Longterm Test
A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist ’s longterm test report
During the first instalment of this test, I decided to try out Kemper’s unique approach to digital amplification because my valve amp, a Dr Z Jaz 20/40 was proving too noisy for home recording. I made a quick call to the good folk at Kemper and they suggested I simply hang on to the Kemper Stage we reviewed back in issue 456 for the duration of this longterm test.
The Stage is the latest incarnation of Kemper’s profiling hardware and resembles a floor-based multi-effects rather than the head-like units that preceded it. Many really big touring acts (including Mark Knopfler) now use Kempers live for their consistency, portability and editability – and many pro session players swear by them, too. Kemper calls its devices Profiling Amps, meaning they run a diagnostic signal through a real valve amp to determine how it reacts across the full spectrum of its performance envelope. It then makes a digital ‘profile’ of that amp that can be stored and loaded up on any Kemper device. When you play through the resulting profile, it sounds and reacts eerily like the
“The beauty of the Kemper is that it can lead you to unlikely but luscious-sounding pairings of gear”
amp it’s been generated from, and thousands of such profiles have been created by Kemper and its growing community of users. Consequently, all the Holy Grail amps, from Dumbles to vintage Marshalls, can now be found, in profile form, aboard Kemper’s digital amps – and you can even profile your own amp to create a digital doppelgänger to store and play. Will this mean green machine deliver the panoply of classic valve tones I’m after and obviate the need for mic stands and leads cluttering the place, too? It’s time to find out.
As I previously discovered, the Stage really requires you to consult the manual from the get-go. The learning curve is consequently steeper than with Line 6’s Helix – that I’ve gigged with in the past – which is pretty intuitive. For starters, the screen on the top of the Stage doesn’t deliver the colourful graphical representations of signal chains we’ve come to expect from Line 6, HeadRush et al. Kemper instead opts to use front-panel space for a range of physical controls, in the form of robust, tour-proof dials and buttons, rather than large touchscreens and the like. They’re not alone in this design philosophy: Fractal’s floor-based AX8 modeller/multieffects processor also rejects big colour screens in favour of a more workmanlike, physical interface. You may prefer this way of doing things, you may not. Either way, it takes a little getting used to if you’re more familiar with iPad apps than rackmount gear.
The core of the machine, from a tonecreation point of view, is the Stage’s ‘Stack’ section of controls. This horizontal line of 12 buttons represents the classic signal chain, from input to output. At its centre are the Amplifier and Cabinet buttons, which are used to activate and edit your choice of amp profile plus whatever cab you want to match with it. To the left are four buttons that cover the effects that usually go in front of an amp, such as overdrive, wah and fuzz (buttons A to D). To the right are four buttons set aside for the kinds of effects you’d typically put in the effects loop of an amp, including delay and reverb. At the far left of the row is an Input button for editing input levels and input sources, and at the far right, an Output button does the same for output levels and routing.
The Stage operates in two main modes: Browser Mode is optimised for creating and storing rigs; Performance Mode is for use when you want to access your preferred tones during live performance, as on a pedalboard. As my first task is to create some virtual rigs that I like, I’m going to start in Browser Mode. The first step is to choose an amp profile to form my rig around. To do so I hit the Amplifier button in the Stack section of the controls and the main display now focuses on a list of possible amp profiles to choose from.
After trialling some profiles of vintage Vox, Fender and Marshall amps, I plump for a mysteriously named ‘Rainheart Mimic Me’ profile, which a quick internet search suggests is a profile of a Reinhardt Mini Me, an eightwatt boutique amp from the US. Further auditioning of cab types leads me to a profile called Mars 1960AV.You don’t have to use much imagination to guess that its origins are nearer Milton Keynes than the Red Planet… This combo yields some surprisingly sweet, haunting clean tones – and that is really the beauty of the Kemper. You can just try stuff out until your ears like the result, which leads you to sometimes unlikely but luscioussounding pairings of gear you’d probably never have put together in real life. I then use the Mod button in the right-hand side of the Stack section to dial in a tremolo. Add a touch of spring reverb and things are sounding soulful indeed – and so I save this little combo out as my first user-created rig.
Before my next report, I’ll create some more tones that I think will be useful for my project – and we’ll start getting them down on a recording, where I can A/B them against my mic’d-up Dr Z. May the best amp win...