jzucker
Experienced
So, lately I was feeling a bit uninspired with my AX8 and I really missed the MBritt Robben Ford Dumble sound from when I had a kemper about 2 years ago. So, I convinced myself that the kemper sounded better than axefx and bought one from a store in NYC. It was about $2k new with the footswitch. My big complaint at the time was that the effects were toylike, the reverb and delays extremely mediocre.
I got it and loaded all my original mbritt profiles. Tried out the dumble patch and yes indeedy, it rocks! Tried some of the other mbritt profiles for fender clean, fender semi-clean, matchless, vox, dumble clean, etc., etc.
And guess what? Other than the mbritt robben ford, they all pretty much sounded mediocre. Not even close to the fractal. *AND* 2 years later, and the reverbs and delay still sound horrible. Not even as good as the reverb on a 15 year old Boss RV-2 pedal. The spring reverb was laughable and the delays sounded like '80s tech to me. Scrolled through the other effects and they still don't have a fusiony overdrive and the chorus sounded like pop music circa 1980s too. I was really surprised that the matchless DC30 didn't sound anything like a real dc30 whereas the fractal raises the same hair on the back of my neck as the real amp.
So, I turned it off and requested a refund. The next morning, I plugged back into the kemper with fresh ears and after an hour, I unplugged it and plugged the AX8 back in. Packed the kemper back up and returned it.
I was shocked that in that period of time, there were few improvements in the effects. I will say that the mbritt robben ford dumble sounded great though. I'd love to figure out what to adjust to get the fractal in the same ballpark.
But overall, the kemper isn't even close.
I got it and loaded all my original mbritt profiles. Tried out the dumble patch and yes indeedy, it rocks! Tried some of the other mbritt profiles for fender clean, fender semi-clean, matchless, vox, dumble clean, etc., etc.
And guess what? Other than the mbritt robben ford, they all pretty much sounded mediocre. Not even close to the fractal. *AND* 2 years later, and the reverbs and delay still sound horrible. Not even as good as the reverb on a 15 year old Boss RV-2 pedal. The spring reverb was laughable and the delays sounded like '80s tech to me. Scrolled through the other effects and they still don't have a fusiony overdrive and the chorus sounded like pop music circa 1980s too. I was really surprised that the matchless DC30 didn't sound anything like a real dc30 whereas the fractal raises the same hair on the back of my neck as the real amp.
So, I turned it off and requested a refund. The next morning, I plugged back into the kemper with fresh ears and after an hour, I unplugged it and plugged the AX8 back in. Packed the kemper back up and returned it.
I was shocked that in that period of time, there were few improvements in the effects. I will say that the mbritt robben ford dumble sounded great though. I'd love to figure out what to adjust to get the fractal in the same ballpark.
But overall, the kemper isn't even close.