble knob going from 7-8 might be a different change than 8-9, and maybe 9-10 does almost nothing, and so on. Same thing with gain curves, etc....

My "one pic" of an amp is useless the moment I turn a knob that doesn't work the way the Kemper algorithm says, if I'm all about the 'reproduction.'

That said - maybe it does cool things. - just not exact copy things.

[El Dunco]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

I'm inclined to agree that there's some unknown unknown at play here. Keep pushing tech support to make them do their d@mn job (it sucks you just can't rely on people to do their job and you have to micromanage everything but it's just a fact of life sometimes).

They're not that flat/honest. Big bump in the lower end and swings between +/- 10 dB for the rest of the frequency range.

I never completely trust the frequency response graphs they include with mics and speakers. They do some "smoothing" f'ery to make them look just a little bit flatter etc. than they really are.

[GuitarStv]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Yeah, but that's not even close to flat after the smoothing!

[El Dunco]

Re: Kemper Profiler: Never been more disappointed in a purchase

Yeah, but that's not even close to flat after the smoothing!

Exactly, who knows what it's really like without specialized equipment?