in an absolute refusal to be outdone....

[barrymclark]

With the Kemper's arrival, I figured Fractal would have a response...and they do. Not much info yet but there will be an Axe-FX II update that has tone matching. It seems that it will at least match the tone of your favorite guitar tones where the guitar tone is isolated in the recording. Some believe it will also do something not unlike the Kemper Profiler.

 

Here is first run. Not bad for a first offering.

 

www.fractalaudio.com/tmp/amp_match_preview.mp3

 

They tend to tweak these functions as they go so it will only get better.

 

For those with such sensibilities, I believe the Axe-FX and all of its internals are MIA. Rarity these days for such an item.

 

They make it damn hard to not sell 2 of your 3 kids for one.

[barrymclark]

yep, it has two modes: tone mode and amp mode. Amp mode imitates an amp's sound. Tone mode can match an isolated guitar track like the beginning of Limelight or something.

[Kuz]

I have been reading a lot about the Kemper unit and, in my opinion, it has some major drawbacks that others are seeing as well.

 

The Kemper unit will only sound as good as;

1) The amp modeled

2) The person's skills modeling the real amp (dialing in the real amp's tone first)

3) The quality of the mic used to model the amp and the person's amp micing skills

4) You have to model the real amp at a clean setting, a dirty setting, a distorted setting, ect.... (only fine adjustments are available I guess)

 

If Kemper was smart (and this I really can't understand) they would have modeled all the real amps with super high quality mics. In other words, the internal presets from the Kemper unit should be incredible. There shouldn't need to be a reason to model your amp if they already modeled it correctly. From what I read, the "presets of internal Kemper modeled amps" are not that impressive compared to the modeled amps that owners are making. To be fair, the Axe-Fx presets aren't all very good either. But I was expecting this to be less of an issue with the Kemper "real amp" modeling process.

 

Many have complained that the owner modeled amps aren't very good because many people don't have good mics or good cabinet micing technique.

 

With my Axe-Fx, I can call the amp up on my laptop and with a few tweaks make it sound like the real amp with my personal guitars (different output of the pickups, single coil vs humbucker, ect). If the Kemper modeled amp was made with a Strat and not a Les Paul, I heard the adjustments available are limited.

 

For now, I am sticking with my Axe-Fx Standard, and in 8-12 months may upgrade to the Axe-Fx II.

 

Here is a clip of an AC30 with John Scofield influenced tone from the Axe-Fx Standard playing the neck pup of my 555

[barrymclark]

Yea. I hope to have one of these one day. Just sick.

[smurph1]

nice job on the Scofield!! I get so confused trying to play that kind of stuff..If it's not I IV-V I'm lost!!

[Kuz]

nice job on the Scofield!! I get so confused trying to play that kind of stuff..If it's not I IV-V I'm lost!!

 

Well, the backing track was in I-IV-V so you would be fine!!!

 

The trick is to make it sound trickier than the simply progression is!!!!!!!!

[JeffB]

I have been reading a lot about the Kemper unit and, in my opinion, it has some major drawbacks that others are seeing as well.

 

The Kemper unit will only sound as good as;

1) The amp modeled

2) The person's skills modeling the real amp (dialing in the real amp's tone first)

3) The quality of the mic used to model the amp and the person's amp micing skills

4) You have to model the real amp at a clean setting, a dirty setting, a distorted setting, ect.... (only fine adjustments are available I guess)

 

If Kemper was smart (and this I really can't understand) they would have modeled all the real amps with super high quality mics. In other words, the internal presets from the Kemper unit should be incredible. There shouldn't need to be a reason to model your amp if they already modeled it correctly. From what I read, the "presets of internal Kemper modeled amps" are not that impressive compared to the modeled amps that owners are making. To be fair, the Axe-Fx presets aren't all very good either. But I was expecting this to be less of an issue with the Kemper "real amp" modeling process.

 

Many have complained that the owner modeled amps aren't very good because many people don't have good mics or good cabinet micing technique.

