Kemper Profiling Amp

[Diminished Triad]

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/kemper-profiling-amplifier Anyone work with one of these?
I have a friend who swears by them. Haven't heard in person............only some clips on YouTube. My friend says it's very real and comes close to replicating just about any amp. Sounds pretty amazing.

 

[dominus]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

I had one for a bit. Two things killed it for me -

1 - No editing software. All edits are done from the front panel. It's intuitive enough, but still a little klunky.

2 - You can only edit profiles so much before they start sounding too digital. When you're dealing with modeling, they do their best to model the actual knobs on the amp, so each amp reacts differently, and hopefully, more true to the original amp. When editing on the Kemper, it's all linear, and you can only adjust so much before it sounds really odd. When I had mine, they had *just* updated the software to let you swap cabs, but it was still sounding a little off to me. When you're swapping cabs/IRs on a modeler, you can really tell the difference between an Orange 4x12 mic'd with a 57 and a Mesa 2x12 mic'd with a 121.

Couple that with the fact that I didn't have my own rig to profile, I was dealing with whatever profiles were available on the Kemper site. There's plenty of good "payware" profiles out there, but after dropping nearly $2k on a unit, you just don't want to drop any more money on it find your sound. I found my sound through a combination of modelers, solid state amps, IRs, pedals, preamps, etc, so I sold the Kemper off.

If they can fix these two things with the next generation Kemper, I may pick one up again. I think they'd be able to profile the knobs easily enough. Tell it how many knobs it has, and then take snapshots of the knobs at various points. Then it would react more like the original amp.

 

[Diminished Triad]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

Very informative.
Thanks!

 

[chadd]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

When you profile an amp, it is the amp at those settings. If you want something drastically different from the same amp, profile it again with different settings. The knobs are there to simply tweak the settings a bit, not function as if it were the amp itself. I love the idea of being able to profile the tones that I use from my Marshall and Mesa and have them all in one, easily portable location. The biggest knock against the Kemper for me is the customer service and the attitude of the owner. I spent a little time reading their forum and his arrogance and condescending attitude really turned me off to the amps. The lack of software and apparent lack of staffing are both major turn offs as well.

 

[everdrone]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

whoa, good info!

its crazy buying a $2k amp, whether it is axefxII or kemper, and not knowing how repairs will go since it is such a small company.

I searched to the end of the earth for good digital fuzz tones, and did not find any with Kemper yet. but I did find some cool fuzz tones with the axefxII:





Ill prolly buy an axefx3 or whateva in like 10 years once the software gets better. I mean we have i7 computer chips and these dont even use em!

 

[dominus]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

When you profile an amp, it is the amp at those settings. If you want something drastically different from the same amp, profile it again with different settings. The knobs are there to simply tweak the settings a bit, not function as if it were the amp itself. I love the idea of being able to profile the tones that I use from my Marshall and Mesa and have them all in one, easily portable location. The biggest knock against the Kemper for me is the customer service and the attitude of the owner. I spent a little time reading their forum and his arrogance and condescending attitude really turned me off to the amps. The lack of software and apparent lack of staffing are both major turn offs as well.

Right, but when you're using other people's profiles, you're at their mercy. The Kemper's profiling only works through a mic'd up cabinet (although, theoretically, you could probably profile the amp through a cabinet IR), something I can't do here. If the Kemper had a built in load and let you profile the amp itself and then add cabinets through IRs, that might have worked for me. I have no problem getting my hands on heads, but I just can't mic up a roaring cabinet here. (Not to mention, one of the keys to a recorded tone is different mic types/positions.)

I've read some forum posts where the Cliff Chase (the owner) of Fractal is condescending as well, but he's also someone that appreciates guitar tone. All the updates he does for the Axe FX open it up to more options. Last year he added "Tone Matching" which is his own way of profiling amps.

Christoph Kemper is more into the workings of the electronics itself. I owned a Virus B years ago and it was a great piece of gear, as is the Kemper, but the software inside them is more cerebral and locked down.

whoa, good info!

its crazy buying a $2k amp, whether it is axefxII or kemper, and not knowing how repairs will go since it is such a small company.

I searched to the end of the earth for good digital fuzz tones, and did not find any with Kemper yet. but I did find some cool fuzz tones with the axefxII:


Ill prolly buy an axefx3 or whateva in like 10 years once the software gets better. I mean we have i7 computer chips and these dont even use em!

One of the reasons for using proprietary chips is so the software can't just be lifted out and put on computers. If he made a software version and it got pirated, he would be put out of business. Keeping it tied to a piece of hardware that he has complete control over keeps him afloat. (Granted, if he put out the Axe FX in software along with a $300-$500ish key card that you installed in your computer, I'd be first in line.) Yes, computer CPUs (and video GPUs) are insanely powerful compared to the Axe, but you don't really need them to run one or two amp sims with effects. If the software ran on a computer, you'd probably be able to run 20+ copies of it without breaking a sweat... which would REALLY be helpful in recording studios. Hint hint Cliff!

 

[Diminished Triad]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

If not Kemper or modeling, what might be the preferred eq rack of any sort to cover the spectrum?

 

[BloodRose]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

my concern is what if you dont have access to amps to copy? do they come with any preloaded? i dont have, or have access to the amps that Id want emulations of

 

[dominus]

Re: Kemper Profiling Amp

my concern is what if you dont have access to amps to copy? do they come with any preloaded? i dont have, or have access to the amps that Id want emulations of

That's exactly what I ran into. The Kemper website has TONS of available profiles to download. None of them sounded as good as my current setup (combinations of external pedals/preamps + various plugins + IRs). There is a website where you can buy additional profiles (Virtual Kevorkian on here bought his Kemper preloaded with a bunch of their profiles) but after dropping $1900 on a Kemper I couldn't bring myself to spend any more money when I could get better sounds from $300ish hardware/software that I had already.