Kemper Player - 1st [ Paid for ? ] Update coming very soon ?

[Enchilada Jones]

Sure it doesn’t affect me directly. Do you only discuss things that directly affect you? @Orvillain , @JiveTurkey get out of here!!

No, I just misinterpreted where you were coming from on it. I thought you were a long time user who was feeling let down so when you said Kemper does not sound good I was confused. All good, I’m smart enough to know my opinion isn’t special even if I feel like I have good perspective.

I disagree here and the video game comparison is a perfect example why. Kemper is one of the Big 4 of modeling/profiling, if they pull this off and it's remotely successfull iit just leaves the door open for other companies to start doing it, but getting more efficient with the profit/customer value ratio and that never works out in the consumer's favor. I'm the last person that reaches for the "do it for the money" mentality, but with this particular model that's exactly like buying loot/cool weapons in video games, I know where this leads.

I said this same thing when the QC was released and then the TMP came out needing to be further updated before they could say it was ready to go. There's a ton of things that benefit us in the compettive world oft this stuff, but not every ripple will have a good affect, or effects for that matter.

I don’t know how much weight Kemper taking this path will have. There is plenty of precedent for pay to upgrade in the industry that I don’t see this being a moment the barrier was broken. I don’t think there is a barrier. I think other manufacturers making us buy the newer hardware models every couple years is no different.
I also think they were up front with the reason it happened. They didn’t want to canibalize their other product but when they considered the demand for a more complete package they simply had to arrive at a price. It was never going to please everyone but it had to make fiscal sense for them. If they priced it too high they will certainly suffer for it. If not they did the right thing.

 

[[Nathan]]

There are no words:-

I like that he summarised his viewpoint in the first 5 seconds, its all I needed to see. And if its some double switch thing then it failed on me, turned it off, rip.

 

[texhex]

Used prices on Kemper Rack and Toaster are consistently below $1100 now. Some of those (like the one I got a year ago, with a foot controller) still have warranty left. Kemper even sells Refurbished, full 3 year warranty Rack and Toaster units on their web site for $1118.

The people running Kemper look like idiots releasing hardware that is full featured but locked by a pay wall. Especially after all the blow back when the Player was first launched and they hinted at this.

Line6… just sitting back, watching everyone release goofed products and taking notes for the Helix replacement.
Cliff… late night coding the dream machine product line into perfection over and over again.

Guitar players… stoned trying to figure out why there is no sound coming out of their amp, overlooking an unplugged cable on the floor.

 

[JCW308]

How do you assign morph to the second press of a foot switch, with the first press being rig select? I wan to go far left clean, then morph to clean ambient. Far right crunch, then morph to lead. Center would be tap tempo / tuner. Thanks!

 

[GTR37]

There are no words:-

most of the videos I have seen from him , he has always been opinionated and been kind of loud but generally respectful

Maybe in this one he just shows his true colours and to be blunt comes off like an Asshole

 

[paisleywookiee]

All good, I’m smart enough to know my opinion isn’t special even if I feel like I have good perspective.

Sure, everyone’s entitled to their perspective. I’m just saying it’s not exclusive to Kemper owners/fans. all good indeed.

 

[paisleywookiee]

most of the videos I have seen from him , he has always been opinionated and been kind of loud of generally respectful

Maybe in this one he just shows his true colours and to be blunt comes off like an Asshole

What an ass. Yikes.

EDIT

HW, not you.

 

[Vic Winters]

Is he seriously trying to compare this (horribly btw since his comparison is ripe with errors) to the HX Stomp going from 6 blocks to 8, which Line 6 did for free?

 

[texhex]

How I feel right now:

 

[Enchilada Jones]

I think Kemper might have looked at the QC when it was announced as the only offering by a competitor that seemed to be a rival for the crown.

But NDSP made a lot of mistakes and Kemper had the proven history of being a professional solution, tried and true with a vast catalogue of free content and third party vendors churning out interest as well.

With QC still failing to deliver what they promised over a year after the big debut, then all these little devices get tossed into the market.
Sure the science on paper says they have now surpassed Kempers process but the results sound much closer than the stats suggest.
And when you try to actually use those little things….create a set list of presets on the new devices and play a set live you realize they all are sorely lacking in effects, content management, software editors, etc. And even the QC two years post debut is not running away with the working musicians endorsement.

