Your thoughts on a Kemper

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Marshallman

Marshallman

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Considering getting a Kemper and was curious is it was still the bomb or if some of the newer brands are outpacing it?
 
I’ve had the same Kemper unit since about 2016. I love it, and it’s awesome for someone like me who just records at home and is a plug in and play guy.

What are you looking to use it for? Will you be creating tones of your own amps or are you looking for “ready to go tones”?

Kemper is great for both uses imo and has “ready to go tones” that are as good as anything else out there. But that’s just my opinion and the floodgates are now open and here comes the suck :LOL:
 
I just hopped on the train a couple months ago and am kicking myself for waiting so long. I primarily play through headphones and it is just awesome for that.
 
There is nothing that comes close to the axe fx 3 right now to me. Blew my head off playing through a power amp and cab. I mean it’s not even up for debate, they sound 100 percent like the amps. The kemper is super super compressed sounding and feeling compared to the axe. I was a kemper guy for years, but nowadays, to me, the axe fx smokes it.
 
At this point if I were investing in a modeler it would have to be the Fractal. The Kemper and even Helix seem to be close to or nearing EOL which unfortunately in that world is a thing. But hey apparently a pretty big Kemper update is imminent so WTF do I know
 
They sound great, and having one side by side with Axe FX, I don't detect anything more compressed about the Kemper. The Kemper doesn't take as much fucking around with to sounds right for me. It's not 100% matched with a tube amp but close enough for gigs and shit. The big issue for me and why I went back to tube amps for gigs is the unreliability of the footswitch connection. I've had two powered Kempers and two controllers in the past 2 years that would randomly restart or totally lose connection. It's apparently a known phenomena when I started digging around too, so if you plan on gigging, be aware of that. If you're fucking around at home/in the studio, it's the best damn "practice amp" you'll ever own.
 
I think the variation in user results is largely dependent on the profiles people get their hands on and the tones they go for. It’s the one aspect of profiles/captures I’m not fond of, while there are tons of them out there and plenty sound fucking great, doing the search for them isn’t inspiring for me at all, as where building a tone from scratch in an AxeFX has me in the ballpark with a couple clicks and I get excited as I close in on it, while having the ability to really fine tune it any which way.

Overall, Kempers are tried and true, if loading up some profiles and just going for it sounds appealing than it’s the direction I’d go in. If being able to fine tune every aspect of a tone sounds appealing I’d go with Fractal.
 
Said it before, I'll say it again - LOVE my Kemper. It won't ever replace tube amps for me 100%, but it's an indispensable tool in the toolbox. In situations where I've got to go direct for a gig, i can get incredible sounds. Also the easiest way for me personally to get good recorded tones and a huge variety of amps that I don't have access to.
 
And the initial updates for the new Kemper features are out in public beta NOW. Installed the new Rig Manager and Profiler OS this morning, there's a new USB page in the Output section.

It's all personal, but Kemper is definitely going strong and will be for a long long long time. If there's new hardware from them in the next 5-10 years, I'd be very surprised.
 
Yea the kemper is still great no doubt, but the old adage of the kemper for tones and the axe fx for effects and tweaking is just not true anymore. I was one of those guys for years saying that, for almost a decade. I used my kemper for hundreds and hundreds of shows. It was great. But with the axe 3 and especially playing through a real power amp and cab, the axe absolutely crushes it for that. They sound, react and behave like the real amps. They just do. You eq them like the real amps, everything about them is pretty dead on. I like this more as I’ve gotten older. The kemper is based on how well someone else does something ( micing, mic choice, levels etc) while the axe is a literal digital exact signal path of the real amp it’s modeling, thus letting you dial it in and make it the way YOU want it to sound, not what someone else had in mind.
 
Tonex rules. Sounds near identical when done correctly. Captures are limiting with what other people do or you yourself does, but there’s some good stuff out there. I’m also not an effects guy at all, which is some people’s gripe with it. Just give me my high gain amp and I’m good.
 
I would agree with VESmedic , the AxeIII and FM units are amazing. I had the powered Kemper in the past which was good but the AxeIII is a step up IMO. I also use mine with a tube poweramp and a guitar cab. I think that’s the way to go for an in the room experience and fir live band situations.

That way the Axefx is the preamp while you still get the balls of a tube poweramp. When utilized that way I go back and forth from the real amps I have and it’s not a compromise. I’ve also found that when going direct into my DAW and studio monitors it’s also not a compromise when comparing a real amp with something like two notes reactive load. Big win for the AxeIII in my book, I tried one not expecting much but was sold on it pretty quickly. There are several great sounding high gain amp blocks in there that rival the real thing and it would be hard to argue that the effects aren’t top notch.
 
I had a kemper and couldn’t fault the tones, providing whoever made to capture set the amp up exactly as I would have, ran it through the exact cab I would have and miced it exactly as I would have. This is ultimately why I sold it. the EQ is more like console EQ after the mic, not EQ on the amp. You’re fairly locked into the exact setup and how stuff was dialed in the day of the capture. But it really does do a scary close snapshot of a particular amp set up in a particular way.
 
I have owned and sold the Kemper unpowered toaster 4 times. I had 1000's of profiles and waded through them and had about 40 profiles in my favorites. Top Jimi stuff. Some Michael Britt and a bunch of other stuff.

I used it for practicing through my monitors and recording. If I only played my Kemper for weeks I loved it. When I would use it to record guitar tracks I thought it sounded really good. But then if I added a real amp miked up, a real amp with IR's or even the Mikko Plexi plug in or one of the Neural DSP plug ins, the Kemper failed to hold it's own every time.

It just didn't sound as in your face as any of my other recorded tracks. Then I listen to a pro recorded album that is all Kemper and it sounds fantastic. I know it was user error with me every time but I just couldn't get it to jump out of the speakers like I can get all the other recording methods to do. I wish I could have figured that out because it really would solve every home recording problem I have.
 
VESmedic said:
Yea the kemper is still great no doubt, but the old adage of the kemper for tones and the axe fx for effects and tweaking is just not true anymore. I was one of those guys for years saying that, for almost a decade. I used my kemper for hundreds and hundreds of shows. It was great. But with the axe 3 and especially playing through a real power amp and cab, the axe absolutely crushes it for that. They sound, react and behave like the real amps. They just do. You eq them like the real amps, everything about them is pretty dead on. I like this more as I’ve gotten older. The kemper is based on how well someone else does something ( micing, mic choice, levels etc) while the axe is a literal digital exact signal path of the real amp it’s modeling, thus letting you dial it in and make it the way YOU want it to sound, not what someone else had in mind.
Click to expand...

I‘ve been dialing in tones in my FM9 rig for the cover band I’m joining, FM9 going to two 2x12’s….here’s all the tweaking I did on the amp block. :LOL:

IMG_4097.jpeg


I love the direct stuff for recording, but for live playing, fuck everything else but real cabs. I’ll eventually throw a cab block on there to give to FOH if I ever need it, but yeah, there’s no difference between dialing in the front panel of an amp than there is dialing in an AxeFX/FM going into real cabs. Didn’t touch any deep parameters, no additional EQ’s, just the Treble and Presence and I was done.
 
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