Kemper user here who just got an FM3 - blown away

Jipps0525 said:
I guess thats kind of what Im getting at then. How long before current FM3 would become a "legacy product" and not be able to receive the firmware update?
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No idea, but any product from any brand will stop receiving updates at some point. If you keep waiting for the next thing, you’ll keep waiting for the next thing and never have anything to use now.
 
dupere11497 said:
Long time Kemper user here and Fractal stuff as well. I just bought a FM3 and my reaction is like yours: I'm blown away!! I finally got my mids back!!! Whatever profiles I would use, there was always this low mids congestion or weird compression going on, a kind of signature sound. You don't get this with the FM3. Every amp model has his own unique character. The feel of both unique is great and similar.The FM3 effects absolutely kills the ones in Kemper. I can't wait to hear and feel that Cygnus update, but anyway, I'm more than please already with the current firmware, the FM3 is truly an awesome tone machine!
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i'm not a fanboy of either unit,i was thinking to sell the Axe 3 to buy me a new guitar but i love the axe 3 same as the kemper so both units are going to stay,im super happy with both units.
 
NightWalker said:
i'm not a fanboy of either unit,i was thinking to sell the Axe 3 to buy me a new guitar but i love the axe 3 same as the kemper so both units are going to stay,im super happy with both units.
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Is there anything that Kemper does which you can't do with the Fractal? Because as far as I can see there is nothing that the Fractal can't do compared to Kemper, but there is a lot of things the Fm3 does which Kemper simply can't do.

You can laugh as much as you want with my posts 😜 but I've done over 200 payed sessions with Kemper and I was able to get all my standard Kemper tones with the Fm3 in 10 days. And many more which I was tone-chasing for years, buying a million profiles but never could quite get.
 
Jimmykonsta said:
Is there anything that Kemper does which you can't do with the Fractal? Because as far as I can see there is nothing that the Fractal can't do compared to Kemper, but there is a lot of things the Fm3 does which Kemper simply can't do.

You can laugh as much as you want with my posts 😜 but I've done over 200 payed sessions with Kemper and I was able to get all my standard Kemper tones with the Fm3 in 10 days. And many more which I was tone-chasing for years, buying a million profiles but never could quite get.
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You can't create profiles ;)

Also, I think Kemper supports formant pitch shifting which was something that was supposed to materialize in the Axe Fx II but never did.

I have no actual experience with Kemper, but based on what I've read/heard.
 
Jimmykonsta said:
Is there anything that Kemper does which you can't do with the Fractal? Because as far as I can see there is nothing that the Fractal can't do compared to Kemper, but there is a lot of things the Fm3 does which Kemper simply can't do.

You can laugh as much as you want with my posts 😜 but I've done over 200 payed sessions with Kemper and I was able to get all my standard Kemper tones with the Fm3 in 10 days. And many more which I was tone-chasing for years, buying a million profiles but never could quite get.
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Did you use the FM3 tone match feature to replicate the tones? If so, then maybe it's a good idea to get the FM3 before i sell my Friedman JJ Jr, tone match it, and then sell it haha
If not, how did you copy the kemper tones? I'd love to hear a comparison
 
Jipps0525 said:
Did you use the FM3 tone match feature to replicate the tones? If so, then maybe it's a good idea to get the FM3 before i sell my Friedman JJ Jr, tone match it, and then sell it haha
If not, how did you copy the kemper tones? I'd love to hear a comparison
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As far as I know the Fm3 doesn't have the tone match feature. Now about replicating my Kemper tones, that was very easy. The core amp/cab tones are so much better in the fractal ecosystem that I didn't have to try a million combinations.

I mainly do solos on the sessions so I must have available a great hard rock bitey tone with my lp/sg, a fat juicy round Petrucci lead, a spanky strat Srv-inspired tone, a Mayer-ish low gain strat sound and a tele country-rock lead. With all the great fenders/marshalls/boogies in the Fm3 it was a piece of cake. It was very easy to get down the "core" tones at first, and then match the eq with my old trusty tested kemper tones. But the main thing is that even when I got there, I still can improve these tones with such great features like the great stomps, the saturation, output compression, variac etc etc
 
NightWalker said:
all i can tell you is that i love my kemper same as the Axe 3,,i can get awesome tone with both units,so i'm not going to say which unit is better,good for you that finally found your tone 👍

