Ah, Virus, The Great One. It's great sounding, but so are many other HW and SW synths. What makes it amazing and sets it far apart is how musical it is. So easy to write songs on that machine, every patch leads you to a new song. It's untouchable to me, leagues ahead of any other synth, provided you like that Virus kind of a sound.
I've always thought that Access' Christoph Kemper and Fractal's Cliff Chase have a lot of parallels.
The Factory Profiles in the Kemper are all good, but the User Profiles are better still. Any one rig on the Kemper is incredibly versatile and would be considered mindblowing in any other amp sim. But just like with real amps there are going to be some that you dig and others that are just meh to you.
It's not really possible to answer what amps are in the Kemper, I mean, it's all of them basically. It can store up to 1000 of them on the unit, and there are hundreds out there, it comes with a tonne too. Every profile is a new amp. There are Marshalls, Mesa's, Fenders, all the usual suspects as well as many boutique amps. The files are tiny, less than 4kb most of the time, so you can keep a ridiculous number of them.
Personally I like the Golub Marshall, the Bassman 1 profile, there's a very nice Clean HiWatt profile too, and my own Mesa 5:25 Blues Rig Clean setting, the Morgan AC20 is lovely too. With any of these you can spend hours just playing and just changing the gain (and maybe some tone settings just like with a real amp) to get a whole range of awesome tones, they're all very flexible (even more so than the real amps). If you're into heavier stuff you may like the Ola Triple Rectifier profiles too.
I definitely agree with this. LESS IS MORE! I need a Vox AC 30, Twin Reverb, JCM 800, Mesa Dual Rec and that's it. I believe if I had so many amps available I would spend my time sampling all of them instead of actually recording and writing songs.
I definitely agree with this. LESS IS MORE! I need a Vox AC 30, Twin Reverb, JCM 800, Mesa Dual Rec and that's it. I believe if I had so many amps available I would spend my time sampling all of them instead of actually recording and writing songs.
I can totally agree with that. However, in the case of the KPA, I have profiled all of my 8 amps to such a level that I am more than happy just tracking with the KPA from now on. When I want to hear the sound of the amp in a room from the amp itself, I fire up the amp. But when I am recording, the KPA profile does the trick.
As a kemper owner, would you feel comfortable using this on stage and for touring or is this more for just studio use? Would you need a seperate power amp, footswitch and full frequency cabinet? Are these things even available through kemper?
As a kemper owner, would you feel comfortable using this on stage and for touring or is this more for just studio use? Would you need a seperate power amp, footswitch and full frequency cabinet? Are these things even available through kemper?
In Italian, haven't a clue what the guy is saying, , but listen to how it sounds live.
He Profiled his own vintage Bluesbreaker amp, he's using his profiles 'live'.
His Bluesbreaker profiles are some of my favourites.
I definitely agree with this. LESS IS MORE! I need a Vox AC 30, Twin Reverb, JCM 800, Mesa Dual Rec and that's it. I believe if I had so many amps available I would spend my time sampling all of them instead of actually recording and writing songs.
I agree, but what happens when you play the 62 Bluesbreaker profiles, or a Bogner Shiva profile, or a Slash signature AFD Marshall Profile, and you love them, do you ignore them?
Nope, you don't, you keep them in your Kemper, pretty soon you've got a few hundred profiles/rigs saved.
[QUOTE=Tok22;7888829]I agree, but what happens when you play the 62 Bluesbreaker profiles, or a Bogner Shiva profile, or a Slash signature AFD Marshall Profile, and you love them, do you ignore them?
Nope, you don't, you keep them in your Kemper, pretty soon you've got a few hundred profiles/rigs saved.[/QUOTE
Well if I love the sound of any amp I would not ignore it. I could just see myself getting lost in a new toy like this one.
I bought two QSC K10 powered PA speakers for use with my Kemper. The QSC's sounded the most real of the PA cabs I auditioned. I could do any gig with it, sounds great.
With full range PA speakers, the Kemper plays with all the touch and feel of a real guitar amp, but what comes out is the sound of a great [I]recording[I] of the amp. It's just a bit weird, but addicting. I can play for hours, 'cause it sounds so good.
In german MusoTalk they did a test of the kemper and gave it 5/5 stars !
The host profiled his orange dual terror and provided the viewers with two tracks playing the same part. one was the original and one was the profiled dual terror! Most people did not hear a difference and im also pretty impressed with the kemper amp...
3 Album Productions later I can say the Kemper is the ultimate tool for guitar recording for any studio! Guitar Players sitting in my studio with their mouth wide open after I profiled their amps and we record with the Kemper. After profiling and some minir tweaking of the profile NO ONE could tell if they are playing their amps or the profile - go figure....
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Markus Stock
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I produced the latest single by A Friend Called Fire which was just released - the guitarist/singer brought his amps over, we profiled the hell out of them, and then I gave him my KPA to take home and get the takes he wanted by himself using his own amp sounds...super convenient. All electric guitars are the KPA. The song is "The Lightning", you can check it out here....pretty killer band.
