Kemper KPA Creating a Profile
The heart and soul of the Kemper is its profiling process. It is the source for all the profiles you can play; whether they ship as factory, are posted in the Rig Exchange, or are available for commercial purchase. You don't truly experience its voodoo until you actually profile a real amp or modeler and find how precise the Kemper gets without even beginning to tweak.
While the process of creating a profile is fairly straightforward, the number of types of profiles and merging process has made the concept slightly more confusing.
Hardware Setup
The hardware setup is simple.
- Connect the Kemper's Direct Out/Send output to the input of your real rig, such as your first pedal in the pedalboard, or your amp's guitar input. If you have a noise gate, it should be disabled - you may want to simply remove it from your signal chain.
- Connect the output of your real rig (typically a mic or mic preamp or possibly a DAW to the Return input of the KPA, preferably using the balanced XLR. The Kemper will not provide phantom power to a mic, so you'll have to supply such with a mic preamp, phantom power box, or possibly running the mic through your DAW interface, if it has inputs that have phantom power.
The profiling process will not capture effects, such as modulation, reverb, delay; even if they're simply natural to the room you're profiling in. It's best to remove these from the signal chain or otherwise minimize them. If you want them, you can apply them in the KPA rig's effects blocks, external effects processors in the effects loop, or via DAW post-processing when recording. The cab profile will reflect phasing issues due to close-mic'ing and multi-mic'ing, just as the real rig does.
The profiling process is not affected by latency. If you have gear that adds latency, the resulting profile still sounds the same and responds instantly. Don't be afraid to route through your DAW for comp, EQ, or similar processing before sending back to the KPA.
Profile Process
Before beginning the profiling process, it's wise to select a rig that is as similar as possible to the rig you are profiling. You will often have the same stomp and post effects as you want in the new rig, and some of the tags may match as well, not requiring to be altered in the new profile. This doesn't affect the result of the profiling process, but can save you time finalizing the rig.
The profile process is very simple:
- Switch to Profiling Mode
- Press the soft button to start Profiling
- Choose whether there is a cab as part of the signal chain or not (this can even be auto-detected)
- Press Profile - the Kemper will start sending 3 weird signals through the real rig
- Refine the resulting profile - the first thing I do after making a profile is choosing refine and playing some large chords and low palm mutes. This gets the frequency response closer to the original often.
- Make some small tweaks - it's best to compare the created profile vs. the reference rig right now before anything changes to affect the tone of the real rig.
- Store the rig - press Store and go through the saving dialogs to create a new rig based on the profile. This guides you through the rig, amp, and cab tags. I prefer to skip this part at this time, or use quick, small abbreviated text that you can fill in later. Don't get bogged down spinning the soft knobs - you can type it out with a keyboard later. See Tagging. For names, I like to go ahead and type out a somewhat meaningful name, just in case I can't edit it immediately. See Naming.
Technically, that's all that needs to be done; but I like to take it a little further:
- Tweak the rig more - before storing the rig, you cannot access the full Amplifier and Cabinet profile settings. After storing, you may want to make further tweaks here. While the new rig should sound virtually identical to the real rig, you may find some slight tweaks can help improve things that sounded poor in the original rig, such as reducing mic phasing (using Pure Cab), fattening up the tone (by lowering Definition), or altering the low and high resonances of the cab (low and high shift in the Cab profile). You could also improve the sound of the distortion tone with pre-EQ or a boost pedal. Or some precise post-EQ to really get a nice, full sound.
- Revisit tags and rig name in Rig Manager, quickly typing in the correct tags for all possible parameters.
Profile Types
Here's a list of the different kinds of profiles you create:
- Studio - a set of amp and cab profiles created using the traditional profiling process
- Direct Amp (often called a DI Profile) - an amp profile created by taking the feed from a DI box connected to the speaker output of an amp (with the speaker cab or a load box connected after the DI box) - this process does not create a corresponding cab profile
- Merged - a set of amp and cab profiles resulting from merging the cab profile of a Studio profile with a Direct Amp profile. This kind of profile faithfully recreates the sound of the amp attached to the profiled cab while the Cab block is disabled, allowing dual output for live situations
- Direct Output or Preamp Profile - can be a set of amp and cab profiles or just an amp profile after FW 3.0. This is a profile of an amp pre-amp, returning the output of the pre-amp (often the effects loop send) to the KPA.
