Anyone switched from Kemper to Axe-Fx III?

SloeGin said:
Hey guys,

I live in an apartment and i am volume restricted.
I mainly play rock and metal and my amp is a Yamaha THR10.
I hardly use any effects and I'm mainly concerned about good amp tones.
I'm thinking about upgrading to something bigger and better sounding.

But I have a hard time deciding between the Kemper and Axe Fx III.
Anyone else who is volume restricted went from the Kemper to Axe Fx III and why please?



Thanks for the help!
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I had Kemper for two years - primarily because I use low-gain, edge of breakup amps like the Matchless DC30, and I mistakenly thought Axe III was only for high gain amps (I only play at church these days). I made the switch to Axe III in January and couldn't be happier. I have a Matchless HC30 IRL, and I don't feel like I'm giving up anything with the Axe III... It sounds EXACTLY like my HC30... which was never the case with the Kemper... it was close, but never quite there.

Not everyone's cup of tea (church music), but here's the Axe III in action. Nice range of tones here too... chimey, driving and some full-blown lead stuff - also, we changed the key from C to E during the morning rehearsal, so if there's wrong notes, just pretend they never happened, haha! I guess my point is, if the Axe III can do these tones this well, and the tones you want are kinda the Axe's "home base", I think you'd be disappointed with anything else:
 
strabes said:
If you're playing at home and have to use headphones or play at low volume, I would just use an interface+plugin on your computer.

I prefer the Ax3/FM3 over the Kemper for all the reasons the other posters mentioned. I really prefer the modeling paradigm over the profiling paradigm, because the knobs on the amps respond the way they do on the real amps. Kemper is an endless profile hunt, because if you want a little more gain from the amp, you have to find another profile, you can't just turn the drive knob because it instantly sounds fake because the Kemper has no way to know how the amp sounds on settings other than how they were set when the profile was made. There's also always this hope that the next Marshall profile pack will be 2% better than the thousands you've already purchased and sorted through the 90% that are just garbage. Whereas on Ax3, you just pull up the amp you want, and a couple of IRs from a matching cab (I usually go with the studio standard 57+121), and you can be confident that the amp sounds like if you had the real thing in a nice studio, perfectly mic'd it up, and listened to that signal through whatever speakers you're using. It's honestly mind blowing every time I pull up a different amp.

Kemper is also really dated in other ways: DSP power (you can't run very many blocks at the same time), signal routing (no parallel processing or different ins/outs, a single fx loop, etc), the UI is pretty rough by 2020 standards (tiny black+white screen), effects are very weak compared to Axe's, no USB audio interface, not much I/O, etc.

I'd still go back to Kemper before going back to buying and lugging real amps, but having owned most of the other popular modelers, once you have the Ax3, it's tough to go back to any other unit.
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Yep... nicely said, Alex.
 
Ive owned the Kemper and Helix. Both are excellent.

the one I still own is the AF3. It spends 95% of its time in 4cm with amps. I also use it as an interface (with load box or using the modelling).

they all work well. rather than thinking one is better than the other, think about your workflow and how you will use it.
 
SloeGin said:
Hey guys,

I live in an apartment and i am volume restricted.
I mainly play rock and metal and my amp is a Yamaha THR10.
I hardly use any effects and I'm mainly concerned about good amp tones.
I'm thinking about upgrading to something bigger and better sounding.

But I have a hard time deciding between the Kemper and Axe Fx III.
Anyone else who is volume restricted went from the Kemper to Axe Fx III and why please?



Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...
I own both the Kemper rack and the AXE FX III... they are both great units and the Kemper does have secondary stereo input for "front of house + backline setup" just like the AXE FX III.... In my mind there's only 2 things I didn't like better about the Kemper than the AXE FX III:

1- The fact that each profile is a "snapshot" of an amp at the particular settings it was set when the profiling took place... which means:
to start recreating a sound or tone you might have in your mind.... you have to look for a profile that already get's close to that before fine-tuning it.

2- The Effects are not quiet as pristine as the AXE FX III.... but you CAN place effects in front of amp just like pedals and/or also later as "post"processing.... Just like the AXE FX III.
In all fairness... this quality of the effects is not something that many people can perceive and specially not a crowd at a live concert.

What's fair is fair and it must be said... that if money is a deciding factor, the current Kemper is cheaper than the AXE FX III, and in my view it does offer more than the new FM3 stomp unit.... BUT, if you can afford it... then I say the AXE FX III would be as of now the ultimate choice.

Hopes this helps.
 
I know this is an older thread. But, for others who might find it, and have the same quandry as the OP.

I had a Kemper, and an Axe FX 2 XL+. I have just an Axe III Mk2 now.

I had to sell one, then for financial reasons.

The reasons I sold the Kemper, and kept the 2 XL+, then was versatility. At the time, dues to circumstances, I thought I would have to 'live' with what I had for a long time.

The ability to tweak stomp boxes to such a level on the Axe, as well as effects and combine them together in more than a few ways, because of the much more flexible signal paths, provides, maybe not infinite, but a lot of possibilities.

The same really goes for the Amp block as well. Dual amp blocks, and level of tweaking meant more than enough variety.

The Kemper signal path is limited. But, for many guitarists, it is more than enough. It's also easier to just use from the front compared to Pre Axe FX III Axes, and somewhat easier than the III, from the front.

The snapshot of an amp, aspect of the KPA, isn't that big a deal, not really.

Ultimately though, the Kemper is only as good, or bad as the person and their skills and equipment used to create the profiles. KPA, was so-so in the stock provided profiles. IMHO, you really had to pay for pro done profiles to get the best out of the Profiler, in tone, feel, etc.

Not to say, expertise on the Axe doesn't help, but in reality, the average player just needs the Axe to make great presets.
 
