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Andertons Kemper Blind Test (Chappers and the Captain)


LucSulla

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I watched this earlier and am glad I decided to buy one! Why have one over-expensive but brilliant valve amp when you can have 100's of digital one's for the same price?

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1 minute ago, Vic Croll (Concrete Sox) said:

I watched this earlier and am glad I decided to buy one! Why have one over-expensive but brilliant valve amp when you can have 100's of digital one's for the same price?

Some people have serious problems with work-avoidance and all those knobs, bells, and whistles are like an impenetrable thicket...  or a gooey honeypot snare... between them and actually making music.

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1 hour ago, gtrdaddy said:

Pretty damn impressive. I would really like to hear more clean, low gain, and low-medium gain comparisons. Definitely sounds great with high gain.

I make the comment about low-gain comparisons because so many of the demos focus the majority of time on higher gain sounds. They may spend a few mins strumming some light chords with low gain, or clean, but I'd like to hear some extended clean and low-gain lead tones compared. I don't think I've ever seen significant time spent in the low-gain realm for direct comparisons. I've owned an Eleven Rack, I've limited experience with Fractal, and none with Kemper. On the Eleven Rack, the higher gain sounds were great. I wasn't sold at all on the cleaner tones. Feel was completely different. Same with the small time I spent on a Fractal rig. Can't speak for Kemper play time, but dang it, how about some juicy low gain electric blues or jazz blues sounds?

I think why they chose the tones that they did is because they weren't exactly demoing the amp.  They were comparing it to Chappers' (guy on left) two basic tones he uses in his touring setup in order to determine if he would be satisfied leaving his clean and dirty rigs at home and just taking a Kemper.  So on the one hand, you certainly don't get the range of tones.  On the other hand, you do get a working guitarist comparing his actual sounds in the rig he uses every day to what the Kemper reproduces.  The fact it fooled him I thought was impressive. 

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1 hour ago, gtrdaddy said:

I completely agree. My comment about other tone comparisons wasn't targeted at this video specifically; I'm speaking in more general terms, it's difficult to find in depth comparisons similar to that which I've suggested above. Kind of frustrating for a low gain, grooving kind of guy... that's all ;-)

Are there any seemingly reliable demos showing a Kemper producing a convincing early JMP tone? To me, that would be the litmus test. 

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18 minutes ago, Armitage said:

Is it just me, or do Chappers and the Captain like everything they sell?

I don't find that to be true, necessarily.  Look up the Mesa cab clone videos.  

In general, I think they give pretty honest reviews for a guy who owns a music store and can't piss off his distributors.  Their blind guitar shoot outs are really interesting as well as the "Sound Like" series, which generally try to get as close as you can to famous tones for cheap.  They have a Page and and a Gilmour version where they go all out and note in both of those videos why better gear usually just sounds better. 

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5 hours ago, scottcald said:

 

11 hours ago, Armitage said:

Is it just me, or do Chappers and the Captain like everything they sell?

Well, if it was your store, would you tell anyone some of the stuff you sell isn't good?

 

It may also be a case of them doing promo videos only/mostly on those new products that they like.  The "bad" ones don't get promo videos.

But, I have seen them do videos in which their praise is faint or qualified.

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The more I see / read, the more interested I become. 

I keep looking at additional amps and then quit when the thought occurs to me, 'for the same price I can get a Kemper...' 

Once you start adding the (surprisingly reasonable) MBritt profiles, I'm not sure buying another amp makes sense.

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On ‎9‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 3:39 PM, gtrdaddy said:

Pretty damn impressive. I would really like to hear more clean, low gain, and low-medium gain comparisons. Definitely sounds great with high gain.

I make the comment about low-gain comparisons because so many of the demos focus the majority of time on higher gain sounds. They may spend a few mins strumming some light chords with low gain, or clean, but I'd like to hear some extended clean and low-gain lead tones compared. I don't think I've ever seen significant time spent in the low-gain realm for direct comparisons. I've owned an Eleven Rack, I've limited experience with Fractal, and none with Kemper. On the Eleven Rack, the higher gain sounds were great. I wasn't sold at all on the cleaner tones. Feel was completely different. Same with the small time I spent on a Fractal rig. Can't speak for Kemper play time, but dang it, how about some juicy low gain electric blues or jazz blues sounds?

Not a Kemper but digital low gain and clean. I have a nice tube amp sitting that hasn't been turned on in over a year. Used to have five of them. Really just comes down to personal preference and what you are doing. They all sound pretty damn good.

 

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You guys do realize that when you hear a Kemper profile you are HEARING THE ACTUAL AMP. It's not a software emulation, "tone matching" or a system of circuits designed to give am amp-like feel. It's "profiling"an amplifier.

I don't give a fuck about how an amp sounds "in the room"... that is meaningless because if you cant record it... it doesn't fucking exist... it's just some guy "playing in a room".

Playing in a room never meant anything to me...hell I consistently have an amp in one room and stand and play in another... I am rarely in the same "room" as my amp.

So of course there are legitimate JMP profiles out there, I own many of them and they sound incredible!

NOBODY does this bloody reviews with a db meter... the amps have to put out exactly the same dbs to accurately assess if we like one over the other... louder will ALWAYS mean "better" to human ears.

To me the Kemper is a HUUUUGE money saver... sooo many amps for just one price.

 

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7 minutes ago, zenmindbeginner said:

You guys do realize that when you hear a Kemper profile you are HEARING THE ACTUAL AMP. It's not a software emulation, "tone matching" or a system of circuits designed to give am amp-like feel. It's "profiling"an amplifier.

I don't give a fuck about how an amp sounds "in the room"... that is meaningless because if you cant record it... it doesn't fucking exist... it's just some guy "playing in a room".

Playing in a room never meant anything to me...hell I consistently have an amp in one room and stand and play in another... I am rarely in the same "room" as my amp.

So of course there are legitimate JMP profiles out there, I own many of them and they sound incredible!

NOBODY does this bloody reviews with a db meter... the amps have to put out exactly the same dbs to accurately assess if we like one over the other... louder will ALWAYS mean "better" to human ears.

To me the Kemper is a HUUUUGE money saver... sooo many amps for just one price.

 

...But they liked the Kemper better.  :P

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I am all digital these days with the Axe FX 2.  The latest software is fantastic and it's very hard to differentiate between the sim and the real McCoy.  

For simplicity, flexibility, consistency and weight digital is the way to go these days.

I found it very hard, given the amount of wonderful valve amps I've used and owned, but aesthetics aside there is no reason I'd buy another high-end valve amp.

The Kemper and latest Axe FX units are not cheap but are great value.  I don't think some of the lesser sims/profilers are close.

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  • 1 month later...

I know I'm late coming to this post.  I owned some modeling stuff 10 years ago and tried the computer apps about 4 years ago.  A few months ago I started googling what's digitally available.  I stumbled across the Boss GT-100 and realized that's probably not much better than what I had 10 years ago.  Then I stumble across the Line 6 Helix.  Wow I love the user interface and setup.  Then I watch these two videos.  Although I've not played through a Kemper, I'm sold.  IMO the Kemper sounds better than the Helix in every online demo I listen to.  I'm not going to rush to buy a Kemper as I think the user interface can only get better.  I don't think I'll ever buy another valve amp as I think digital has now breached a hole in the valve amp dam.  Unfortunately I don't think this technology is going to help the boutique valve amp makers.  You make the boutique amp and I stick it's profile in my digital amp and now I have no use for the valve amp designer..

 

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