Longterm Test
A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist ’s longterm test report
It’s mid-afternoon at our house and our little daughter is fast asleep having her nap. This is no obstacle to recording with the Kemper Stage, however. As we have discovered in previous tests you can get great cranked amp sounds out of this digital profiling amp and into your recording device completely silently.
Today’s recording project is to make a couple of demos to form the basis of an upcoming jam with excellent blues-rock guitarist Innes Sibun. I’d mentioned a couple of Neil Young-esque pieces I’d written to Innes and he suggested sending them over before our jam so he could familiarise himself with them. This presented a more or less perfect first practical test for the Kemper as I wanted really organic, tweedy amp tones on these tracks. If the Kemper could deliver these digitally, it would be impressive proof of its much-vaunted profiling capabilities.
My first task was to lay down a guide drum track, which I tend to do with the extremely useful DM1 The Drum Machine app for iPad by Fingerlab. This has a very intuitive and straightforward step sequencer built into it and some pretty decent acoustic kits among its many electronic and acoustic drum sounds. Check it out: it’s not expensive, it’s used by the likes of Damon Albarn and others for quite serious projects, and it’s a great little instrument for the money. Half an hour of beat-making later, I used the DM1’s handy Export function to email the mixed-down drum track for the song to Dropbox, whence it can be downloaded to PC and dropped into my DAW. I’ve now put aside my hardware 32-track recorder, as nice as it is, in favour of a PC-based system. I’ve always fought shy of these as I never found one I really got on with. But Studio One by PreSonus, which came bundled with the AudioBox iTwo audio interface I bought recently, has been a bit of a revelation. It promises more intuitive operation than most DAWs, and I clicked with it immediately, so I’ve now made the switch to recording on PC, with all the big-screen ease of editing that it offers.
Drum track laid down, it was time to fire up the Kemper and start recording some guitar. The first sound I need is a crunchy, chewy rhythm part in the style of Neil Young’s sound on tracks such as When You Dance I Can Really Love. I’ve often thought crunch tones are the litmus test of whether any modelling or profiling amp is any good. Clean tones always seem to come out okay in modelling amps – to varying degrees – while high-gain tones are so compressed that any lack of nuance or response that the modelling device might suffer from is often hidden under a tsunami of empowering gain. Crunch tones, however, have the harmonic complexity of overdrive but also some of the detailed dynamic light and shade of clean tones. Thus, I think they’re a tough sound for modelling amps to nail.
Last month, I’d dialled in some tones on the Kemper that I liked in preparation for this project. The main one was based on an eight-watt boutique amp from America. I remember being very pleased with what I’d created but coming back to it with cold ears, so to speak, I felt it wanted a bit more work. I turned down the gain to a near-clean level of crunch, fiddled with the reverb model and generally fussed over it a bit, and then sat down to record. This part is where the Kemper and other devices like it really shine. All I had to do to get tracking was plug two XLR cables into the stereo outputs on the back of the Kemper and run those into the two inputs on the front of the AudioBox iTwo audio interface. With a stereo audio track already set up on the excellent Studio One DAW all I then had to do was tweak levels and make a start.
My guitar for the session was a recently acquired Fender American Vintage ’52 Telecaster, which graced last month’s cover – it’s a nice-sounding instrument I’m already confident in. Before hitting record I did a few practice runs through the track with the drum part in the headphones as I played. I have to confess to not feeling the tones I’d created as much as I had before. I’ve often felt that even the best modelling devices sometimes have a very slight edge to them that sounds artificial. It’s like someone took a really good guitar tone then blended in just five per cent of a dry piezo tone with it. The Kemper is so good, however, that I’m wondering if I’m just imagining things.
The only way to find out is to rig up my Dr Z with two SE condenser mics and record the part again, to compare and contrast them. The nipper has awoken again by now so it’s fine to make a bit of noise as mum has taken her out in the garden. With the glorious sound of the amp in the room now making things so much vibier during the tracking, I’m certain the Dr Z will sound much better on the track.
“I’m learning to use the Kemper and my valve amp as complementary tools in my studio toolbox”
On playback, however, there proved to be very little in it – especially as the Kemper profile I used isn’t the same model of amp as mine, making this an apple and pears comparison to some degree. There was maybe a little more air, life and detail in the mic’d amp sound but we’re talking pretty subtle stuff here. In the end, I go with the mic’d amp sound – but it’s a photo finish and I’m not even certain it’s not just in my mind.
Next, it’s time for a nice rich, sustaining lead sound. Here, again, the Kemper shows off its strongest suit – I’ve got the better part of all the world’s seriously good amps to choose from onboard. Soon I find a Bognerderived tone that is absolutely stunning: just a nice, singing, fat lead tone that I’d use anywhere. Add a touch of reverb and an analogue delay with a bit of modulation and I’m in tone heaven. After rehearsing a little melody line for the track’s intro using this tone, I hit the red button and get lucky with a really clean take. I’m very happy indeed with the results – and there’s no way I would have got as good a sound of that style so easily with my pedalboard and the Dr Z, which is limited to the kind of sounds its own 6V6-based construction can produce, plus whatever pedals I can throw at it. It just wouldn’t do that really girthy moddedin
Marshall type tone – not without a lot of fiddling and specialist overdrives.
I’m already starting to arrive at a new position on modelling and profiling amps. So much of what is written about them is focused on whether they sound identical to the valve amps they emulate – with a kind of implicit assumption that the player should try both then decide whether they’re a ‘real amp’ loyalist or a ‘modelling’ fanatic. The reality is more nuanced – and the notion of which is ‘better’ becomes harder to nail down the more you use both valve amps and modelling devices side by side in the studio. The practical benefits that profiling amps offer in terms of the speed you can work at (no fiddling about with mics, no need to find the perfect room to record in) plus the very wide range of sounds onboard are just as big a deal as outright tone. Second, the tones of the Kemper are very good anyway – and many cases the ability to choose between hundreds of amp types for a recording project outweighs whether a particular real valve amp you own sounds five per cent better under ideal conditions than its corresponding profile on the Kemper.
Finally, there’s a human factor to consider, too. When it came to that vibey rhythm track, I just wanted to hear and feel an amp being played fairly loud in the room to inspire the performance I was after. But with the lead part I wanted control, precise tone-sculpting and the ability to just sit at the computer with the guitar in my lap and try for a perfect little solo. The former situation was best served by the valve amp, the latter by the Kemper. The lesson learned is twofold – the Kemper is well up to the task of tracking great tones. It hasn’t made my nice valve amp redundant overnight and, in fact, I’m learning to use them not as opposing technologies but as complementary tools in my studio toolbox. Sometimes the Kemper gets the nod; sometimes I turn to the mics and the Dr Z. I also have to consider that I’m still very new to the Kemper and haven’t drilled down into its sonic tweakability all that much. But one thing I know for sure is that I’m very glad to have it in my studio and I feel sure I’ll get more from it with further use rather than an increasing sense of its limitations.
“The Kemper’s strong suit is that I’ve got the better part of all the world’s seriously good amps to choose from”