 

With my Axe-Fx, I can call the amp up on my laptop and with a few tweaks make it sound like the real amp with my personal guitars (different output of the pickups, single coil vs humbucker, ect). If the Kemper modeled amp was made with a Strat and not a Les Paul, I heard the adjustments available are limited.

 

For now, I am sticking with my Axe-Fx Standard, and in 8-12 months may upgrade to the Axe-Fx II.

 

Here is a clip of an AC30 with John Scofield influenced tone from the Axe-Fx Standard playing the neck pup of my 555

http://soundcloud.co...-the-pocket-sco

My thoughts on both the Kemper and Axefx having used both but not for extended periods.

 

Modelling with the Kemper is silly easy. We casually stuck a 58 in the direction of the speaker, slightly of axis. We had the kemper sitting right next to the Mesa LSC and Royal Atlantic. We didnt even bother listening through monitors to see if we had a good sound. We have all gigged and recorded long enough to have a ball park idea of where a mic should go.

The sounds we got were not bad, they were good, for a first attempt and without trying too hard. I did another profile where I pointed the mic center of cone and the results were what you would expect from aiming a mic at that position.

BTW, we were in a room that had music playing in the background and the four of us talked through the profiling only 4-6 ft away from the mic. So even in less than optimum circumstances it is possible to get a good profile done.

In the Mesa LSC there are sounds I really like.

Clean ch: A pristine funky clean, a warm fat furry clean, a good light crunch.

Cnannel 2: A light but slightly dirty crunch, a big more saturated crunch and then a fluid saturated lead sound.

You can only access one sound from each channel at any time when gigging without having to dick around with the tone, gain and vol controls.

This is where I could see the Kemper being useful. There is enough scope in the kemper eq to make adjustment for room and band sounds.

For me the whole reason for the Kemper or any such device is so I can collect and store my own sounds. That is the point. End of story for me.

The Kemper works very good at what it does. Remarkably good. There are more than enough quality on board fx to suit me, maybe not for every one.

My time with the AxeFx was spent playing through a friends unit. He has owned both Axefx and is proficient in its use. He gets great sounds out of it.

I was impressed by it during the time I spent with it. Initial reaction was that I thought it was the best amp modeller Ive tried at that point.

But in the same room the Axefx was sitting were some nice Marshalls Fenders and Mesa's and after dicking around on the AxeFx it was nice to plug into a JCM800 or mk4 and play a real instrument.

Neither the axefx nor the Kemper are there yet. The feel of the Kemper for me is closer.

My thought this far are I will keep playing through My fender concert and stomps or my mesa or egnater and wait for both the AXeFX and Kemper to evolve. Im expecting by the time they have there will be at least one more major player to push them further along. It can only get better.

But for today the Kemper is more fun and more inline with what I would want. The Axefx is a really really good(Excellent) version of a line6 product in that it does the same job just much better. I can get some useful sounds out of most line6 products but not the quality of the Axefx and the axefx does feel better.

Im just not sold on any of it.

[barrymclark]

Here is my take... and this is speaking in generalities towards modelers because I believe the general experience applies here.

 

The Axe-FX and other modelers like Line6's HD500 and so on have FAR more stuff in it than I will ever use. However, if I were a gigging/recording musician that had to go through tons and tons of styles, the Axe-FX would be absolutely the tool to have. But, when you are limited to a handful of sounds and don't really record... it is just sort of overkill.

 

Straight up amps are closer to what I want, but they often have a very difficult time doing more than one or two tricks. There are exceptions, but they are few and generally not cheap and some even come with speaker emulated direct outs.

 

Hughes & Kettner Triamp is a Master of all Trades type of amp. It is also nearly $3k USD. Also has an emulated out. This is my dream amp. Just don't think I will ever get to where I can afford such a thing. Never heard a bad tone out of it regardless of what style it was being used for. Everyone of them is incredible.