P.S is funny that you said you done over 200 payed session with the Kmper and now miraculously you found your tone with the FM3 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
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A good tone can always get better, or maybe much better. Improvement and evolution is always welcome. For example, imagine if the Fractal guys had stopped improving their algorithms ten years ago, who knows how things would be today...oh wait...I know a German company who did exactly that :)
 
Would love to see Fractal implement a profiling capability along the same lines as Kemper and Cortex... Have the result morph into a user defined amp and cab block or something like that... That would surely make a splash and make a dent in that market space. Of course this has to be supported on the FM3!
 
cyprusx said:
Would love to see Fractal implement a profiling capability along the same lines as Kemper and Cortex... Have the result morph into a user defined amp and cab block or something like that... That would surely make a splash and make a dent in that market space. Of course this has to be supported on the FM3!
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My biggest complaint about the Kemper was exactly that: the profiling. I was so tired of having a good profile with potential and when I tweaked it it was becoming unusable.

Many will say "and why not use a another profile instead"? The answer is because again I'll have to tweak because the profile was made with a different guitar with different pickups.

Whatever you use, you will always have to tweak to your guitar, pickup, taste etc. With profilers tweaking won't work. With Fm3 I just turn a few knobs and it's always there.At least for me, modelling is the only way.
 
Jimmykonsta said:
Hello everyone and nice to meet you!

A couple of days ago the Fm3 was delivered at my door and...all the problems I've had with the Kemper suddenly dissapeared!

My initial intention was to get the Fm3 as something more portable (I have the toaster), and maybe get some extra tones I can hear at some demos which I couldn't quite get with the Kemper. But it turned out much better than I expected.

The noise gate is awesome, it doesn't kill your transient or sustain, the effects are much better (finally a great and musical reverb), the editor is super fast, light and works with win7 (which Kemper editor doesnt).

And the tones? Omg the tones! It's like having the best of the best profiles of every amp, but you can also tweak them as much as you like without getting unnatural results. There is no cocked wah effect anymore which I couldn't get rid of in half the Kemper profiles, the sound is much more 3D, amp-like and open, and the feel/response is as good as in the kemper.

The stomps are doing what actual stomps are supposed to do and inside one preset I can basically dial in a whole lot of my favourite profiles but with better tone and more possibilities ☺️ I had been searching for years for the best Marshall, Fender, Boogie and Vox tones but with the kemper there was always something missing.

And of course, the icing on the cake, it's more affordable and more portable.

I thought that Kemper and Fractal products were on the same league, but not anymore! I should had bought a Fractal modeller years ago!
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I also used to be a kemper user also back in the day. No shade on the kemper or its users, but for me and my needs, Fractal just out performs in everything in my opinion. I did enjoy it though, but I hated having to buy profile packs and then going through 200+ profiles to find the right one. And the big one was recording for me. And more power to those who can get a really good quality guitar track sound from the kemper, but I just could not to save my life. Something about the low end just never sounded right. And I tried EQing it til I was blue in the face....but just couldnt get it sounding right. Probably user error on my end I suppose. But guitar tracks always sound killer when coming from a fractal product.
 
RobertSH1981 said:
I also used to be a kemper user also back in the day. No shade on the kemper or its users, but for me and my needs, Fractal just out performs in everything in my opinion. I did enjoy it though, but I hated having to buy profile packs and then going through 200+ profiles to find the right one. And the big one was recording for me. And more power to those who can get a really good quality guitar track sound from the kemper, but I just could not to save my life. Something about the low end just never sounded right. And I tried EQing it til I was blue in the face....but just couldnt get it sounding right. Probably user error on my end I suppose. But guitar tracks always sound killer when coming from a fractal product.
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There's always been a marked difference in the low end between my amps and kemper profiles of these amps, plus a ts focus that's always there with gain sounds. How recognizable it is largely depends on the kind of test. At times, it's easier to feel this than hear it -- but it's still there, struggling to come out, like pterodactyl.

I don't believe fractal units are perfect either.

People will say there's "no fractal sound" (unclear what this characterization often means, ok) even if a newer firmware relatively consistently changes tones between a variety of amp sims, and so forth and so forth, claim an amp sim is "spot on", which then changes as well, relatively considerably.

A big difference for me is just that fractal evolves the core amp sounds. Kemper does not (not for a long time at least). Where as you can expect Cliff to continue seeking improvements, CK will drum the same beat.

