It's funny that accuracy is the hill so many chose to die on.
And you've been quite vocal about how you feel about them as a company and product.
Me, I got my beef with some of the guys every one 'round here swears by.
And it's not even that the gear doesn't do what it's advertised as.
Just other stuff does it way better for me.
As for accuracy I got a bunch of killing nam profiles I don't use because the fun factor/vibe isn't there. Yet it's there with the Kemper, more so than on any other Digi devide. Only thing as much if not more fun factor are the UAFX pedals. But they lack in the convenience factor.
But none of it is an amp, so it's back to amp for fun factor.
That's why I got a Fryette GP/DI pre, is it an accurate Pitbull or Deliverance experience? No but it sure is more fun than any modeller/profiler.
And yes that in the Kemper loop or the MkV:25 is where its at for me.
For me it really comes down to this:
- I've been balancing being in a band and maintaining a career in music tech for 18 years. Just killed that band off last year, but the principle is there.
- I'm only 40, which is young. My body still works relatively well.
- We were never the kind of band that was going to tour 300 days a year or anything like that. It was arty metal-tinged rock. We were much more of a play 20 gigs a year kind of thing. Although towards the end, that massively slumped to only 4 or 5 a year.
- Most of our shows were in local-ish places, around 200 capacity venues. We had the occasional 600-1000 cap places and festivals, but in the main it was pub/club gigs. That's just where this genre lives in the main.
- I'd say my preference is more towards writing and recording music. I do enjoy playing shows, but I'm not involved in music so that playing shows is the big goal or conclusion. I could join a covers band if that were the goal (ew!)
So with all of that in mind.... I've pretty much found my "setup" regardless of what gear I use. It is no more easier for me to setup a Kemper rig, or an Axe FX rig, or a Helix rig, than it is to just chuck a tuner, wah, DD-8, and RV-5 on a board, and plug that into the front of whatever high-gain amp I can get my hands on.
I absolutely love music tech. It is why I went into the business. But my personal needs are really a slither of what these various devices offer. I think I said in another thread, but I use about 15% of my Axe FX III about 30% of the time. The numbers there don't really matter, but the overall point matters.
Accuracy is less a hill to die on, but just a threshold to pass for a capture box to even really stand a chance at becoming a semi-permanent part of my setup. The reason I sold my Quad Cortex recently - even though I had a much nicer time with it this 2nd time around - was because as a consequence of it not really being good enough to work properly with a valve amp (too noisy), it just sat on the shelf gathering dust.
All said and done, I'm quite old school in my approach to guitar tone, and I absolutely don't mind it. There are other ways for me to get my modernist rocks off, but I love the fact that guitar is a fairly simple affect of smashing the front of a guitar amp and seeing how many cool variations on a wall of sound I can do.