Kemper Profiling Amp Kemper

The Kemper Profiling Amplifier is not another modeling amp! The Kemper uses special technology to capture the sound and soul of your own boutique tube guitar amplifiers (and/or any other amps you can get your hands on) inside one lunchbox-sized amplifier. How does it work? The Kemper uses cutting edge technology to capture the sonic DNA of virtually any guitar amp. The resulting Profiles are as alive, vivid and dynamic as the original amps they were made from.

Imagine that you used (or want to use) a pile of sweet-sounding, vintage tube amps in a studio session: With the Kemper Profiling Amplifier, you can create your own Profiles of these actual amps (or download and share existing profiles with other users) and take them with you to use anywhere and anytime you like. Variations with alternative settings and even cabinets can be exchanged at any time. Dozens of pro-grade onboard effects and stomp boxes can also be used to spice up the Profiles. Profiles of many exceptional amps are already included.

Any amp. Any time. Anywhere. We mean it.

“Profiling” is what the folks at Kemper have named the proprietary technology that captures the sound and feel of a specific tube amplifier. In other words, the Kemper Profiling Amplifier doesn’t simply give you a list of static digital amplifier reproductions. Instead, profiling creates a vivid, living, dynamic and multi-dimensional image of your existing tube amp.

Profiling is as simple as plugging your tube amp into the Kemper Profiling Amplifier and pressing ‘record.’ Just insert the Kemper Profiling amplifier into the recording chain and it will do its magic. Test signals are sent from the Kemper Profiler Amplifier into your tube amp and recorded by the microphone in front of your cabinet.

You don’t even have to play your guitar. After less than a minute the Kemper Profiling Amplifier acquires the sonic DNA of your tube amp and offers you the resulting custom profile. You can then use the A/B comparison mode to compare original tube amp sound with the profiled sound.This gives you a fast and convenient way to make final tweaks to the profile to get it exactly right.

Amp Controls

The Kemper Profiling Amplifier includes the standard Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble and Presence controls that you would expect from an guitar amplifier. However, in contrast to many vintage amps, we have kept the gain control neutral, so you are able to find the sweet spot of your amp, and run this optimal sound at any gain level.

The gain control ranges over 80dB and features an automatic volume compensation for clean settings.

Now, imagine if you could change the sonic character of a profile beyond what’s possible with the amp itself… What if you could change the sonic age of the amp, or the bite of the pick? What if you could modify the power supply of your profiled amp in order to benefit from power sagging or be larger than life? With the Kemper Profiling Amplifier, you can! The Kemper Profiler allows you to dynamically adjust key aspects of your favorite amps- From minor tweaks, to more radical changes- such as adding some modern high gain chunk to a vintage Fender Bassman.

Control way beyond the usual

• The Amp Definition parameter determines whether the Profile leans more towards a vintage or modern character. Increase this parameter to intensify the touch response of the virtual tubes.
• Power Sagging: this parameter lets the tubes breathe with your playing; damped strings will have more ”chug,” and clean, picked notes will cut through better when you reduce your playing volume.
• The Pick parameter controls the attack of your pick independently of the gain setting—even through heavy distortion. This innovative parameter lets you decouple your pick sound from the natural compression of the distorting tubes and cut right through the mix.
• The Amp Compressor will sustain the clean guitar when you play soft, but lets the distorted sound through, unprocessed, when you revert back to normal playing volume.
• The Cabinet Voicing parameters give you access to the guts and the character of the cabinet. You can change the size of your virtual cabinet, tune the bass resonance or control the tonal character in an creative way.

Thanks to a Hi-Z input optimized for passive guitar pickups, the Kemper Profiling Amplifier offers a crystal clear signal path. It uses only professional-grade analog components to ensure that your guitar tone remains unchanged.

We include a single-knob smart noise gate on the front panel that is completely transparent. It’s faster than any other noise gate we have experienced and doesn’t need an adjustment of the release time. Damping a string results in immediate silence.

The Kemper Profiling Amplifier features two independent main outputs which can be used in multiple ways. The mains feature a balanced studio level connection and a parallel pair or TSRs. The monitor output optionally provides the amplifier’s sound without the cabinet. This proves beneficial for musicians with an existing power amp / cabinet on stage.

 

In order to seamlessly integrate the Kemper Profiling Amplifier into an existing studio and live sound environment, it includes several ground lifts to easily deal with possible hum and grounding problems

Analog endless potentiometers

The analogue endless potentiometers offer the best of both worlds. They provide the smooth feel and high resolution of an analog pot, yet are as intuitive to use as a rotary encoder. Need to increase a value? Simply turn the knob to the right – no need to worry about the current position. You have precise control over your sound, yet can still make extreme value changes with a single rotation. In other words, those are engineered for musicians, not for technicians.

LED color code

The status lights of the stomp boxes and effects on the front panel can change their color depending on the category of effect chosen. For instance, distortion effects are red, compressors are represented by a turquoise LED. This little details enhances your overview greatly. You can literally just look at the Profiler without reading the display and you already know which stomp boxes shape the sound.

Undo

When designing sounds, you often move one step forward and two step back again. As one idea triggers the next one you refine your original idea and change your mind. The Kemper Profiling Amp offers multiple undo and redo steps so you can always return to a previous stage. It also introduces the concept of snapshots.

Snapshots are backups of entire rigs and those are automatically generated for everything that would be lost otherwise. For instance, a snapshot is created when you store over an existing rig. This way you can go back to what you’ve overwritten earlier on at any point in time.

More to come…