I've compared cygnus on axe fx 3 with ares on the same unit and on fm3 -- the JCM. I can see why it's closer now, even not having Cliff's specific amp (or I believe it's likely I do see the difference, and why it's closer to his amp even, having spent an hour too many with such comparisons).

With kemper, when i profile the jcm, I know what I'll get, and I know nothing's gonna change any time soon, other than more marketing style posts perhaps.

It's not that kemper is bad. I can even see people preferring kemper sound to fractal, whether with ares or even Cygnus. Such evaluations are based on such metaphysical subjectivity. There's something about kemper's response you just don't get with fractal right out the gate, cygnus or ares. (Well. Engage considerable mid compression, plus a few other tweaks and you'll get close, but never 100 percent, at least not through every single reasonable -- for me specifically -- means of evaluation).

Personally, I prefer fractal. But I also trust them more to push forward considerably further for core amp tones. That also matters to me... And I wouldn't say I'm a "fan" of either company, at least in some exagerated, loyalist sense. I don't wake up, put my fractal or kemper panties on, before coffee, proceeding to sacrifice sheep, cats, donkeys on the altar of cliff or lord Ck or god knows whom.

But at the end of the day, when Cygnus feels better to me than kemper, I'll go with that; and I'll be glad to receive updates that inspire me as a player, as well. And I also do respect the fact that cliff still pursues core improvements to this day.
 
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Dimi84 said:
There's always been a marked difference in the low end between my amps and kemper profiles of these amps, plus a ts focus that's always there with gain sounds. How recognizable it is largely depends on the kind of test. At times, it's easier to feel this than hear it -- but it's still there, struggling to come out, like pterodactyl.

I don't believe fractal units are perfect either.

People will say there's "no fractal sound" (unclear what this characterization often means, ok) even if a newer firmware relatively consistently changes tones between a variety of amp sims, and so forth and so forth, claim an amp sim is "spot on", which then changes as well, relatively considerably.

A big difference for me is just that fractal evolves the core amp sounds. Kemper does not (not for a long time at least). Where as you can expect Cliff to continue seeking improvements, CK will drum the same beat.

I've compared cygnus on axe fx 3 with ares on the same unit and on fm3 -- the JCM. I can see why it's closer now, even not having Cliff's specific amp (or I believe it's likely I do see the difference, and why it's closer to his amp even, having spent an hour too many with such comparisons).

With kemper, when i profile the jcm, I know what I'll get, and I know nothing's gonna change any time soon, other than more marketing style posts perhaps.

It's not that kemper is bad. I can even see people preferring kemper sound to fractal, whether with ares or even Cygnus. Such evaluations are based on such metaphysical subjectivity. There's something about kemper's response you just don't get with fractal right out the gate, cygnus or ares. (Well. Engage considerable mid compression, plus a few other tweaks and you'll get close, but never 100 percent, at least not through every single reasonable -- for me specifically -- means of evaluation).

Personally, I prefer fractal. But I also trust them more to push forward considerably further for core amp tones. That also matters to me... And I wouldn't say I'm a "fan" of either company, at least in some exagerated, loyalist sense. I don't wake up, put my fractal or kemper panties on, before coffee, proceeding to sacrifice sheep, cats, donkeys on the altar of cliff or lord Ck or god knows whom.

But at the end of the day, when Cygnus feels better to me than kemper, I'll go with that; and I'll be glad to receive updates that inspire me as a player, as well. And I also do respect the fact that cliff still pursues core improvements to this day.
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I noticed that TS sound too. Which, to my ears anyway, would make it kinda get lost in the mix....kinda like that digital TS sound with plug ins. It was kind of a bizzare thing. Fractal tones seem to have more "girth", if that makes any sense. And it just sounds bigger in a mix. Another interesting point you hit on was the lack of improvement or innovation. I just dont understand it. Theres always room for improvement. Part of the excitement with a fractal unit is the updates. Has Kemper done anything new in recent years other than the floor model? New tech, or software announcements? Maybe someday there will be a Kemper 2...
 
