Just got a Kemper -- Wow!

I have a room full of amps -- new and old. I've built a couple of my own mods. So no one can accuse me of not being a biased amp fanatic. But over the past few years, I've been moving more and more toward digital modeling and IR profiling, and it's beginning to disturb me that I'm playing less and less of my old classic amps, and more and more finding myself plugging into an FRFR speaker with an amp modeler.

The silent stage movement is really beginning to pick up. Here's an article about the band Chicago's journey toward that world:

https://www.64audio.com/blog/the-benefits-of-switching-to-a-silent-stage/

The benefits of the silent stage can be pretty big: No amps on stage, no monitors, the musicians can hear themselves play, in some cases acoustic drum sets are gone, too. The days of standing in front of a wall of amps and getting your ears blown out are gone. The instruments go straight to digital modelers and the FOH. It's the audience that gets their ears blown.

I started trying this out a few years ago with a simple Line 6 Pocket Pod. From there I moved to their Firehawk FX, then to the latest Helix unit. The built in amp and effects modeling -- especially in their latest units -- are pretty accurate and amazing. But some of us are tweakers. We like to swap tubes and build mods for our amps. As an example, I put a switch in a Princeton Reverb mod that I built that has three settings on the preamp cathode for different voicing. I love that switch! But the Helix gives you what it gives you. It doesn't do profiling on any other amps. So if you want that certain sound you've tweaked out of your amp, you end up lugging your amp to a gig and being the only dinosaur on stage with it (and getting dirty looks from the other band members and the club manager because it's too loud for the venue and the mix).

I heard about the Kemper Profiler from some other musicians and tried one out a year ago. It seemed pretty complicated and I wasn't conviced. But then a friend shoved his on me and said "Take it home for a while". "Try the profiling function".

The Kemper has a profiling function that allows you to connect any amp in your collection through a normal micing process, and then it generates several sound patterns through it. The Kemper then analyzes that sound signature and profile and builds a digital model of it that you can save. So when you connect your guitar into the Kemper and into a powered FRFR speaker, it sounds EXTREMELY CLOSE to connecting directly to your favorite classic or boutique amp! I'm blown away by this! It's not exact at a molecular level, but it's so close that most wouldn't notice the difference -- especially in a venue setting. If you don't want to profile your own amp, no worries. There's two hundred amp models built in of just about every classic amp you can think of. And there's an active online community that offers new ones all the time.

I ordered one and just took delivery of my own yesterday. I'll just say that things are getting pretty amazing in the digital world, even for die-hard analog folks like me.

I'm not advertising or being compensated by Kemper for this review. I'm just a very impressed customer. Perhaps we could convince David at some point to add some of these to his review list.

If you have a chance to check one of these out (or the Line 6 Helix as well), definitely give it a try. They're a little pricey, but compared to investing in several amps and effects, it's cheap.