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→Gain Staging and Clipping
'''Be wary of rigs in the Rig Exchange that may be clipping.''' There are lots that have the Volume turned up or use Boost effects post-stack that push the volume too high. Just turn down Volume and see if the tone cleans up. Even a heavily distorted tone will sound bad (or at least harsher than it should) if subjected to this kind of clipping.
== Post EQ ==
Loop some drums and bass while dialing in your tone. If you are creating a track, definitely reamp - you will hear things much better when you aren't playing. My philosophy is that a good tone should sound good in all situations - low volume, high volume, inside, and outside a mix. But a great tone will always sound great in a mix at a high volume, and honestly it's more important to sound good in a mix than good solo. Pulling that tone outside the mix and lowering the volume may reduce its charm, but you'll still be able to tell its a good tone. Comparatively, a "killer" tone you dialed up in the headphones at low volume outside a mix is more likely to sound like garbage inside a mix than if you took the opposite approach. If you absolutely can't get your own drums and bass or even find a suitable backing track, you can import a track from ___ band you like the sound of - in this case, pan that track 50% L and pan your guitar sound 50% R to get some separation. Now you can tweak EQ and really hear how it affects the sound in a mix.
Always set the ToneStack EQ controls before adding a Graphic/Studio EQ effect. Save those for fine-tuning. In some cases you might not need one at all, and this will free up an effects slot.
It's a good idea to browse through the EQ presets that come factory with the Kemper. There's a cut-through-the-mix setting that is a good template to help a tone fit a mix. It is essentially boosting around 1.5 kHZ, with smaller boosts to the surrounding areas with more focus around 1 kHZ. I have found moving this peak upwards can get you a thin-sounding tone, but sometimes this works perfectly for a lead, where you want to cut through with a sharp edge to the tone. Sometimes, I find I prefer a lower-midrange peak, but be careful not to add too much of that boominess that resides at the high-end of the bass frequencies.
Another piece of advice is to move the tone stack controls in opposite directions. For example, I may want to boost mids, so I cut bass to prevent too much lower mid-range woofiness or boominess to the tone. Similarly, you can boost treble but back off presence to get a brighter tone but without too much top-end sizzle.
Sometimes tweaking EQ leads you to believe you improved the tone, when what you are enjoying is the added volume. Try to compensate final volume every time you make an EQ change. This will keep you honest about your tweaks.
If you demo a bunch of the most praised metal profiles out there (Lasse Lammert, Ola Englund, and Keith Merrow's rig packs), you'll notice they are all very different sounding. Keith's tones are very upper-midrange focused, Ola's are kind of thin-sounding, and Lasse's are more wide-open but they cover a lot of different ground from one rig to the next. Playing solo guitar on these rigs can definitely sound very off-putting. But if you listen to any of their mixes, the tone is big and powerful and pretty natural-sounding. This just comes back to mixing, which always requires context.
So for example, if your mix has keyboards, bass, drums, and vocals, you need all the instruments to find their spot in the mix. If you EQ'ed every instrument to sound flat accross all frequencies, the resulting mix would sound awful. Everything would be "on top" of each other, and "fighting for space" in the mix. This is even more the case for heavy metal music, where the playing is fast and technical and leaves little space. But that doesn't mean boost the kick drum at X frequency, the bass at Y frequency, and the guitar at Z frequency. The numbers are arbitrary. One mix might like to emphasize bass around 200 HZ, which means the guitars will likely need to dip around there. The guitars would then have very little punch and sound very thin on their own. Another mix might emphasize bass around 100 HZ. Now there's room for the guitars to have more punch. So it's a real balancing act, and there's a reason there are people paid to professionally mix albums.
As a learning experience, I'd advise you to do the looping/reamping suggestion I mentioned above, where you can hear your guitar tone in a mix. First tweak the BMTP knobs to get the guitars to sound balanced - not too bright and not too dark with the right amount of overall midrange. Now use the Studio EQ and set one of the mid-bands to +6 db. Now sweep the frequency up and down slowly. Every now and then toggle the EQ on/off. See which frequencies help the guitars cut through and sit nicely the mix. When you've found good frequencies, you should be able to reduce the guitar volume and the mix will still be nice and full-sounding, but the guitars will have more clarity. Try the same test but use -6db; determine which removed frequencies help make the guitars clearer. This will give you starting points on how to think about EQ'ing. You may find a spot that has the biggest impact on the tone - now you have to figure out how wide/narrow and how large your boost/cut should be. Start with subtle changes.
Always remember to try toggling your EQ on/off every now and then to see what it's actually doing and how it's contributing. Also, if you are boosting a lot via an EQ effect, try turning the Volume parameter down a bit. Sometimes you THINK you like an EQ setting, but it's only because it's boosting the volume. A good EQ tweak should sound good even when it is reducing the overall volume of the guitars.
Also, you have to think about multi-tracking. Most metal rhythm guitars are double-tracked and sometimes quad-tracked. This will make a thin-sounding tone sound a bit thicker and dial back some harshness. If a tone seems a bit harsh and cold, try double-tracking it before tweaking. If you can't double-track, a frequently used trick is to use a delay with the minimum time and feedback settings to fake a 2nd guitar sound.
Remember that most bedroom tones you tweak outside of a mix tend to have more distortion and less midrange than tones that work well in a mix. Many of the guitar tracks on albums can sound a bit dull and weak on their own. This doesn't mean you should try to make your tone dull and weak; only that it gives you a starting suggestion - if your guitars sound too harsh or lack clarity in a mix, start by trying to reduce distortion and add some midrange.