powered profiler review
I recently decided to take the plunge on a powered Kemper - and long story short, my unpowered toaster will be for sale soon. Yep, I'm going powered full time. Here are a few technical specs, some of which I had to look up in the documentation:
600 watts at 8 ohms, 300 watts at 16 ohms, and even though the back only shows 16 and 8 ohms output, you CAN hook up a 4 ohm cab. Difference is, it may make the Kemper overload at extreme settings and reset/lose output power momentarily. I never had this happen, but it's something to consider. First, a little history. I ran my first Kemper with external power amps into guitar cabs as early as 2013 and also made profiles 'direct only' to push the envelope of what I could do with it. It sounded pretty good, I tried a Crown power amp, a Rocktron Velocity 300, a VHT 2/90/2, a Randall RT 2/50 and power sections of Diezel, Bogner, Mesa and Marshall tube amps. (ran Kemper into the fx return, or power amp input).It sounded ok. Not amazing, not bad... but not good enough to wean me away from using a full range monitor. I don't know what voodoo Kemper does, but the internal power amp sounds better than using an external one with a non powered kemper. If I had known this earlier I would have taken the plunge sooner too. If you have good profiles, and want a 'in the room' amp sound and are running a guitar cab, This is your solution. Here are some pros and cons to this approach: |
pros
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Nothing moves air like a 4x12, and you get that low end woody 'knock' with a good cab.
Sounds like the amp you have a profile of, just through the cab you're using Plenty of volume for gigs, but also works as a great master volume too - volume of the Kemper is very smooth, so there is no giant 'jump' from nothing to loud like some Tube amps have. |
cons
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Whatever Cab you use is going to color all of your tones and you'll lose some of what made your profiles different. In other words, play through a Marshall 4x12 cab and it's going to take away some of that Fender color from your Fender Profiles. Reverse is also true - if you play through a open back 2x12, then you'll lose some of what made the Marshall Profiles special.
Power amp is mono, not stereo. |
Profile sets below have specific Direct or Merged (or both) content. ALL of my profiles work well with a powered profiler, but these have direct out content that was taken from a line out, either from an external device or the line out from the amp. Profiles that do not have this are sorted by direct and miked content within the Kemper, which may not be as accurate. As always, feel free to contact me via email if you have any questions!