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Happy to be proven wrong
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.
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.
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!
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.
I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd
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.
Such as applying a Marshall tone stack to a Mesa preamp?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Ed Conway & The Unlawful Men - Alt Prog Folk: The FaceBook and The SoundCloud
'Rope Or A Ladder', 'Don't Sing Love Songs', and 'Poke The Frog' albums available now - see FaceBook page for details
about 50 mins in
crunchman said:
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.
Really wrestling my inner demons on this as I've always been a devout tube fan boy!
View my feedback at www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/1201922