JiveTurkey said:
I love the Kemper. I've owned more times than I would like to publicly admit. It sounds excellent through a traditional guitar cabinet. I am not quite as enamored with Fractal in this same manner. Probably something I haven't quite clicked into as far as poweramp interaction with the "traditional" gear? When I went that route; I had the AX8 and didn't give it much of a go that way because I was all about moving away from regular guitar amps and cabinets. But Fractal sounds GODLY through powered monitors. I am nowhere near as much of a fan of the cab portion of Kemper profiles. Through a powered speaker; it's a lot less impressive, imo.
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I had a Kemper a while back, and just had a hard time getting the sound I wanted. On one hand, the higher gain profiles sounded either a little thin, or muddy...I could never find the right sound. But I did always wonder how it would sound through an actual cab set up. Never got the chance BC I play through monitors.....But that was something I always wondered about
 
stephenclark1 said:
My problem is getting lost in the sauce with all the goodies to tweak on! At some point I need to take my own advice, pick a preset/amp and just play!
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You know what though? After awhile you kinda get a feel for what most of the knobs do, and how theyll affect your tone. Then you can get pretty speedy at getting the exact tone your after :)
 
NightWalker said:
all i can tell you is that i love my kemper same as the Axe 3,,i can get awesome tone with both units,so i'm not going to say which unit is better,good for you that finally found your tone 👍

P.S is funny that you said you done over 200 payed session with the Kmper and now miraculously you found your tone with the FM3 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
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That's awesome you like both!
 
Same here. Much like JimmyKonsta, I'm a Kemper owner. I've been into modeling technology for a long time. When I first started looking, I ran across the original Axe FX which you could get on the waitlist for. I ended up researching things and thought the Kemper was a better choice. Maybe it was/wasn't at the time (seems like 10 years ago). Ive got an original toaster, the foot controller, 2 Kemper Kones, a stereo Camplifier built into the back of the toaster (pretty much everything needed and offered). I wanted a smaller solution to avoid bringing the Kemper and the pedalboard to small gigs.

Moral of the story, I'm loyal to Kemper and for now will keep it and use it and see if I can like it as much as the FM3 once my initial excitement wears off. I'm simply really liking the FM3 too. Especially the effects. The Reverbs are like Lexicons and are on par with my Lexicon plugins and my Exponential Audio stuff. The new Kemper verbs are great, but don't compare with my plugins, the FM3 definitely does (I've spoke about this on the Kemper forum). Kemper Verb is really good but it's missing something that I hear maybe not enough CPU power or something. I'm not that into Ambient either. I'm mainly a Jazz player, but I love very clean and dense Reverbs and have been missing my Lexicon MPX1 I used on gigs for the Rich Hall Verb, The FM3 definitely cures that craving. I'll check out the KPA verbs and report back if I'm wrong.

The ease of use of the delays and chorus and getting what I want is great too and I'm not sure why because the KPA has great delays too, I'm just quickly preferring the FM3. I'm also really liking finding an amp that I know and simply setting it to my liking. I have a Blues Junior profile on the Kemper Rig Exchange (and people give it 2 stars). I like it and had trouble finding clean profiles for jazz. I've eventually got some good ones, but for the most part they all sound very similar for clean/high headroom modern jazz guitar. I think people give it 2 stars because I set it up with my guitar, my amp settings and for a modern jazz sound. If you grab that profile thinking its going to be good with your Strat for a Rolling Stones tune, you'd probably give it two stars as well. That is the issue as others have said. If I had my own great amps I could do profiles that work work. Don't get me wrong, Ive got some mBritt Dumble profiles and some others I've bought that are really great. It's just simpler with the FM3 so far.

Kemper uses Performances, but I'm liking the concept of channels and scenes better and thinking of Presets as Performances. It seems a bit easier and I'm happy with 3 switches (plus an additional Boss FS-6 to change views and add a tuner/tap tempo). I can probably get away with using one preset.

FM3 can do different Cabs for left and right, that is cool too.

Anyways, won't bore you any longer, just wanted to give my appreciation for the FM3 (and the Fractal team) as I've done many times in the past for the Kemper team. Both are great products, but if you are a Kemper user who hasn't tried the new FM3/Axe III, you may want to if money isn't an issue. I've got both and couldn't be happier to have lived long enough to experience these great devices.

Edit: 5/23/21 - Longtime Kemper owner, just sold the Kemper, Remote and Kemper Cones. There is nothing wrong with any of the top modelers out there, I just prefer the FM3 because of routing, editor, clean tones and the ability to get what I want much quicker, and especially now that Cygnus is out.
 
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