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Kemper Profiling Amp


keeno

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Anyone had a look into these? Been following them for a while and some of the videos have been great.... then Chappers and co released the mother of all reviews a few days ago.

If you have access to a whole range of amps/cabs/mics this could be the most versatile rigs around. In the last couple of months I've seen several professional musicians sell other gear to use these for recording and some for live use too. Profiles can be shared and downloaded from their website but no guarantess as to how accurate they are and there is no rating system. The best use would be to profile an amp in a studio with all the gear you want then use that profile live - you would get a nearly identical sound to the one you recorded with.

Between this and the Axe FX modelling has come a long way in the last few years. I just wonder how long it will be before these gadgets actually become affordable! They are currently abou the £1150 mark. They are pretty massive but pretty sure a rack unit is on its way.

http://www.thomann.de/gb/kemper.html

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I suppose £1150 isn't too unaffordable in terms of top of the range amplifiers. I haven't watched the whole review because it's ONE WHOLE HOUR LONG, but is it the same sort of deal as the AxeFX, where you plug into it with the guitar, and the Kemper goes straight into a desk?

I'm not sure I would ever take a punt on one. I don't really like what I've heard of the AxeFx so far either. It's all very slick and tight. It's not filthy enough for me.

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The Kemper profiles other guitar amps. It's totally different to the Axe FX.

This video shows it in action and is a lot shorter

I probably should have linked to one of Ola's videos. He has loads of them up including one showing all the tweaks you can do to the profile once it has been recorded.

Yes and no.... yes the Kemper is different in that it records the amp whereas the axe fx was initially only a modeller, however the Axe FX has something called 'tone matching' which I think it still in beta which looks like it is going to be pretty similar.

http://forum.fractalaudio.com/axe-fx-ii-discussion/48000-tone-matching-preview.html

I suppose £1150 isn't too unaffordable in terms of top of the range amplifiers. I haven't watched the whole review because it's ONE WHOLE HOUR LONG, but is it the same sort of deal as the AxeFX, where you plug into it with the guitar, and the Kemper goes straight into a desk?

I'm not sure I would ever take a punt on one. I don't really like what I've heard of the AxeFx so far either. It's all very slick and tight. It's not filthy enough for me.

The video is worth watching! What Chappers basically concludes is that it is really hard to hear a difference between the recorded profile and the real amp, the only difference is how they respond to your playing style.

As Jeid said, with the Kemper you actually record the original amp being played and it makes a 'profile' out of it. So essentially you are near enough capturing the exact sound of the amp at those particular settings. You can then tweak the character of the amp (gain, bass, mid, treble, pick attack and other stuff) but these are emulated. They are based on the character of the real amp but obviously when you tweak the profile it doesn't sound exactly like the real thing would. However it stores up to 1000 profiles so you could make several profiles of the same amp with different gain and EQ characteristics on the original amp.

On the Axe FX everything is digitally modelled. but the components inside it are pretty much the same as an amplifier so with tweaking they should be able to sound pretty realistic. (from what I have read anyway... not on personal experience, sadly I don't have the best part of £2500 so spend on one). It was initially bought by people as an effects modeller but they all discovered the amp modelling was quite good so starting to use them for recording.

Btw this is effectively the follow up to Ola Englund's video that Jeid posted showing what you can do once you have recorded the amp profile.

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Oh yeah I didn't mean are AxeFx and Kemper the same thing. I just meant in terms of output. Does the Kemper go to the desk or a cab, or is there another stage in amplifying it?

You can do all of what you suggested but both need some sort of amplifier to get power to drive a cab, so you would need a poweramp -> cab or active speakers.

You could plug either into the mixing desk but I have seen very few bands do that in a live situation(maybe it's because so few people over here have expensive gear like the Axe FX/Kemper, they are much more common in the US). I think you're getting a bit hung up on the fact Periphery do that;) They do it mostly because they have 3 guitarists and a bass player and a ridiculous number of guitars and effects pedals. Saves space and makes it easier to tour countries traditionally difficult to transport gear to like Australia. You could maybe manage that with tube amps if you're Iron Maiden and can afford huge tour buses and a crew to haul your gear around! A rack mounted set up is much more portable. The other benefit of course for a small touring band would be consistency of sound. If you turn up at a venue and use the house gear you don't know what the cab will be like, whereas if you can go straight to the PA you always know it will be conistent. Remember the amptweaker pedals I linked you to? Plenty of extreme bands like Misery Index use them as backups. It's effectively a pre-amp in a pedal so if the amp isn't what they need they can just use the pedal in the FX loop of the amp and with a bit of tweaking to allow for the character of the cab get the sound they want. Gigging shortcuts like that are everywhere.

This may make interesting reading for you, it's someone who gigged the Kemper (using direct to PA and poweramp->cab for monitors) http://www.thegearpage.net/board/archive/index.php/t-1036253.html

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