AxeFX & Kemper - thinking the unthinkable and selling my soul to the devil

WarpedSounds

Great. Thanks. I'm new to high-end modellers, but I am curious about them. I just thought they'd be more like computers with bespoke components so hard to replace. 

Happy to be proven wrong

Sporky

I don't think there'll be many repairs that yer average valve amp tech could take on, but the companies concerned have a good history of servicing their kit, and these aren't built as cheap throwaway bits of kit. They're all designed to survive professional use.

It's a bit like the old car vs new car argument. Yes, with an old car you can actually get at the oily bits and weld things and fix stuff yourself, but the new car requires that attention much less often. It's not that one is necessarily better than the other, but just a choice how you want to approach the same thing.

digitalscream

I'd be very surprised if there's a battery in the Kemper, for certain - I believe it uses flash memory for non-volatile storage. Given the (lack of) frequency by which data is written in such devices, I'd be amazed if it didn't last decades.

Sassafras

kjdowd said:

I appreciate that this is hardly representative, but the only pieces of kit that I have ever had a problem with during a gig are valve amps. 

On the long term serviceability point, I've only heard good things about line 6 and fractal in this regard. 

Leads and pedals have given me far more problems than valve amps.
Luckily, it's easier to sort those things out than replacing an output transformer mid-gig.

cosmicned

Yes- I came to the same conclusion earlier this year and bought a Kemper & not looked back... and my back has thanked me too! :-) I'm a semi professional player if some 40 years & have used just about everything in my time from tiny 20w valve amps mic'd up to two full Marshall stacks...! but I've always tried to embrace new stuff if I thought it would a). Cause less 'arseaboutery' and allow me to focus on the actual music/playing guitar & b). Sound consistently better.  I still have my lovely Bluesbreaker combo & Fuchs 'Dumble' ODS amps along with myriad pedals/controllers etc...etc... but the secret with the Kemper is it allows you to sample your own actual amps & even pedals too, that way I'm really pushed to hear the difference... but the ease of set-up and much less weight to cart about is a major bonus to my ageing frame, plus I can use it at home & in the studio for recording without the usual hassles of sound isolation & possibly citizens arrest by the neighbors.... 

WarpedSounds

Sorry to have hijacked the thread, but this is all great to hear. Thanks folks!

John_A

I'm in much the same position - I've played for years starting with 2 Marshall stacks, 'progressed' to posh little combos and big expensive pedal boards and now use a Helix.  Never sounded better, had more versatility, set up quicker and carried less gear to gigs in my life.  Originally bought it to see what all the fuss was about thinking I'd return it, and after 24 hours was a total convert!

Sold enough gear to pay for it three times over since I got it too!

digitalscream

John_A said:

I'm in much the same position - I've played for years starting with 2 Marshall stacks, 'progressed' to posh little combos and big expensive pedal boards and now use a Helix.  Never sounded better, had more versatility, set up quicker and carried less gear to gigs in my life.  Originally bought it to see what all the fuss was about thinking I'd return it, and after 24 hours was a total convert!

Sold enough gear to pay for it three times over since I got it too!

That's my thinking, too. Now I just have to decide whether to get a powered Kemper, or an unpowered one and install a power amp in my cab.

fretmeister

I had done a gone a full circle on amps - multi channel amps, single channel amps and loads of pedals etc, back to multi channel. Marshall / Suhrs / Fender / Mesa etc etc

I went for the Helix Rack as I didn't want the brain on the floor and I didn't want to be stooping down all the time.

I love it. I use it on both bass and guitar. I use some outboard gear with bass, but nothing on guitar, the Helix does all I want for guitar use.

crunchman

I've got a Kemper and it's great.

As others have said, the Helix is also good.  If you watch the Neville Martin Andertons video (there's a thread about it somewhere) he's switched to Helix now as well.

professorben

digitalscream said:

My experience is that the AxeFX gear sounds...like an AxeFX. There's a very definite something which is unique to them, and you either love it or you hate it.

I haven't really heard enough of the Helix to be able to tell, but the clips I have heard suggest that this isn't anywhere near so much of a "problem".

The Kemper, however, sounds like the amp you profiled (assuming the profile was made well). It's a hell of a lot less flexible than either the AxeFX or the Helix, though; not so many effects, very little in the way of fancy routing options and the like.

It comes down to what you want to do with it, really; if you want to experiment, I'd say Helix. If you want to just do a straight replacement of your gear with a single digital box, I'd say Kemper. If you enjoy spending lots of time fiddling with deep editing, go for the AxeFX.

Personally, I'm going Kemper as soon as funds allow. It's worth noting that with some ingenuity, you can actually use the Kemper to improve on the original amp by getting around some of its shortcomings (like my Kraken's second channel).

I've heard you can do that, but how does it work? For instance if you profiled a Fender Champ with only one tone pot, then you can adjust the bass mids and treble, but what frequency range would they affect? Do you tell it it's an F style amp or can you adjust the range? 
Such as applying a Marshall tone stack to a Mesa preamp? 