So Kemper may have thought…”Hey! You want to take shot at the King you better kill the King! So fuck that noise, slap our board in little enclosure built to our superior specs with half of our content enabled and we own the little Player segment of this market niche for the next year or two without spending a single dime on R & D or even software development.”

No harm no foul, just pro ball.

And I think people are missing the reality of the situation when they complain about ‘Kempers ‘old tech’
The fact that Kemper can bring their decades old systems to the fight and score so big is illustrating just how half assed the competition still is today.
So I say let the competition continue. After all, it shrunk my Stage down to a great tiny version for an even trade in cost!

 

[Aleksi]

1k€ for the whole Kemperer Profilererer Playerererer. Maybe there's a market for this? Who the hell knows. If I were Kemper, I would have sold all the individual features piece by piece. Beat scanner 39,99€. More banks (WTF) 4,99€ per bank. 19,99€ per extra fx block

The fuck does this mean:
The KEMPER PROFILER Player now also lives in the Paradigm, the philosophy of the original KEMPER PROFILERS

 

[Antipodes]

*That quote seems to suggest that once upgraded the players will enjoy the same support and free upgrades that we’ve been enjoying for over a decade.

Yep - that would be the point of unifying the OS across all SKUs. From now on the full fat (LVL 3) Player will get everything the Stage, Rack and Toaster do.

 

[Orvillain]

Somebody at Kemper sat down and said "what can we remove and charge for later?" and then made two lists.

And I really think that is as much thought that went into this as they could muster. The way the two lists are compiled are designed to greedily extract as much money from users as possible. It all looks pretty desperate to me.

 

[deepskyone]

"Consumers white knighting blatant corporate cash grabs must be some sort of cuckold fetish."

It is sad and funny at the same time that "brands" seem to be the last thing left that provides a sense of identity and belonging for some people.

It's going to be even more fun when all of their appliances and toys will become AI-enabled and start giving positive affirmations and telling them what good little consumers they are...

Real-life cyberpunk is going to be stranger than fiction.

Back on-topic, props to Christoph and co.! This will make my gear calculus much easier in the future. I am not going to support this business model and will gladly cross one company off the list completely.

"Guitar Amplification as a Service" is only one step removed from this in my mind...

 

[Orvillain]

It is sad and funny at the same time that "brands" seem to be the last thing left that provides a sense of identity and belonging for some people.

It's going to be even more fun when all of their appliances and toys will become AI-enabled and start giving positive affirmations and telling them what good little consumers they are...

Real-life cyberpunk is going to be stranger than fiction.

Back on-topic, props to Christoph and co.! This will make my gear calculus much easier in the future. I am not going to support this business model and will gladly cross one company off the list completely.

"Guitar Amplification as a Service" is only one step removed from this in my mind...

Recently I've been going around the houses with gear. Got the Quad Cortex, it is very cool. Got the Axe3, it is pretty much undefeatable for flexibility and capability. Got the Helix, and it is the perfect goldilocks device.

But when am I most happy?

An amp, a volume pedal, a wah pedal, and a DD8.

Gear is great and I love playing with it. But truly I could get by with just those things if it really came to it and if the industry heads in a SaaS direction any further than it already has, then I'm getting off the train.

 

[James Freeman]

Vote with your wallet, don't let a stranger find you in the Alps.

 

[Lysander]

There are no words:-

 

[EOengineer]

I’m glad I hung in there, this thread delivered. It’s not every day you get to watch a company shoot their own god damn face off.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I’m not against pair updates per se, but this update makes no sense. If it upgraded Kemper to some kind of totally new tech (say it had a library of modelled amps, or ML playback etc) then fair enough. What they’re charging for out of date tech on an already overpriced crippled device is barmy and shows a real la k of foresight and reading the room

 

[Orvillain]

I’m not against pair updates per se, but this update makes no sense. If it upgraded Kemper to some kind of totally new tech (say it had a library of modelled amps, or ML playback etc) then fair enough. What they’re charging for out of date tech on an already overpriced crippled device is barmy and shows a real la k of foresight and reading the room

Nor I, and in fact if you go back to my Ideascale submissions for Line6 back to 2016, I was suggesting in my amp requests even back then to price the amps at $99 - what crack was I smoking!?!

It isn't that I'm anti paid updates. It is just the messaging and the cynical way it has been presented; the division of the features to force users into the level 3 tier, when all they might've really wanted was just to have spillover. I think they've handled this quite badly.

If Kemper had "true machine learning amp capture tech 2000" implemented and were asking for £300 for it, I could see that being way more interesting to me.