First Kemper Incoming ...

  • Hi,


    I will soon be a brand new Kemper user having been a stalwart valve-amp + pedals user for a very long while! About a year ago I moved from a heavy valve amp to a Fender Twin Tone Master and started running a Victory Sheriff valve pre-amp on my pedalboard. The rig sounds great but my pedalboard is now by far the heaviest thing I have to lug around and listening to some demos of Michael Britt's 2020 pack convinced me on the Kemper tones being more than capable. Consequently, I have a new Kemper Stage inbound!


    My band plays a mixture of Punk and Rock from 70s through to 2010s so my plan is to use the aforementioned M.Britt 2020 pack to begin with since I really like how they sound:


    Rigs:

    1. Clean (Fender Vibro Lux)

    2. Slight Drive (Fender Pro Reverb)

    3. Medium Drive (Marshall 68 Plexi)

    4. Heavier Drive (Marshall 68 Plexi)

    5. Tighter Drive (not sure .. .maybe CA Tripper or the Trainwreck for some fun!)


    I'm thinking to set all of those up so that the Morph feature adds reverb on the cleaner sounds


    Effects:

    A - Fuzz or Drive mapped to footswitch I (I'm thinking Fuzz into the lower gain and Overdrive into the higher gain ones?)

    B - Phaser mapped to footswitch II (I like Phaser before the amp)

    X - Lead Boost (flat 3db?) mapped to the TAP footswitch

    Mod - Tremolo, mapped to footswitch III

    Delay - Delay mapped to footswitch IIII


    From reading manuals and watching YouTube that all seems possible ... just remains to be seen how long it takes me to actually set it up!


    For amplification ... I'm gonna try running it through my Fender Twin Tone Master with Monitor Cab Off enabled. I think I've seen at least one person saying that works okay but there's no effects loop on the TM so I may need to look into a powered cab such as the Kemper Kabinet. I've just heard a few reports on that being a bit quite so will see how the TM goes first.


    Exciting times!!

    Edited once, last by tolmuk: typos ().

  • Thinking a bit further ... perhaps Reverb always-on for the two cleaner Rig tones and then the 'Morph' function on all of the Rigs can kick in the Kemper Drive so that each Rig has a 'more' button. Frees up space on the effects footswitches for Fuzz / Phaser / Tremolo / Delay which basically covers everything I need in one Performance.


    This is gonna be so much fun!!

  • Welcome to the forum! I generally use the morph capability to go from rhythm to lead, but there are limitless other possibilities!

    Go for it now. The future is promised to no one. - Wayne Dyer

  • Hi there!


    It's going to be a shock the first time you try it at rehearsal, possibly. Give it some time and maybe consider a powered guitar speaker or Kone to replace your nice tube amp to get more authentic sounds and low weight.

  • Hi there!


    It's going to be a shock the first time you try it at rehearsal, possibly. Give it some time and maybe consider a powered guitar speaker or Kone to replace your nice tube amp to get more authentic sounds and low weight.

    I don’t run a tube amp anymore - at least not for gigging: I have a 65 Amps Lil Whiskey which is great fun but far too heavy to lug around anywhere! For my band, I use a Fender Twin Tone Master (i.e. digital) with, presently, a Victory Sheriff valve pre-amp on my pedalboard running into it.


    I’m considering two setup options initially:


    - 1. A Yamaha DXR10 (as I have a couple to hand) with all the modelling goodness going on

    - 2. The Fender TM , fed from “Monitor Out” with “Monitor Cab Off” enabled


    Gonna try both and see which I prefer … ideally I want a “real amp” experience on stage (and, hand-on-heart, I just think it will look better in the backline!!) so hoping Option 2 works. And, of course, I can run XLR from the Stage to FOH as well when more volume needed.


    Stage arrived yesterday … so far all I’ve done is powered it up and installed the latest OS! Once I have everything sorted and am happy with the tones / usability, I’d ideally like to add a powered Kabinet as those seem like a really neat solution.


    The Friedman ASC powered cabs look nice too but they’re hella expensive and don’t seem particularly lightweight? Plus they’re not green …

  • I have a single DXR10 which is great but I barely use it as all of my gigs are inears. I’d definitely give the two DXRs a whirl in stereo but to be honest, main outs to FOH is where the magic happens, it sounds spectacular. Have a nice time experimenting

    A brace of Suhrs, a Charvel, a toaster, an Apollo twin, a Mac, and a DXR10