BintyTwanger77

I've only ever tried a Kemper with headphones, so haven't had a chance for a true comparison with valve amps/pedals.

A lot of the debate seems to be how good it is at "moving air" like a tube amp does, and also how good the clean amp profiles are.

guitarfishbay

professorben said:

Such as applying a Marshall tone stack to a Mesa preamp? 

You can do this on the Axe FX 2 - I think all tone stacks can be selected (though I've not cross referenced as I don't use the feature) as well as tone stack position.  I think @Clarky has done some experimenting with modding some of the amps that way.

John_A

digitalscream said:

John_A said:

I'm in much the same position - I've played for years starting with 2 Marshall stacks, 'progressed' to posh little combos and big expensive pedal boards and now use a Helix.  Never sounded better, had more versatility, set up quicker and carried less gear to gigs in my life.  Originally bought it to see what all the fuss was about thinking I'd return it, and after 24 hours was a total convert!

Sold enough gear to pay for it three times over since I got it too!

That's my thinking, too. Now I just have to decide whether to get a powered Kemper, or an unpowered one and install a power amp in my cab.

I'd go unpowered and then you have more options - I use a Yamaha DXR10 powered monitor which sounds great, but I've also used the FX return of a JCA22h, an Alto powered monitor and a EHX Magnum 44 all of which worked well.

digitalscream

professorben said:

digitalscream said:

Personally, I'm going Kemper as soon as funds allow. It's worth noting that with some ingenuity, you can actually use the Kemper to improve on the original amp by getting around some of its shortcomings (like my Kraken's second channel).

I've heard you can do that, but how does it work? For instance if you profiled a Fender Champ with only one tone pot, then you can adjust the bass mids and treble, but what frequency range would they affect? Do you tell it it's an F style amp or can you adjust the range? 
Such as applying a Marshall tone stack to a Mesa preamp? 

I'm not entirely sure - that's not the kind of "improvement" I'm talking about. What we managed to do was create the Gain II channel that I always wished it had - full but tight low-end, with a lot more gain than Gain I.

You do tell it what kind of gain levels you're aiming for, but I honestly didn't get that far into it. I think the tone stack is configurable, but I couldn't answer that 100%.

With that said...if you want to muck around down in the guts of amps - switching tone stacks etc - then the Fractal gear is probably more appropriate.

guitarfishbay

digitalscream said:

professorben said:

digitalscream said:

Personally, I'm going Kemper as soon as funds allow. It's worth noting that with some ingenuity, you can actually use the Kemper to improve on the original amp by getting around some of its shortcomings (like my Kraken's second channel).

I've heard you can do that, but how does it work? 

I'm not entirely sure - that's not the kind of "improvement" I'm talking about. What we managed to do was create the Gain II channel that I always wished it had - full but tight low-end, with a lot more gain than Gain I.

This is fairly common now in recording - in quite a few interviews/podcasts I've noticed producers stating that they set up a real tone, profiled it, then tweaked it beyond what the amp could do.  Also that way the tone never changes in case of component failure, or the classic 'someone knocked the microphone'.

On the subject of tones not changing - it used to be an issue that firmware updates with the Axe FX required re-dialing of presets.  However recent firmware releases have contained the option to select previous modelling algorithms, and global options have allowed you to install a new firmware (so you can get new amps/fx etc) but keep all of your presets on the old firmware modelling algo...  You can select modelling algorithm on a patch by patch basis if you require, allowing you to keep your old patches on old algos but make new patches on the latest one.

Col_Decker

A guy in band in town uses an Kempler. Fek me it sounds amazballs, so many great sounds. But for me I want only a clean sound and a not clean sound so all the kemper's abilities would be wasted on me.

It did sound bloody good though!

Teetonetal

about 50 mins in

crunchman said:

I've got a Kemper and it's great.

As others have said, the Helix is also good.  If you watch the Neville Martin Andertons video (there's a thread about it somewhere) he's switched to Helix now as well.

John_A

Col_Decker said:

A guy in band in town uses an Kempler. Fek me it sounds amazballs, so many great sounds. But for me I want only a clean sound and a not clean sound so all the kemper's abilities would be wasted on me.

It did sound bloody good though!

I use three sounds, cleanish, dirtyish and dirty for 90% of our set since getting a Helix (and I'm sure the same would apply to a Kemper) I have sounded better at gigs, my load-in/set-up time is down to 5 mins and I've sold a boat load of gear.  I only use 10% of the Helix's capability (so far) but that doesn't mean it's a waste. 

Jonathanthomas83

Thanks all, this has been great. I'm still very hesitant about it all and have been known to make rash decisions before and it's gone a bit tits up so I'm going to do things carefully. It all seems like a good idea though.

Really wrestling my inner demons on this as I've always been a devout tube fan boy!