The Kemper user thread

[rick16v]

Gotta remember the source amp is dialled in for a specific guitar in a specific room.

I sold my kemper after about a year or so. Bought a helix but now only use it for fx.

Am back on tube amps.

 

[Michael Roe]

@Dogs of Doom See if this works for drop box:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mr6i6bsypbaotsr/Kemper profiles MROE.zip?dl=0

 

[Michael Roe]

There is about 30 profiles there. a lot of them are not named real good right now.
The ones that start with NMV are the ones from that soundcloud clip above (#2 & #4).
The ones with "V-Sonic or "VS" are my new Rocktron Valve Sonic Plexi and Black Plate + done using my DSL20 as the amp.
The rest should be somewhat self explanatory. If not , just ask! All of these are done with a load Box and my IRs.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

yep, 29 files...

I don't have my kemper handy right now, but, I 'll get it w/in the next couple days...

 

[Michael Roe]

This would have been helpful to have watched a few months ago!
They say if you are doing vintage amps you should dial back the definition. I think they mean NMV amps. Would have been very helpful to have that in the manual!
I did a bunch more profiling this past weekend with my SV. I think I am getting the hang of it now. They are starting to sound much better.
I will upload a few more in the next few days for you to check out.
I also tried to do my 1987X with very poor results. I had just bought the 1987X a few months ago from my local GC but haven't had much time to spend with it. I have found out something very interesting. It has been modded! Explains why it sounded like a turd trying to profile it. Somebody modded it to have way less gain and treble!

 

[Dogs of Doom]

the unfortunate thing about the Kemper, is that it would take a doctorate degree to learn everything. If they included many things, the average user would get lost in it & the unit would not be consumer friendly.

The way it's released, is that it's as simple as plug 'n play, or as technical as you want to get into it. I'd venture to say that 90% of the people only delve into 10% of what it can do, while only 10% delve into the other 90%. +/-... If it was laid out as technical as possible, those 90% would be left out.

So, you are to find your own resources.

It's similar w/ lots of tech stuff. Like look at Photoshop. They give you a pretty good sized book, but, you end up having to learn from other places moreso.

Good find, I'll have to check it out!

 

[texhex]

Added some profiles of my DSL100H with an OwnHammer Mesa V30 and a 1960AV cab. They are direct DI captures so feel free to swap out the cabs for your personal favs.

Best suited for humbuckers.

I get a lot of mileage out of these and they respond really well to guitar volume.

DSL100H is still one hell of an amp.

Enjoy!

UG = Ultra Gain Channel (Lead 1)
CG = Classic Gain Channel (Crunch)
V = Volume
G = Gain

You may have to check some of these effects, I may have left the Tube Screamer and Reverb enabled on some of them. Depending on playback source, the OwnHammer V30 can be a little harsh.

Effects are:
Tube Screamer
Noise Gate
Vintage Chorus
Phaser Vibe
8 Band EQ
Ambient Reverb
Single Delay
Natural Reverb

 

[Michael Roe]

Added some profiles of my DSL100H with an OwnHammer Mesa V30 and a 1960AV cab.

Best suited for humbuckers.

I get a lot of mileage out of these and they respond really well to guitar volume.

DSL100H is still one hell of an amp.

Enjoy!

UG = Ultra Gain Channel (Lead 1)
CG = Classic Gain Channel (Crunch)
V = Volume
G = Gain

You may have to check some of these effects, I may have left the Tube Screamer and Reverb enabled on some of them. Depending on playback source, the OwnHammer V30 can be a little harsh.

Effects are:
Tube Screamer
Noise Gate
Vintage Chorus
Phaser Vibe
8 Band EQ
Ambient Reverb
Single Delay
Natural Reverb

I didn't know that you could upload a ".zip" file on this site?
I would check it out except I really really don't like Vintage 30 speakers unless they are in an Orange cab The grill cloth on an Orange cab kills all that spikiness.
Let's see if this works, here is a brutal sounding DSL20 on the UG ch with a zombiecabs Bogner 212 closed back O/S cab, mic'd with a Ribbon, SM57 and a room mic.
No FX on this one except for a splash of reverb.

 

[Michael Roe]

Here are a few SV20 profiles with different gain levels on the High Treble ch.
Most of these are with a Zombiecabs 1960AX but there are a couple of other cabs in there as well.
Edit: I believe the mics used on these were an MD421, SM57 and a room.

 

[Michael Roe]

@texhex Thanks for showing us that you can upload a ".zip" file here!

 

[Michael Roe]

Here are a few SC20H profiles with a 1960AX. MD421/57/room mic
These are with the Master at 3 and the preamp gain (P) from 2-8. Ex. "M3 P6" = Master on 3 and preamp on 6
Notice how the tone changes while going up in gain.

 

[texhex]

Very cool profiles! Love the SV20 and SC20 and how the classic Marshall sound comes though on all of these.

That OR4GB cab is sweet!

I also love the LOCK feature on the Kemper, probably my favorite feature of any of the modelers/profilers.

I agree with you on the V30s, they can be too much at times. The 1960AV cabs on the one's I posted are pretty good though.

The OwnHammer V30 one is one of the free Mesa IRs and that one is with a SM57, it can be a little too much with certain profiles.

I pulled that 1960AV from the attached JVM410H Profiles from Dead Light Studios. There are some very good JVM representations in this one IMO.

