Kemper KPA External Control
The KPA has extensive, intuitive support for external controllers, and some products are made specifically for control of the KPA. The three main types of control are analog expression pedals/footswitches, MIDI, and the Kemper Remote.
Contents
Expression Pedals
The KPA has 2 stereo jacks on the back of the unit that can be connected to expression pedals or footswitches. Expression pedals should be stereo and connected with a stereo cable. Footswitches can be mono or stereo. Additionally, up to 4 expression pedals can be connected to the Kemper Remote.
System Menu Settings
Pages 5 - 10 cover how expression pedals behave. Pedals 1 and 2 cover the two inputs on the back of the KPA, while Pedals 3 - 6 refer to inputs on the official Kemper remote. The setup done here is simply mapping the pedal's anolog input to that appropriate MIDI CC # (1 for wah, 7 for volume, 4 for pitch, and 73 for monitor volume).
Note: if you only have one expression pedal, you can still use it to control wah, volume, and pitch with some additional MIDI setup below. The KPA is actually very smart about this, and you don't really ever need more than one expression pedal, unless you like to have dedicated pedals, or have your wah/pitch with a spring in it to push it back to heel position, or do some crazy stuff where you jump between pedals.
Pedal Type refers to the polarity of the expression pedal - type 1 is the normal type (Roland), while type 2 is reversed (Yamaha).
This is also where you would come to calibrate a new pedal, or after updating your KPA's firmware/OS. You simply press the button then do a full sweep. Be sure to calibrate any pedal that you add to the KPA or after you update the KPA's firmware/OS.
MIDI Assignments and Settings
While in Browser mode, page 12 allows you to assign the current rig to a MIDI Program Change number, as well as view all the MIDI assignments. Note, these are only for Browser mode, not performance mode, where more than MIDI bank of 128 rigs each can be assigned.
While in Performance mode, page 13 allows assigning external devices to the MIDI Out and Thru ports, as well as giving them device names, and specifying which channels the Kemper should use to communicate with them.
Page 14 has some settings for allowing an expression pedal that was set to Wah Wah on pages 5 - 10 or MIDI CC 1 to also control volume or pitch-shifting, when not being used for a wah wah effect. It also has settings for sending the KPA's MIDI clock to external devices and setting the MIDI global channel (omni by default). And you can also see the current MIDI CC values for 4 of the most likely used CC's, controlling modulation, pitch, volume, and monitor volume.
Rig Volume Pedal Settings
- Lock Vol. Pedal - this setting will lock the current volume pedal settings below to apply to all rigs
- Wah Pedal to Vol. - this is a rig-level version of the page 14 pedal linking option above
- Location - this refers to a volume pedal's placement in the signal chain. Since a dedicated volume pedal doesn't require an effect slot like wah wah or pitch (whammy), you use this parameter to set where it should affect the signal.
- Range - this refers to whether the volume pedal should boost when moving from heel position to toe position (when set to right of center) or cut when moving from toe to heel position (when set left of center)
Expression Pedals/Footswitches
There are several places to set up your analog pedal or footswitch. On the System menu pages 5 - 6, you can specify what kind of device is connected and what it should control. Really, you are setting what it should act as - the KPA will map its input to a MIDI CC parameter. What the pedal (as well as the corresponding MIDI CC) controls is a bit more flexible, dependent on which effects are enabled, as well as "linking" settings on page 14 of the System menu. On page ? of the Rig menu, you can set additional per-rig settings for the pedal's range.
Note, if you link a wah pedal to volume, when you disable a wah effect on a rig, the pedal will not begin to control volume until you put it fully in the toe position - this prevents a jump in volume if your wah pedal is not in toe position when you turn it off. Similarly, if wah is linked to pitch, when you disable wah/enable pitch, the pedal will not begin to affect the pitch until it is brought fully to the heel position, again to prevent the pitch jumping on the transition.