Kinda? Line 6 was selling model packs before I joined, and when developing Helix (3x the price of the previous flagship!), yes, it didn't quite feel right to continue down that path. But it was also a technical/scope decision—dealing with copy protection and managing model packs across multiple licenses and products (especially when someone might keep their Rack but sell their LT) would be more effort than it was worth. So let's say one half casual altruism and the other half laziness.
Christoph once told us the percentage of KPA owners who actually make their own profiles. It'd be bad form to specify the number here, but it's likely far lower than many people think. Plus, everyone and their mom was asking for a Kemper "player," not a smaller profiler. Anyone thinking that capturing your own amps (vs. the ability to browse amps others have profiled, which is totally viable) as a major selling point for more than a small group of touring musicians, techs, and basement aficionados—or those who endlessly suffer from FOMO—is out of the loop.
Plus, if metrics are to be believed, we've pretty much hit peak capture at this point. Anything could happen, and tech trends ebb and flow, but right now, the promise of "everyone can capture their room full of expensive tube amps!" has pretty much already happened. Now it's just marketing paid-for captures on YouTube, desperate SEO, and a metric ton of file management, for better or worse.
Mabye. As it stands right now, their "preset spillover" is really just snapshot scene spillover, because the block order and model set is fixed. (It's trivial to instantly buffer swap out profile and IR files instantly; we support the latter per snapshot on Helix/HX.) Neural would have to come up with another spillover methodology for full model selection or block moving to be added, and the hardware UI and silk callouts don't really account for that anyway. Time will tell.
It’s fucking legendary and the ultimate rainy day preset. The history of guitar effects on a single board.
