Fucking awesome.

Sent to my collaborators. One has a Ultra with the latest updates (has bits from the II) and the other wants a II.

I intend on buying one. Apparently you can send amp profiles about on the net, so I imagine in a few months' time there will be some serious shit going down with that thing.

I've actually been really impressed with the , much more so than with any other modeler. I'd love to hear one of these- the Kempers- in person. The latest round of modelers is a far cry from my Pod XT- isn't that like ten years old at this point?

Definitely seems a much smarter way to go about fakemaps than the SnaxFx style, IMO, for metal sounds anyhow, which are mainly frequency response and EQ anyhow.

I would be curious to hear how it does with a mid/low gainer, particularly, how it plays, responds to volume knobs use, etc. It seems to me that for that, the modelling style of the SnaxFX would be better suited, because it, by simulating the electrical components in addition to the frequencies/EQs, would also seem to be expected to do a better job of simulating the response of those amps to volume and playing dynamics.

The Kemper is slick as all getout though. I was wondering about whether such a thing was possible several years back. I was thinking about modelling microphones though. Surely that technology will be here soon enough now.

There's a lot more to high gain amps than just frequency response and EQ... for example, a Recto and a 6505 dialed in to sound as close to the same as possible then CurvEQ'ed to match perfectly will still sound different from each other. That's ignoring how chords are handled by either amp entirely. There's an inherent character in either amp that isn't in the other, and vice-versa. The 6505 is super coarse and aggressive sounding by nature, whereas if you try to make the Recto sound coarse and aggressive, it'll just get smooth fizz instead. Amps that are notoriously similar, such as the XXX and 6505 sound different from each other as well. Hell, two 6505s placed side by side with identical settings will sound different, if only slightly.


The Kemper does a good job of getting the character of the Recto right, even down to the little nuances that make it a Recto, though the Kemper is a little boomier in this example, but still considerably closer than anything else on the market today. Some of those crazass noises seem to be for figuring out the dirt character of the amp, especially the lower frequencies used in it. I don't know how well it'll handle lower gain stuff, so I'm not going to speculate that. Although when he turned the gain all the way down in the 2nd video, it sounded pretty much like a Recto with the gain almost off, so maybe it'll be pretty good at that too? Who knows until someone tries it and records it, right?

I can confirm the does low/mid-gain well. It certainly responds like a real amp, which weirded me out at first. Even using the high gain stuff- my friend who has one, he uses way, way more gain than I do, even for heavy, and it responds well. I back the volume down on the guitar quite a bit when I play through his rig- to play metal or rip wanky leads.

I'd like to hear a modeler in person that does to what my synaesthetic ears what the actual amps do. Add in the recording chain and the effect is largely neutralized. I hear a much bigger difference between things in person, where a Marshall or Engl (or Vox for that matter, cranked up and boosted) sounds yellow, Bogner or a Mesa Stiletto sounds orange, and the Rec, 5150 and SLO all sound red. Oddly, the Triple X does not sound like a 5150 or a Rec to me, somewhere in between.

To me, the XXX is like an even more coarse and aggressive 6505 but with a much much much tighter low end and considerably more pick attack. The mid voicing is completely different too... the 6505 seems to be centered around 450hz, whereas the XXX is around 600hz. Still low mids, but different low mids. Oh, and a clean channel that doesn't sound like a bag of smashed assholes. Seriously, how did Hartley Peavey figure the 6505 clean was usable? Is he fucking deaf or something?

Eddie Van Halen was drunk and high at the time he approved it?

The 6505/5150 rhythm channel isn't supposed to be clean anyhow; the +/II is a different matter.

The XXX sounds more like a Rec than a 5150/6505 to my ears. But it's really it's own animal.

It is indeed it's own animal. As is the JSX. Although these days I'm finding owning the JSX more of a nuisance than anything... it's sound seems to only work on a guitar with high action and a rosewood fretboard. Otherwise it's just a clank machine with an awesome EQ balance.

I play guitars with rosewood boards (save for the silverburst Tele) and stupidly high action to the point people find them awkward. So I'll give you twenty bucks for the JSX.

In all seriousness, how would you compare the JSX to the 5150/6505 and/or XXX? I know the other two but haven't spent any IRL time with the JSX.

I went to HC looking for this map and couldn't get anyone to drop the name. I had heard a vid quite a few months back. This thing is sick!

wasnt too sure about it while watching the first video.

Second video intrigued me. Definitely dig the eq knobs being physical instead of having to do something like the axe edit to change them up.

Tempted................

I'm not really sure how to compare it. It's got kind of a Mark series vibe to it, if the Mark is dialed in super tight. It's also got a very pretty (if a bit thin) lead tone. It handles chords in a kind of weird way, in that you can play 5 string diminished chords and hear every single note as if you were playing clean. If the Revalver tweak menu is anything near accurate, it seems to blend the clean and dirt channels at some point in the circuit? That might explain the clankiness and the extreme clarity. Also: the fat switch. It does what it says, but I'd still not call the amp "fat" even when the switch is on.

I've not played out of one, but a co-guitarist did a few years ago. His was not my favorite tone. He also had a habit of playing with ear plugs in and when one does that, they tend to over compensate with the high end. I really disliked his tone out of it. When he didn't have earplugs in (Only at practice) he dialed a decent tone, I would agree something Mark-like. Not my flavour of map, but not terrible.

I don't disagree, but the gap becomes much smaller between real and fake maps, when the guitar sound in question is a square wave. Dynamic frequency response is what gives any amp its character, especially playing, and the basic "grain" of the clipping is part of that. But, especially in a mix, so much more of the audio cues have to do with really specific EQ things, and how the EQ changes with a dynamic input.

Anyhow, after looking a bit more into it, it seems to me that the Kemper is really just a sophisticated sampler and EQ/impulsemaker. Seems that the gain control is actually non-adjustable for anything but master volume? So it is literally sampling the clipping and the EQ at the same time, and turning both as one, into an fancy-ass EQ filter. I wonder what kind of computer/software they need for that.

I also would like to know more about how the model can be adjusted after the profiling.

Watch the second video. It's pretty in-depth.

And the gain control actually does work as a gain control.

Ah!

My internet has been acting wonky for a couple weeks now, so i only streamed the first one before it shat out loading the second, and i didna get a chance to watch it.

Shit is interesting.

I note:
1. Aside from the gain, all of the tweak controls seem to either be EQ or Delay.
2. Or EQ-based delay. Like the adjustable delay of mostly just the sub frequencies for a sort of sag control, for instance.

I wonder:
1. What they are doing to "guess" the lower gain sounds.
2. What it does with cleaner amps like AC30s and Twins.
3. Whether the AxeFX will be able to get better(or not) results than it when they add the profiling to their already-in-place component models.

There is one thing I'd like to know about it... how the fuck does it get that mic-in-front-of-a-speaker sound? There's always been something off about IRs in that regard... they don't sound right. Like, every chug sounds identical to the last. But with the Kemper or a real amp, you can hear the cab resonating differently (as it's wood, not a bunch of ones and fucking zeroes) for each chug.

I wonder if it's just using different IRs of the same cab+mic and dynamically changing them based on input level+attack vs. decay? Or is there something more sci-fi going on here?

I pointed out the second video to my co-guitarist, as he had the same question re: the gain. We find it a bit baffling; I wonder how many times they had to go through to get the gain structure right, 'cause, like, it does sound right. We both found it a cool piece of kit for sure.