I replaced the DSL profiles V30s with the OwnHammer MRBW GNR cab and attached those three. Check em out.

The Kemper is so bad ass.

 

[Michael Roe]

Here are some more SV20H / 1960AX profiles.
These are all done with different preamp and power amp tubes.
Wow, you can really hear the difference.

The naming will be like this:
SV20 T M -H2 1960AX............so this one reads Tungsol preamp and Mullard power amp
First letter/s after "SV20" = preamp then second letter = Power amp

The "T" = TungSol Gold preamp tubes
The "M" = Mullard preamp Tubes
The "JCC" = the Marshall stock JJ/Chinese/Chinese preamp tubes

J= JJ power tubes-Marshall stock JJ
S= Svetlana power tubes
M=Mullard power tubes

These were all done with identical EQ and gain on 2.
Which combination do you think sounds best?

 

[Trapland]

@Dogs of Doom I checked out that site some and quickly found this statement:
"During the fine-tuning process for the profiles I heavily relied on the various controls of the Amp and Cabinet section of the profiler. I found the Definition and Clarity controls as well as the Cab Character controls extremely useful to further tweak the sounds."

This is what I mean by "Not accurate". If you have to tweak afterwards then the Kemper is not capturing that sound correctly. Of course you can tweak afterwards but I find it odd that some amps come out really well with no tweaking needed and others are just initially way off. So far with my experimenting, I am finding that any NMV amp or a MV amp that is pushing the power tubes hard does not come out very well.
Have you tried profiling any NMV amps yet?

This is good info. I’ve considered a Kemper specifically to profile my old plexis. If they don’t sound and FEEL like the original, I don’t need a Kemper.

 

[Michael Roe]

This is good info. I’ve considered a Kemper specifically to profile my old plexis. If they don’t sound and FEEL like the original, I don’t need a Kemper.

I made that comment while still trying to figure out how to profile my amps. While I still think they are not 100% accurate, I do think if you get the volume right, they do an excellent job. Actually, very well! There is a setting named "definition" that had me confused. The Kemper will auto set this after each profile captured. If you find that perfect volume level while profiling a specific amp, then leave this "definition" setting as it is. On NMV amps, if your volumes going to and from your mixer/daw are optimal then the Kemper should auto set this "definition" to a lower setting ( somewhere in the 4-6 range).
Keep in mind, all my testing with this is using a loadbox and IRs. The output volume on the loadbox is the most important level to get right.
Also, if you think you can profile an amp with a pedal in front, you can but this gives a very poor result. The kemper sounds much better if you profile the amp without any pedals in front. It sounds and feels much more accurate if you add the pedals in front of the kemper while playing a profile. Why some guys are selling profiles with pedals in front is really stupid. The end user will not benefit in any way. Yes, it will sound different but in no way accurate. If your captured profile is accurate then the kemper will respond to pedals very much like the real deal.

My biggest problem with the Kemper so far is that there is almost no info on how to best capture a profile. In this post alone there is probably more info that is helpful in achieving a good result than I could find anywhere on the internet.

 

[Trapland]

Thanks for this. I tried a friends Kemper and could not get it to do the most important thing for me.

I play plexis through vintage celestions in old Marshall cabs. Nothing too unique there. I also use a Powerbrake and dial the amp in with the volume about 6-7 so I get some bright cap effect. I don’t use any dirt pedals, ever.

what my plexi rig gives me is the ability to turn down my guitar to get a clean sound while losing almost no actual loudness. Old plexis seem to go from plenty of gain to clean within a very narrow loudness range.

No matter what I did with the Kemper by the time I got the tone clean enough with the guitar volume, I had lost way to much volume. I did use late compression but it was either not enough or it affected the tone too much.

‘Lots of guys would just say to profile a clean tone and change between them, but that’s not how I play. Until I can make a Kemper work like I described, I guess it’s not for me.

Thanks for taking the time.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

the thing is you need to have a Kemper of your own.

You can't just go to a friend's house & try it out. You need to take proper time w/ it. Plus, there's 1,000s of plexi profiles already made. I think the worst thing about most profiles, is the speaker profiling. After that, I've downloaded a lot of profiles & in many cases, w/ all the different, say Fender Deluxe Reverb profiles, they all sound different, but, when I strip away the cabinet, effects, etc., they sound incredibly similar, almost indistinguishable.

Probably Mike's SV20 was the most drastic differences I've heard between a single profile, w/ only changing tubes, which is surprising, because I'd imagine that all these other guys use different tubes, etc.

I guess my point though, is that w/ all the free & $$$ profiles out there, I'd be willing to bet, that you can find something that acts like what you want. But, it takes having the profiler in your posession & having access to everything about it for a considerable amount of time. You are not going to get it, spending an hour at a friend's house w/ him hooking it up to the internet.

There's just too much to it...

 

[Michael Roe]

@Trapland
I would second what @Dogs of Doom said above.
When I first got mine and played with it for a few days I was going to return it. It wasn't until I started profiling my own amps that I changed my mind.

 

[Trapland]

I’ll never say never. Hell there was a time when I swore I’d never play marshalls because I was using fenders at the time. (Long ago, lol)

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to profile my own amps and dial them in someday.

 

[Michael Roe]

Here are some profiles (14) of my Jubilee 2525H with multiple cabs. This time just used a Sennheiser E609 single mic.
Ld ch w gain about 6, LD master 7, and output master 6