I've had both. Bought the Kemper about 3 years ago and A/B'd with the III. Ultimately I kept the III, but at that time the units were neck and neck soundwise. I though the Kemper, with its best profiles, edged the III out in raw amp tones, but the III was more everything-in-one-box. During the next couple of years, I would go through periods where I thought hard about the selling the III and getting another Kemper, just because of those amp tones. After Cygnus however, whole other ballgame. Since Cygnus was released, I haven't thought about another modeller, Kemper and QC included.

When you play through the amps on the III, you'll just think "there's no way another modeller sounds better than this." If you get the Kemper however, you'll be wondering about the III, but if you get the III, I'm fully confident you won't be wondering about the Kemper. The sounds are truly that good. It has everything. Not just the amps, all the effects - delays, reverbs, the drives, etc. They are all so polished now I don't ever think "I need to buy some other effect." Oh, and if you can swing it, get a footswitch. Then you can ditch all your pedals.
 
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Matthew Shoquist said:
Most of the users agreed with the exaggerated midrange and compression characteristics. A lot of them also felt that it was more "tubelike" than the Fractal (likely due to the compression), and also stated that the Fractal had more fizz than the Kemper. Well...it does have more fizz because that's how a typical Marshall or Mesa is going to sound. It's what helps cut through a busy mix.
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I'd like to know how this would stand up with an FX3 running Cygnus; Cygnus is a wholly different beast.
 
bradlake said:
Got both at inception, still have both, play the III ( or FM3) 98% of the time..but the lunchbox is, for me, worth keeping for the few MBritt selections that can sound superb(the Dumbley stuff , Guytron And Princeton’s especially)..if you consider the cost of original..
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Is there mojo in the kemper profile that the axe doesn’t have? I’m curious, since I don’t have much of a reference point for real Dumble tones.
 
I owned a Kemper quite a few years ago. Really liked it, especially for amp tones. The lack of a dedicated foot controller and editor at the time was kind of annoying. It's easily the second best option to the Fractal stuff imo.
 
SloeGin said:
Hey guys,

I live in an apartment and i am volume restricted.
I mainly play rock and metal and my amp is a Yamaha THR10.
I hardly use any effects and I'm mainly concerned about good amp tones.
I'm thinking about upgrading to something bigger and better sounding.

But I have a hard time deciding between the Kemper and Axe Fx III.
Anyone else who is volume restricted went from the Kemper to Axe Fx III and why please?



Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...
I have a kemper and an AXE FX3.

I had the previous AXE FX models and enjoyed them but was blown away by the Kemper and disregarded the FX3 because I always spent a lot of time trying to get the sounds I wanted out of the older ones and never quite got there and the Kemper offered some really good sounding amps.

Earlier this year I decided to get the AXE FX and I am blown away and should have gotten it a lot earlier.

The FX3 sounds awesome. EVERY amp sounds good and is totally usable. The FX are miles beyond what the Kemper can do.
One of the things that bothered me about the Kemper was whatever profiled amp you got sounded strange if you tried to mess with any of the parameters like gain etc. So it was like a snapshot of a specific setting. Some of the profile packs would have hundreds of profiles to mess with of various settings so it was cumbersome to use it like an amplifier.

To me the FX3 is better in every way. It's an excellent soundcard with a lot of I/O, it has tons of great sounding amps, it has excellent FX. If you feel like tweaking you can mess around with the amps at a component level and the changes are meaningful. It's hard to go into detail of all the cool things you can do.

At any rate, I would advise to go with the AXE FX. I own both as well as the quad cortex and the FX3 is just the best there is.
 
I have had all three units: Helix, Kemper and Axe Fx III. I sold the Kemper and rebought the Helix Stomp, still own the III. The Kemper is nice for a few raw amp tones, a couple that are kind of "My sound" but I cannot for the life of me get a full clean sound on the unit, even after purchasing hundreds of dollars of profiles (a complete waste of time and money). But, the Axe III has everything and I can adjust it to exactly my specifications and make any effect I want to make from subtle to completely out of this world. I'm going to repurchase the Kemper for a few amp models (3 to be exact). With the Helix I can get it to sound just like the Kemper on a few guitar tones but have more tweakablility. The Axe you can do all of this and add any effect you can dream of. I would say that the Axe is by far the gear you want to own.
 
I owned 2 kemper and 2 axe (i actually play with the 3 and a tube stack , depends of the mood)

kemper :
+
Nice and warm clean
Very Nice effects . Not a lot but all good
zero gaps between patchs
Profiling is super fun if you own a tube amp
Got the best noise gate ever . It clean the signal and you don’t have any loss in the sound . Just perfect
The kemper stage is a real kemper not a 1/2 kemper
-
Most distortion sound the same
Fuzzy high gain
Too much mids and high fizz
Rig manager software bugs …

Axe fx 3 :
+
Tons of everything, effects , amps …
The difference between amps is there
More tight sounding in high gain
Axe edit is not sexy but it works good
They listen to the community
Always improving

-
Audio Gap between patchs even in scene mode
Need to redo your presets everytime they are updates (and they are many)
You tweak more than you play if you are curious

both are cool . I prefer the axe globally, even if the kemper got nice features .
And you know what ? I owned a helix too and was very cool

i don’t know the quad but the demos sound like &&@« , the dist my god 🤦. But the effects , clean and some other things are nice .

If we can do a fusion of all the modelers 🥳

In the 3, you add profiling, no gap, a warmer sound , a brand new axe edit with a arcade mode with skeuomorphic 🥰 and you got the perfect unit . Wait . And a ax10 that is a real axe 3 in a pedalboard.

in a apartment play with studio monitors . Both are horrible sounding in headphone, don’t know how people do . Forget headphones
 
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