How do you guys use performances? - Kemper Profiler Forum (2024)

I'm currently using one performance patch per song with my band, and it's dawning on me that that might not be the best thing to do.

Do you use one patch with a clean > crunch> gain > lead > "special (like a wacky OTT lead sound or a tonne of effects you don't otherwise use)", or do you use one performance patch per song? Do you have as many patches as you have guitars and tweak to fit that guitar's personality?

If you use one performance patch per song using different amps/cabs etc. how do you keep your level consistent throughout your set?

I have sort of a basic setup as follows:

1 - clean

2 - clean 2

3 - crunch

4 - hot crunch / lead

5 - lead - solo

Sometimes (if I am using timed delay) I use that standard performance with timed delay and song specific effects options for that specific song.

I have approx 30+ performances based on various amps/cabs. I play in a cover band.

I used my P90 based guitar to choose the right profile within those performances for each song.

Each performance is pretty much setup like TomR above^^^

I ran through each song and assigned the correct profile via Midi.

Now I can choose the song on my tablet, and the profiler jumps to the correct performance slot.

If I need more or less gain it's a simple tap to the left or right on the foot controller.

I'm running the Kabinet through a SD700 amp, so if I change guitars (and I do) I can quickly adjust the EQ on the amp and guitars.

Lately I've been taking one guitar and finding rigs that are exceptional with it. Performances for the particular Guitars.

Ideas seem to arrive sooner when the combination fires me up.

I couldn't agree more. That's in my opinion one of the biggest advantages of the Kemper that most profiles react very sensitively to different guitars. It sometimes drives you up the walls but as soon as you find a profile that really supports the character of a certain guitar it is so amazing and inspiring.

I told the story a few weeks ago in the German forum: I own a Vintage Blugocaster which I had used excessively for bluesy and funky stuff until I got my Kemper. It used to have a good amount of sparkly high frequencies and a "smoky" feeling when it came to the neck pick up.

When I used it with the profiles I had chosen and dialed in to my needs with my other guitars, it sounded flat and lifeless - partly because the pickups don't have much output, so I used other guitars instead and thought of selling the guitar.
One day I picked it up again and stumbled over some AC30 profiles for clean and crunchy sounds and the guitar sound started to breathe. I also found an Orange profile for distorted sounds and I was amazed how deep and complex this guitar could sound. There is a growly and dirty tone underneath when using the neck pickup with the Orange, and in that performance all profiles cut through the mix easily . I tried some Tone Junkie Mesa profiles with that guitar and it simply didn't work. But I bought a PRS SE Custom very cheaply a few months ago and this one is a real killer with the Mesa profiles - and with a slightly altered setup of the AC30/Orange Performance. And of course I dedicated two performances to the PRS.
Why do I tell that in this thread? Well, some performances are there for certain songs or bands. Some are bread and butter performances that suit everything else but the songs that are covered by the special ones. So one goes more into the funky direction, one performance is a bit more bluesy one tends to be most useful when you really want to do hard rock. Some are tailor made for certain guitars and one performance could be deleted but I keep it ... you never know...

As per above. I'm in 2 bands and I have 3 performances. I have 2 performances for one band purely because I use 2 guitars that are very different ( Les Paul and white Falcon).

I really don't get why people would have a different performance per song, its massive overkill I feel, too much tap dancing and maintenance. There is so much variation available in a performance anyway. In a covers band you don't change guitar, pick, cab etc for every song, why profile? regular amps normally have 2 or 3 channels, why go from that to effectively 50 channels just because you can. ...Just my view...

My slots are:

Clean

Clean with a bit of drive

Rhythm

Rhythm with effects ( I have a few songs where the base sound starts with effects

solo

All slots have a morph, which add a bit of boost for riffs, except solo which has some delay for longer solo notes...

I have stomps for each slot as well for particular effects, including wah on permanently but set to @bypass stop.

I agree the KPA is more sensitive than other amps on showing guitar differences although I think that's more to do with FRFR than the KPA itself. Cabs have such a smoothing effect on sounds...

Quote from V8guitar

why go from that to effectively 50 channels just because you can

Good one ...besides that we're all hunters for good profiles we're probably all show guys who want to present their assets

Seriously. All being said above is good advice. Personally I just have a handful of Performances for my work in the band. Definitely not a single one per song and definitely not all with a full set of clean/crunch/solo stuff. I limit the amount of different amps in my performance for live use down to a small handful to keep live sound consistent and the rest goes well via stomps, effects and morphing.

I think somebody else brought this up as well some time ago: When it gets very dark or very wild on stage I sometimes have a challenge to hit the upper row of switches on the remote properly. And I am not especially tall or do have large feet. Standard medium size I'd say. Thus I tend to not squeeze everything into one slot for the sake of less performances. Sometimes I create Performance which has sounds allocated to the 5 slots which could be achieved by stomp/effect switching as well just to have the convenience and risk-management in place.

And by the way I use Performances also at home and in my studio work. Without the need to switch via remote but to have things bundled together and to easily adjust the rigs in the slots to my needs. That great Kemper machine gives you many brilliant options to optimize creative workflow...

Quote from deadman42

I limit the amount of different amps in my performance for live use down to a small handful to keep live sound consistent...

I wish I was that disciplined. For me it's more like "Oh come on! That one sounds terrific. Let's break the rule and putr it in." Always!

Quote from frankdeike

I wish I was that disciplined. For me it's more like "Oh come on! That one sounds terrific. Let's break the rule and putr it in." Always!

Its funny but I have the opposite problem...

I decide I'm goign to try some different profiles. I go through a load ( RM or commercial), find some really great ones. I put them into a folder to narrow them down.

