Longterm Test
A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist ’s longterm test report
While gigs may still be off the menu for most guitarists, lockdown hasn’t been entirely barren of musical jobs. Not long after taking delivery of the Kemper Profiler Stage for longterm testing I got a call from an old friend, Bristol producer and solo artist Ben Menter, aka Mr Benn, who’s on Nice Up! Records. Ben specialises in dance music influenced by Jamaican reggae and dancehall, as well as hip-hop and more besides, and he’s an established favourite on the stages of festivals such as Boomtown and Bestival.
Every so often he’s kind enough to get in touch to ask if I could play some guitar parts on his records – always an absolute pleasure, partly since we’ve been making music together since college days and partly because he’s just a great musician to work with. He always knows exactly what he wants for a track, generally favouring simple yet impeccably tasteful, groovy hooks and in-thepocket-rhythm parts. The classic guitar recipe for success on the dancefloor.
The job in hand this time is a Mr Benn remix of Good Time Not A Long Time by Bristol MC Gardna featuring soul singer Omar. Mr Benn is known for incorporating a vintage reggae feel into his tracks and, chatting the remix over, we talk about the 1977 Randy Newman track Baltimore, which was covered majestically by Nina Simone the following year. A further reggae version was recorded by The Tamlins in 1979 – a beautiful, minor-feel reggae track with a blues-like edge of melancholy and plush horn parts. We agree this is useful as a loose musical touchstone for the style of the guitar parts I’ll play on the remix. Ben reaffirms that he’d like a few simple but strong melodic hooks and fills that he can arrange over the track, plus some basic rhythm, choppy parts.
Like many musicians who also have children and a day job, I find the best time to focus on
“We agree The Tamlins’ ‘Baltimore’ is a loose musical touchstone for the guitar parts’ style”
recording is after everyone else has gone to bed. I’m a night-owl by nature so this is no hardship. In this setting, the Kemper is an essential tool for silent recording. I don’t have to set up mics or run any amps out loud. I can monitor everything in headphones as I go and it can sit on a little table beside my computer. For this part I need a clean tone with the faintest suggestion of crunch to warm it up – a little hair, basically – but something that’s also crisp enough to retain definition in the mix. Using the Browse dial on the Kemper, I flick through dozens of amp models, finally settling on something AC30-like that’s been dialled in by Michael Britt, who’s known for crafting great-sounding custom presets for high-end modelling multi-effects such as the Helix and also Kemper’s profiling amps.
Kemper’s control layout is quite different from the screen-based, highly visual interfaces of things like the Helix and Boss’s GT-1000. Kemper seems to prefer using dedicated hardware buttons on the front panel that engage specific elements of the Stage’s functionality, such as the amp model being used. At first glance it makes the Kemper look more complex than something like the Helix, but it’s really just a different interface philosophy, a little more hands-on, a little less tightly centralised – though the Kemper’s screen is big enough to be clearly legible and delivers all the information you need. I would say that it has a slightly steeper learning curve than either the Boss or Line 6 approach, possibly because it doesn’t really resemble an interface you’ll find on anything else and thus is less familiar and intuitive if you haven’t used one before. That said, it’s logical and well laid-out.
Sound-wise, the Kemper remains impressive and full of feel. I especially like the way the ‘front’ of each note sounds on the Kemper. On some modelling multi-effects the initial attack can sound a bit plasticky and unyielding, whereas the Kemper breaks up very naturally when you dig in. Anecdotally, I feel like Kemper is the choice of a lot of guitarists who don’t normally like digital kit. It has a very warm, organic feel that feels like home – more of which shortly.
Tones dialled in for the remix, I use two XLR cables in the back of the Kemper to connect in stereo to my PreSonus AudioBox iTwo audio interface, which is connected to the excellent Studio One DAW, also by PreSonus. I then spend a couple of hours at maximum focus laying down multiple takes of different ideas for Ben, saving the best and discarding the weaker takes as I go, until I have about a dozen strong rhythm and melodic parts that he can use whole or chop up as he pleases.
As Ben was working to a tight deadline, I was pleased to get a link to the finished release only a couple of weeks later. I loved what he’d done with my parts, judiciously selecting the hooks he liked best and crafting them beautifully into a soulful reggae reimagining of Gardna’s original track. The great thing about working with the Kemper was that I didn’t have to waste time fiddling about with mics or chasing down a buzzing amp or loose connection, and yet the resulting tones didn’t sound sterile or coldly digital, either – especially important on a track that abounds in rich horn sounds, warm drum sounds and emotive vocals.
It’s the first pro-grade test for me and the Kemper and, thanks to Mr Benn’s wizardry far more than my playing, it sounds great. It’s also fired up my passion for recording this way – so next time I’m going to pit the Kemper head to head with a leading modelling multi-effects to see how they compare in the studio. See you next time.