Please give me your honest opinion about the *accuracy* of the Kemper

Sometimes it's 98%, sometimes is 30%. The Kemper profiler (person profiling) has a lot to do with it. I have certain guitars that work great to create profiles. Other guitars not good. The refining process also has a lot to do with the final product. THEN you have to weed through a bunch of profiles to find the ones that translated the best.
 
BigHairyGuitars said:
Sometimes it's 98%, sometimes is 30%. The Kemper profiler (person profiling) has a lot to do with it. I have certain guitars that work great to create profiles. Other guitars not good. The refining process also has a lot to do with the final product. THEN you have to weed through a bunch of profiles to find the ones that translated the best.
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Ironically I just saw someone getting crucified in the FB Kemper group for posting your latest vid of the Tone X demo... holy shit balls. Is that thing for real man? I have a Kemper... I pretty much hate it and revisit it every 6 months or so to see if its human error lol.

I'm a simple man. I have a lot of nice amps and want to capture them with their recording chains with boost etc for home recording purposes. Otherwise its a pain in the ass to setup my desired recording chain and leave it setup for recording in a small ass apartment with a wife n kids and no dedicated room for myself. I realize in your demo you mentioned the chunky metal stuff may not be the best but is it better than Kemper for that stuff?

Well regardless, you sir have a knack of pulling my heart strings and wallet strings lol. I too want to capture my Dirty Shirley 40w and after I watched your vid twice I just ordered that Tone X capture from SW. Wish me luck buying more stuff I don't need 🤙
 
FAKA! said:
Ironically I just saw someone getting crucified in the FB Kemper group for posting your latest vid of the Tone X demo... holy s**t balls. Is that thing for real man? I have a Kemper... I pretty much hate it and revisit it every 6 months or so to see if its human error lol.

I'm a simple man. I have a lot of nice amps and want to capture them with their recording chains with boost etc for home recording purposes. Otherwise its a pain in the ass to setup my desired recording chain and leave it setup for recording in a small ass apartment with a wife n kids and no dedicated room for myself. I realize in your demo you mentioned the chunky metal stuff may not be the best but is it better than Kemper for that stuff?

Well regardless, you sir have a knack of pulling my heart strings and wallet strings lol. I too want to capture my Dirty Shirley 40w and after I watched your vid twice I just ordered that Tone X capture from SW. Wish me luck buying more stuff I don't need 🤙
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I was on the Kemper beta team. I got kicked off it for being too complimentary to the Quad Cortex. When I quizzed the manager about this, he said that I was being removed because I had posted online that I was moving to another device. I mean... I hadn't, but okay... if that is how you want to run your company...... hmmmmm. Not how I'd run things.

So I kinda went out in a blaze of glory. Sold my Kemper, told some people to fuck off, and bailed.

@BigHairyGuitars - Your Kemper section was great, and encapsulates my problem with the unit. To a greater or lesser degree, every single profile I ever made with the Kemper had accuracy problems. Every single one. And whenever I showed people these obvious differences, they'd always say 1 of 2 things:

1. It's subtle enough to not matter.
2. The Kemper sounds better than the amp LOOLLL ROFLS ROFLS ROFLS BOOOO.
 
Wow, I thought Kemper's technology was the top of current options, closely followed by QC.

Not that I worry about that being a Helix user. I'm more than happy with the amp simulation, and there's this new update that might boost it a lot in the charts.
 
I've owned the Kemper twice but haven't profiled anything. When I sit and focus on the Kemper sounds, I can hear the slightly pushed midrange, and in shootouts that can be an obvious tell. BUT I think a good profile sounds (and feels and reacts) really great, so I don't really care as much.
 
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In my experience my Profiles never sound or react exactly the same as the amp and I've never had one that matches 1:1 (especially on high gain) but they can get pretty close. Now that I've heard the Kemper "cocked wah" signature I have a hard time unhearing it and the Profiles always seem to have more gain and some weird high end happening before any tweaks.

I've only ever used a Suhr RL or Two Notes to create my Profiles and I've always wondered if a mic and cab would get closer.

I've found that the Tone Match in the AXE-III is closer to matching the one-time-sound of a specific amp. I've got BE-100, Recto and Helios Tone Matches that blow the Kemper away as far as 1:1 one-time-sound matches go. The Profiles and Tone Matches don't handle guitar volume roll off exactly like the amp does though, on roll off the AXE has more gain, the Kemper has less. The Tone Match on the AXE is crazy good but the creation, management and use of them could use a lot of work in AXE Edit and it really depends on the Amp Model you start with in the AXE. Cliff could have something really competitive to the Kemper and QC if he spent some time on how this is implemented in the AXE, AXE Edit and the axechange.fractalaudio.com website (say axe one more time... sheesh!).