I go through the folder and get to about 3 or 4 ones, excited at this new sonic nirvana....

..only to compare to my original ones to find I prefer those, and bin the 3 or 4. I've then spend a copuple of days to come back to the point I started from

Quote from V8guitar

..only to compare to my original ones to find I prefer those, and bin the 3 or 4. I've then spend a copuple of days to come back to the point I started from

Isn't it great to be fully satisfied? Yes it is... nevertheless it is fair to try something new here and there. I find it very inspiring but often come back to my favorites as well

Quote from deadman42

Isn't it great to be fully satisfied? Yes it is... nevertheless it is fair to try something new here and there. I find it very inspiring but often come back to my favorites as well

I've come to the view that all guitarists have a built in desire for the endless search for the perfect sound. I've also come to realise that it does not exist, because:

• One mans perfect sound is another's most hated
• we change our minds - yesterdays perfect sound is not todays
• Our brains play tricks on us - we believe valve sounds better because we have been conditioned to, but in a blind test we can't tell the difference
• Most of us are deaf having played at stupid volumes for 300 years

Gimmie That Tone Man!

Like most of the comments above, I use one performance (5 slots) for most of what I do.

For songs that require something out of the ordinary, I have a couple of performances with specific settings for specific songs. In my case, I have 10 songs that I have done this with, so that takes up two performances of 5 slots. Each night, I make notes on my setlist so that I know which performance and slot to go to for any of those songs. My main performance is performance 1 and the song specific performances are 2 and 3. That makes it easy to get back and forth between them.

I have one performance where the whole performance is dedicated to one song. I didn't want to do that. I was using one slot and then trying to morph between different settings for that song, but it never was quite right. So, I bit the bullet, and made one performance of 3 slots for that song. It works much better than the morphing I was doing prior. That is performance 4.

So, I am keeping it as simple (stupid) as I can. But, yeah, I change the rigs in my main performance sometimes also.

Interesting how many of us have used the same basic idea:

1) Cleanest rig on the left

2) Heaviest Rig on the right

3) Various levels of heavy between left and right.

What I do:

One Performance:

1) Natural Clean

2) Pushed Clean

3) Classic Rock Rhythm

4) Heavy Rhythm

5) Lead

Second Performance:

1) Chimey Clean

Similar 2-5 as above, but geared more toward AC/DC type of distortions.

A few other performances especially designed for specific songs. Examples:

1) U2 Streets, 2) U2 Pride, 3) U2 With or Without you.

OR

1) Cake by the Ocean, .... you get the idea

For special tones, I have a hand full of performances that hold those settings. I spend most of the time on the general performances.

Also, I keep the right most effect in the chain, and the right most effect button on the pedal set to a pure boost. This comes in very handy for precise changes in volume from in the background, to more up front, or from rhythm to lead.

I mainly use.........

Main distorted rhythm on the first switch. That way, I can I locate it in the dark through dry ice or smoke machines by simply putting my foot on the side of the board and finding the first switch. Done this since my Bradshaw days. It’s a safe home switch for me.
Second switch is always solo sound

Third is generally clean or semi clean

Fourth is long delays for intros or harmony solos

Five is specialist sounds like Leslie sounds or whatever.
I normally have a performance per song
I disable any unused slots.

I use one amp per performance, and the slots are (1) Clean, (2) Edge of Breakup, (3) Oberdrive (Tube Screamer), and (4) Distortion (Rat). I haven’t ventured out to the fifth slot yet, but I’m thinking either a fuzz slot or a misc. slot for weird sounds. Although I use the same amp, each slot usually has a different gain stage of that amp, so the drives aren’t solely responsible for adding gain to the profile, but rather just a little bit of gain and a little bit of EQ. Drive pedals get a lot of their sound by boosting the amp, so I replicate that by using a higher gained profile.

Each slot’s effects are identical (with the exception of drives and EQs, which obviously depend on the specific slot). Each slot has a compressor, octave, tremolo, chorus, and a stereo loop, so I can run a loop to my Timeline and Big Sky. The octave, tremolo, and chorus are all assigned to one of the four hot buttons, and the rest are always on. The fourth hot button is currently empty, but I’m taking applications. I then assign a 2db volume boost to each slot, which is controlled via instant morph by clicking the main number switch a second time. This allows me to toggle between normal and boosted volume really easily.

Since I have to do ability to make as many performances as I want, I cater the EQ of each performance to a specific guitar, and I just put the guitars name in the comments

Performance 1 - 5 are my standard go-to sounds.

Performances 6 - 128 are song specific.

I use an Android app called Bandhelper that I arrange my setlist with. My phone sits in a holder on my stand. It sends MIDI per song change to call the Performance per song. Probably half the songs use my standard go-to performance patches but the rest are specific to the song. I have hundreds of songs loaded into the app with lyrics and MIDI patch #s per song. The app allows separate projects (bands). I can override the setlist and change to any song in the fly. I never tap dance in the Kemper Remote between songs.

Quote from deadman42

I think somebody else brought this up as well some time ago: When it gets very dark or very wild on stage I sometimes have a challenge to hit the upper row of switches on the remote properly.

Quote from Vinny Burns

Main distorted rhythm on the first switch. That way, I can I locate it in the dark through dry ice or smoke machines by simply putting my foot on the side of the board and finding the first switch.

This. Exactly my point as well and I remember when you Vinny Burns brought this up in your story about the ShipRocked and how much the ship did for you

And by the way I also have different sequence then clean/crunch and co. I usually start in slot 1 with my main rythm sound as well. Sometimes no clean in the performance, mostly clean in slot 4 or 5 then