As a kemper owner, would you feel comfortable using this on stage and for touring or is this more for just studio use? Would you need a seperate power amp, footswitch and full frequency cabinet? Are these things even available through kemper?
I just got one of these babies and it's built like a tank... except for the knobs feel oddly flimsey. Weird. If I were to take it out I'd have those upgraded to something a bit better. Also the handle? Not sure what they're thinking. High on design, low on usability.
I think they're currently working on a rack version which is what I'd probably wait for if I was doing a heavy amount of touring. A gig or two on the weekend, no problem, but I'm not sure I'd want to bounce this around on any sort of big tour. I bet it could be easily put in a custom case though, which would be just as good I suppose.
As for the amplification of it, I've been playing live with various amp modelers for years. Going directly into a PA is fine (even preferred) is you have a good monitor set up. If you're doing in-ear monitors you're going to miss the acoustic feedback you get from standing near a real amp. Using a Sustainiac is a decent way of simulating that though, but it's another thing to worry about.
I think if I was less studio bound or mostly gigging I wouldn't have purchased the Kemper, or purchased it for home use and had a flexible live rig as well. In my research it was the Kemper against the Line6 "Dream Rig" which consists of a Line6 DT25 or DT50 and a POD HD500. I'd probably go combo DT25/HD500. In a sense I think this may be even better than the Kemper, but in my home studio I'd have had to go with an ISO cab which is a hassle and would probably negate any extra quality I got using an actual tube amp.
Anyway, for my use the Kemper is fantastic. It truly is a game changer.
You can use the KPA with something like a Tech21 Power Engine, or going through your normal amps FX loop (and disable the cab portion of the profile). Or through a power wedge or an FRFR cab while on stage. The KPA will feel, feed back and react pretty much the same way as a real amp will.
I bought the Kemper amP last month. It is everything that it is cracked up to be. I'm currently using a PRS p22. Is their solid body with a piezo. It sounds amazing. I downloaded an acoustic profile for the piezo acoustic sound. Simply amazing. The Marshall profiles sound great with the humbuckers. I have a feeling this wil become the industry standard very soon.
I bought the Kemper amP last month. It is everything that it is cracked up to be. I'm currently using a PRS p22. Is their solid body with a piezo. It sounds amazing. I downloaded an acoustic profile for the piezo acoustic sound. Simply amazing. The Marshall profiles sound great with the humbuckers. I have a feeling this wil become the industry standard very soon.
Would you be kind enough to post a link to the piezo acoustic profile please?
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"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes"
I am seriously thinking about ordering the kemper. However, I just downloaded the bx_rockrack demo and I may have just found a reason not to. Would love to have some of you kemper users try this demo and tell me what you think as far as the difference in quality to the kemper, or axe fx for that matter. I am really liking this plugin compared to other amp sim plugins, but I haven't played a kemper or axe fx yet, so it might be just good for a plugin.
the fundamental difference between the Kemper and ANY modeling device is that the Kemper is not a modeller, its a profiler.
It will replicate the sound of ANY amp instead of mimicing the sound of certain amps that the plugin programmers tried to copy.
the fundamental difference between the Kemper and ANY modeling device is that the Kemper is not a modeller, its a profiler.
It will replicate the sound of ANY amp instead of mimicing the sound of certain amps that the plugin programmers tried to copy.
Yes I understand this and this is a valid point. However, for my needs and workflow I only need a few amps. I am just curious how the quality of the amps modeled in this plugin compare to similar amps that have been profiled by the kemper, or if there is any comparison. As far as I know the kemper could destroy this as far as realism and organic three dimensional sound and feel. Unfortunately, I have no reference. I can only compare to other hardware modelers and plugins. So, if anyone wants to demo this and give me a comparison I would appreciate it. If not, no worries. Have a great day.
Jayrawk at the end of the day I'm just another stranger on the forum, but from my extremely extensive searching, the kemper is by far the most real/ honest /natural amp out there in terms of ones and zeros.
Jayrawk at the end of the day I'm just another stranger on the forum, but from my extremely extensive searching, the kemper is by far the most real/ honest /natural amp out there in terms of ones and zeros.
Ya, that's kinda what I figured. You get what you pay for I guess. Thanks.
I am seriously thinking about ordering the kemper. However, I just downloaded the bx_rockrack demo and I may have just found a reason not to. Would love to have some of you kemper users try this demo and tell me what you think as far as the difference in quality to the kemper, or axe fx for that matter. I am really liking this plugin compared to other amp sim plugins, but I haven't played a kemper or axe fx yet, so it might be just good for a plugin.
So far the word on the street from some people I trust is that bx_rocktrack is on par with S-Gear/Amplitube. Good, but not ground breaking. I've not a/b'd the two but time is short and I doubt I'll get to it any time soon.
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, but listen to how it sounds live.
