Another Eternal Question. Amp or Guitar?

[dmatthews]

Amp. Where was Les in 1979 to help me understand this earlier? Seriously, back then, these were trade secrets that NO ONE shared and it took me 10 years to figure out. Tons of stage time, pickups, bad stomp boxes, and copious amounts of frustration…not to mention bad amp decisions.

The guitar helps me be me. The amp helps me sound like me. (And as you’ve heard, that’s not exactly a desirable thing for most)

My amps define me. Heck, just look at my name! But I also have a Kemper that has changed my musical life for the better. It’s a compromise, but I’m not dropping big coin every time I need to scratch the amp itch! Like it or not, I’ve done good things - for me - with the Kemper.

Special note: I’ve not profiled my Super Dallas well for the Kemper. I gave up after a gallant attempt. There’s an open invitation by a heavy cat in the Kemper world to do it for me, which I’ll accept once this pandemic crap subsides. Until then, the Kemper doesn’t even come close.

I'd buy that pack if he makes it.

 

[11top]

According to their ad/PR firms, mission accomplished!

You make an excellent point.
However, that Vaughn Wamsley jingle (Boogie knows) makes me want to pull a John Bellushi on the stairwell.

 

[László]

I appreciate your points. One of the beauties of the Kemper is that each output - headphones, main/FOH, and monitor - have their own level controls and master EQ. If we’re playing a dive bar with house PA, we’ll use our own for continuity. With my amps, I’d be attempting to tweak the board for each venue because you don’t dare change the amp. You know, continuity. But we rarely had a sound guy to do this stuff for us and I felt our sound from venue to venue suffered. The Kemper made continuity a reality. No changes to what I heard, and the FOH got the same levels and EQ as the others…with the advent of making EQ changes an easy possibility. No tube fade, heat exhaustion, or other tonal shift of the tube amps due to either being in A/C, outdoors in 105F and 95% humidity, or baking under a traditional incandescent light system. It just works the same every time. Thats what sold me.

Oh, and Michael Britt makes some amazing profiles that sound blissful, even with me playing.

You're a good player, so I'm not surprised that you make them sound good!

 

[László]

He does. They are all I have on my Kemper: about 1,600 of them.

How many do you use?

 

[László]

Les, You need to be writing some scores for the lawyers who advertise on TV during mid-afternoon soap operas. Some of the worst music jingles I’ve ever heard. And, once those earworms are in your head, there is no escape!

Here the lawyers advertise so much that a friend who advertises licenses for-real, hit songs. The production quality is sometimes awful for these folks, but sometimes, as with my friend, amazingly good.

 

[veinbuster]

How many do you use?

None of them at home.
There are a dozen or so that I favour while playing through headphones on vacation. I kind of treat it like a science project.

 

[markd21]

Well, as much as love amps and guitars, I have to admit I am pretty happy with having one "Swiss Army" guitar and a Helix Rack.

 

[Tucson Thump]

In 1979 I was getting a law firm underway rather obsessively. I knew nothing of tone. My priorities were beyond screwed up.

Of course, because you were concentrating on tort, not tone.

 

[László]

None of them at home.
There are a dozen or so that I favour while playing through headphones on vacation. I kind of treat it like a science project.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been someone's idea of a science experiment.

Of course, because you were concentrating on tort, not tone.

Too many torts, not enough tarts.

 

[veinbuster]

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been someone's idea of a science experiment.

And we probably aren’t even what is being studied.

 

[László]

And we probably aren’t even what is being studied.

So true!

 

[SinSir]

In New York they ran out of real estate, so they started building tall buildings to cram more people/businesses in. Recently, I had to add more storage space to my studio, and didn't have much floor space I wanted to give up. The solution was to replace my existing storage cabinets with taller cabinets.

My solution will be to put it on my rack's top shelf and use my head/cabinet switcher to get double duty from my HXDA cab. Voila!



Yes, I completely agree. The cabs are hugely important, and when I talk about amps, I should specify that for me the two things compose a single system. I have that amp and cab switcher to experiment with different tones. It makes a difference in how I use amps (and it's so simple and fast!).

The thing about amps is that they're all about generating harmonic frequencies when they start to break up. Every amp does that a little differently. They have different transformers, power levels, tubes and tone stacks. So they do sound fundamentally different from one another.

My theory is that everything affects the tone, guitar, cab, amp, plus whatever else is in the chain, right down to the cables. Then there's the mic, the mic cable, the mic preamp...



Great gadget, but...not really an amp! Bahahaha! (If I lived in an apartment, I'd of course need one, too).

We need to start a Les go fund me kemper page.. I for one would like an audiophile like you to model a good profile of that HXDA!

 

[tiboy]

We need to start a Les go fund me kemper page.. I for one would like an audiophile like you to model a good profile of that HXDA!

Skip the Go Fund Me. Let’s go straight to an intervention. Even if it fails we’ll get together and track mud into Les’s pristine studio.

 

[Alnus Rubra]

Skip the Go Fund Me. Let’s go straight to an intervention. Even if it fails we’ll get together and track mud into Les’s pristine studio.

Then it really will be Studio Craptastic

 

[Boogie]

I want Les to stay a purist. Him getting a Kemper might reverse the earth’s polarity then we’ll have to rotate our pickup’s magnets. Huge PITA.

 

[Alnus Rubra]

I want Les to stay a purist. Him getting a Kemper might reverse the earth’s polarity then we’ll have to rotate our pickup’s magnets. Huge PITA.

Just think of all that toothpaste water that will rotate the other way!

 

[Boogie]

Just think of all that toothpaste water that will rotate the other way!

I was thinking more of the poop, but, ok.

 

[Alnus Rubra]

I was thinking more of the poop, but, ok.

Yeah I could bring myself to type that!

 

[László]

We need to start a Les go fund me kemper page.. I for one would like an audiophile like you to model a good profile of that HXDA!

Nah, hang onto the money, I don't want to own one. BUT...if you need an HXDA profile, come visit with your Kemper some time, and we can try to create one.

Skip the Go Fund Me. Let’s go straight to an intervention. Even if it fails we’ll get together and track mud into Les’s pristine studio.

You'd make a grown man weep. I just got a sweet new Persian rug for it.

I want Les to stay a purist. Him getting a Kemper might reverse the earth’s polarity then we’ll have to rotate our pickup’s magnets. Huge PITA.

Hahaha! So true!

 

[HANGAR18]

I'm in the "amp makes a bigger tone difference than guitar" camp, unless...

The contributions of the amp to the overall tone FAR outweigh the contributions which are provided by the guitar or any of the individual ingredients which went into building of the guitar.

Here's the rule... (which I suspect you already know)

You can take a great guitar and plug it into a crappy amp which will result in a crappy sounding guitar.
Then you can take a crappy guitar and plug it into a great amp which will result in a great sounding guitar.