I still really like the Kemper Profiles I've created of my amps, I just don't expect them to work 1:1 as to what I would get out of the real amp. If nothing else it's one more sound I can use and they are really easy to work with as far as workflow goes. It's pretty nice to be able to Lock the cab and other effects and just scroll through a ton of different sounds. There's nothing really like that out there that I've found that works as quickly or as easily.
 
texhex said:
Now that I've heard the Kemper "cocked wah" signature I have a hard time unhearing it and the Profiles always seem to have more gain and some weird high end happening before any tweaks.
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That cocked wah thing drives me up the wall man... Whats worse is when asking in a Kemper forum or group if they hear that too anyone that speaks up gets blasted as non believers lol. My gut tells me the majority of kemper lovers do not or have never owned nice tube amps so they don't know any better.
 
FAKA! said:
Ironically I just saw someone getting crucified in the FB Kemper group for posting your latest vid of the Tone X demo... holy s**t balls. Is that thing for real man? I have a Kemper... I pretty much hate it and revisit it every 6 months or so to see if its human error lol.

I'm a simple man. I have a lot of nice amps and want to capture them with their recording chains with boost etc for home recording purposes. Otherwise its a pain in the ass to setup my desired recording chain and leave it setup for recording in a small ass apartment with a wife n kids and no dedicated room for myself. I realize in your demo you mentioned the chunky metal stuff may not be the best but is it better than Kemper for that stuff?

Well regardless, you sir have a knack of pulling my heart strings and wallet strings lol. I too want to capture my Dirty Shirley 40w and after I watched your vid twice I just ordered that Tone X capture from SW. Wish me luck buying more stuff I don't need 🤙
Click to expand...

I've gone back and revisited my Triaxis profiles several times over the past 5 years. The Kemper can capture a moment in time, but sometimes it's a little too static in time. The ToneX seems to capture a broader breadth of the tone. Keep in mind that the ToneX is still v1.0. I've been talking with IK. They seem to be excited about ToneX, and they're definitely working on updates. SO, hopefully it will continue to get better and better.
 
FAKA! said:
That cocked wah thing drives me up the wall man... Whats worse is when asking in a Kemper forum or group if they hear that too anyone that speaks up gets blasted as non believers lol. My gut tells me the majority of kemper lovers do not or have never owned nice tube amps so they don't know any better.
Click to expand...

To be fair, I have some profiles that don't have that cocked wah thing. So, if someone is using a fat sounding axe, with a nice profile, perhaps they don't experience that wah midrange. I bath in Kemper while making all of the profiles, so I see the best and the worst of it. It goes back to my original thought that there's a LOT of user influence when it comes to the quality of the Kemper profiles.
 
BigHairyGuitars said:
I've gone back and revisited my Triaxis profiles several times over the past 5 years. The Kemper can capture a moment in time, but sometimes it's a little too static in time. The ToneX seems to capture a broader breadth of the tone. Keep in mind that the ToneX is still v1.0. I've been talking with IK. They seem to be excited about ToneX, and they're definitely working on updates. SO, hopefully it will continue to get better and better.
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BLINK TWICE IF THEY MENTIONED A PROFILING PEDAL
 
JiveTurkey said:
BLINK TWICE IF THEY MENTIONED A PROFILING PEDAL
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4340426D-153B-45C1-B542-9CE1BEA5F453.gif
 
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I (personally) know a few locals who are internationally touring professionals, all in different bands.

Two of them are metalheads, and both owned a Kemper very early on, only to switch to an Axe FX rack + power amp at some point.

I know they're also fond of the Helix, but for some reason they ended up with Axe FX.

The rest of the bunch is actually sticking to their "old school" approach: Boss multi-effects through tube amps, because "no matter where you go, there's always a Fender Twin you can rent".
 
Modellers/Profiles tend to sound cleaner, more sanitised to me. Tighter, crisper. Still great fun and there’s a place for that in recording and playing live.
I’ve got an FM3 and a Stomp and that’s what I hear. The feel on those things are great too for me, no complaints.
My real amps are rawer and have a different texture.

Personally I think if you’re not hearing an analogue power amp through a cab, then you may as well just go digital. Sound, feel, convenience etc…
Eg: micing up a real amp on stage and isolating it so there’s no stage spill and feeding that back through a foldback or FOH, you may as well run a modeller/profiler.
I use my FM3 through a Boogie poweramp into cabs and it’s got everything real amps have IMHO. The only thing digital there is the FM3 preamps and FX.

I also have analogue effects boards into vintage amps and they’re great for certain things too.
Everything has a place.
 
Bought and sold it twice. Helix stayed.


I think it's past time for a hardware update. It feels like an old piece of kit. Modernize it; simplify the layout and user interface, bigger better screen, etc.


Soundwise I would say it's close enough for govt work lol.
 
why does the kpa footswitch have 5 buttons for rigs and then 4 more for effects? thats really dumb imo. just put 8 buttons on there and let people do whatever the flip they want with them.
 
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