Studio and Merged profiles contain both amp and cab profiles, while Direct Amp and Direct Output/Preamp profiles only have an amp profile.
The only difference in the profiling process is selecting No Cab on the first page of the profiling dialog. The rest of the difference depends on what the real rig consists of. Merged profiles additionally are put through the merging process.
Merging
OS 3.0 introduced merging, which is designed to more faithfully isolate the amp and cab profiles' respective impact on the tone. This means swapping cab profiles on merged profiles sounds more realistic; however, its design is really to accommodate running a real guitar cab off the cab profile while simultaneously sending the amp + cab profile to a PA or DAW. Merging will guarantee the PA sound and live sound are as close as possible.
The reason merging is necessary is because the profiling process of a full cannot perfectly isolate the amp and cab's impact on the guitar tone. Comparing the full rig vs. a profile of just the amp component allows the Kemper to do so.
But the amp is still affected by the load applied to it (which depends on the cab shape, material, and speakers). Thus, if you swap cabs on merged profiles, there can possibly be a different impedance between the current amp and the different cabinet than the different amp and different cabinet had when it was created. Merging doesn't perfectly detect and duplicate that. However, for the most part, you will get more consistent results swapping merged cabs than cabs on simple studio profiles.
The process to create a merged rig is simple:
- Add a DI box between the amp's speaker output and the speaker cab.
- Create a studio profile by sending the microphone/mic preamp/DAW output back to the Kemper
- Create a Direct Amp profile of just the amp by sending the DI box output back to the Kemper
- Load the studio profile rig and hold the cab button to edit it
- Press copy to copy the entire cab
- Load the DA profile rig
- Hold the Cab button
- Press paste to copy the cab into the rig
- Check the Merge Cabinet option while in the Cab edit screen
- Store the profile - the merging process will occur during storage
Naming
I like to conform to the following naming format:
<AUTHOR INITIALS> <AMP> [<CHANNEL>] [<CAB>] [<MIC>] [<STUDIO/DIRECT/MERGED INDICATOR>] [<PACK SEQEUNCE NBR>] [<TONE DESCRIPTION>]
Examples:
- "MAB PodHD JP MkIIC+ Ld" - MeAmBobbo Pod HD patch seeking to recreate a John Petrucci Mark IIC+ Lead tone
- "MAB PodHD Rect 4" - MeAmBobbo Pod HD patch, 4th rig of the Rectifier model in pack
- "MAB 5150 MarsT75 SM57" - MeAmBobbo 5150 amp through a Marshall cab with T75 speakers, mic'ed with an SM-57
I like to use capital letters together for acronyms or initials, but otherwise use a capital only for the first letter of a word, which allows similar categories of words to be mushed together (ex. "AmbLd" for ambient lead).
When I initially name a rig, I'm not super careful to get everything right or add every detail - I can add that later via Rig Manager. I just need enough to know relate what I did when I created the profile; to remember the particulars or general target tone of the real rig.
Tagging
Do not overlook tagging, especially if you plan to share your profiles with others. This is how you fully document what you have profiled. It also allows much easier searching for profiles via Rig Manager, which looks at all the available tags in addition to the rig name.
I like to enter all the tags for a new profile immediately after creating the profile in Rig Manager - this is far quicker and easier than using the soft knobs. Be sure to press enter after completing a tag, or Rig Manager won't write it to the rig. If you are doing a profiling session with most tags exactly the same, be sure to do the tags for the first one before moving on to the rest of the session. New profiles will carry forward the tags from the current rig (in this case the first profile). If you forget, Rig Manager can allow updating tags on multiple rigs simultaneously - select multiple rigs, then edit them as usual.
Don't just fill out the rig section. If you save the amp or cab profiles as presets, they will save their respective tags, so that if you load them on other profiles, you can see the exact details of how the amp/cab was profiled.
Be sure to write whether an amp/cab is studio or merged (or direct). I like to use the amp/cab comments tags for this purpose, so that they will follow the amp/cab as presets.