Another thing: How does it do with solid state amps? Someone's going to profile one eventually, so will it sound solid state?


I don't think I've been this interested in a digital product ever. It's fucking cool.

Haven't watched it all the way through yet but he said "Fender Twin" so I'm interested.

I consider it to be essentially just an IR maker itself. Only, it makes a much more sophisticated IR by accounting for volume and frequency changes at the input and how they affect the output at the microphone. Which is what all of the laser chirp action is.

It is also notable and interesting that they have that profiling noise do a lot more than just sweep the ranges low to high. It seems to also be paying attention to how the response changes given multiple similar inputs in a row, which is simple and clever. So, while i said i think it is sampling the amp and making an IR of it, really, i think it is making hundreds or thousands of samples/IRs of the amp. It is the same thing as if you try to loop a drumbeat using just a recorded two bar section, versus if you loop four or eight or sixteen bars of a dood playing the same beat. Two bars, and over a four minute song it gets way too computer-sounding, and you can hear where the loop starts way too easily. Capture more bars to loop, and it over the course of the song, it just sounds like a real drummer who is just a metronomic beast.

Those are probably, and have been forever, the biggest problems with all digital models: they either fail in their sampling resolution(i.e. they do not accurately enough electrically simulate the components or interactions they mean to reproduce) or they fail in their sample size(i.e. that they can only respond the one way that they respond, taken from one sample/frequencysweep/whatever.

That is definitely, for instance, the reason i have never met a digital '63 Reverb Unit that sounded or behaved anything like the real thing. The real thing hardly ever makes the exact same sound twice, certainly never twice in a row. All digital copys sound like they have a digital delay underneath them because the same things keep happening in the same way as you play.

The thing is probably the single smartest guitar related product in 50 years.

That Kemper guy is fucking smart.

That is cool as all hell. I can only imagine how loud that Twin was.

Loud. Very fucking loud. Like hand grenade loud.

I don't suppose it's practical to make an IR of a grenade. It would be pretty cool, though.

I'd use it all over the place.

I can see it now: Snare+hand grenade IR 50/50 mix. Toms 100% hand grenade IR Kick 180% hand grenade IR


My mixes would improve drastically.

Verrry interesting. The more i hear if the thing, the more questions i have though.

After everything so far, i definitely think the thing has a big edge over the SnaxFX, which whatsisfuck from Fractal probably realizes also, hence the apparent jumpiness on his part and the part of his disciples. Really it just seems to be a much more clever idea, to model the way something really sounds, rather than what it actually is. I mean the desired end result is that it sounds right, not that the virtual resistors and tubes and transformers operate close-to-life.

The AxeFX says "this is electrically equivalent to an analog device and therefore sounds like one". The Kemper shifts the focus to sounding as the analog device does, first, and then offering some really basic(relatively, compared to the attempt to model how a tube works) sorts of alterations to that sampled sound to make minor adjustments to it as desired. Digital models for EQ, delay, and compression are so much less fiddly than the ones for tubes, saturation, dynamic impedances, and resonances. It just seems like the more efficient course to take in programming a box for the purpose of reproducing a sound.

How would that work? You would need a way to blow something up sans-grenade with the same amount of force(pneumatically/hydraulically i suppose ) to record a comparison, thereby allowing the reproduction of that "fragmentation shell tone". We would need separate IRs for all of the grenade types.

I would also be interested in landmine and claymore IRs, for that matter.

I'll take a potato masher, please.

Good gawd.

Played one this past week at the Gibson factory in Memphis, TN.

It's as sexy as you thought it was.

Color me intrigued. Is there a story behind this?

holy cow.

THAT was pretty convincing via internetz vid. he took a twin-- which i have NO idea how he got it loud enough to distort... and made it sound like a raging bassman and beyond.

i think it'd be confusing as hell live... but it's neat technology. nifty studio biz.

i'm just too retarded to NEED that much stuff. i'll buy the one that has one 'loud as fuck twin' setting with three knobs when they come out with it. but i don't need the starship enterprise does-everything-and-more version. i can't say it doesn't sound good.. it does.. but WHY do you NEED all that shit?

I would wildly guess that the hardware/brain would be about the same for it whether it was just a "profile player" or actually had the ability to make the profiles as well.

So, while i would agree with you in principle, that like the AxeFX, i personally would only really need it for one or two amp models, it would also not sit particularly well with me if they sold a version of it that was about the same amount of money due to the workings of it being the same, but with less features enabled.

I also suspect, that freed of the rest of its bells and whistles, and with the profiles taken on their own in comparison to real amps, that they would fall short in the comparison. In other words, that it is the fact that it can do hundreds of different amps "well enough" more than the fact that it can do any one of them "perfectly enough" to really push a real tube amp aside. Kind of the same deal with the SnaxFx, which is IMO a very flawed-sounding thing, but flexible enough a tool that folks can look past it. Same for that matter, as the better VST amps that are currently available these days.

It would be very interesting though, if they could produce a version of the Kemper that ONLY played premade profiles, had no FX, and cost maybe half as much or even less. Just a USB connection or something to download and swap out the profiles, but none of the other stuff.

Though, i do suspect that the interior electronics workings for playing the profiles are probably about the same as the ones needed to make them/play them/process the fx. And that a stripped out version might not be very much less money than the full fledged dealio. Which would make it a silly choice to make: more an aesthetic one than a practical/efficient one.

i do wonder that. but y'know... why NOT just make a PERFECT version of ONE amp, and preload that stuff onto an HD card. then plug that shit into yer three or four knob amp, and dispense of all the doodads? then when you want-- put another HD card in. or make multiple slots for the cards and switch between.

i'm sure you probably don't need all the brainpower for PLAYING, but i bet you need a lot to generate the agorhythms, like ye were saying. i'd be inclined to use something like a simple plug and play with a class d amp if it were REALLY well profiled for live use, and you could chuck the amp in your guitar case or a snoopy lunchbox. and it were cheap. and sounded like the real deal.

As ever, i suspect that the best possible course, will be to buy up as many JCM800s and Super Reverbs as possible, so that a few months or years down the line they can be sold back to the former profiler users for a tidy profit.

When it comes down to it, smelly simple loud old tube amps, just have rock and roll in them. When it comes to keeping things simple, i suppose that they are still going to be straightest line between the points. They make electric hammers these days too. But 90% of all people realize that the old analog type is the simplest way to get nails banged in around the house. To me it is the same basic concept.

This is always the best course of action. Raise your hand if you're kicking yourself for not buying JCM800s and blackface Bandmasters and the like when you could get them for really stupid cheap. [raises hand]

Re: pieces like this with uber-functions, there is a small market segment for whom these are totally appropriate, IMO. My friend/collaborator with the is one of them- an inveterate tone chaser/tweaker and effect nerd who actually gets some serious mileage out of the thing. But it's just one piece in his collection among many. And he prefers to run it through a tube power amp and a 4x12 or two as a preamp + high-end effect box. Lately he's been running the thing through the power section of his JVM for live work with his DM band. Not everyone is looking to create tones that don't exist in nature though- something the seems ideally suited to vs. the profiling amp concept.

I always felt like the it was only a matter of time before someone nails the modular amp system similar to the Egnater and Randall ones.