Guitar sound

[Pharaoh's Curse]

I use a Kemper for my guitar tracks. Been working on some new Rock style songs, (Think old Rainbow, Purple etc.)

I usually send out for drums, do a bass DI for processing later, tracking vocals and mixing at a local studio.

My guitar sound is more modern than the aforementioned styles, but I often wonder if it's right for the mix. I think that any sound off the Kemper will probably work, they all sound pretty good to me...

Should I just pick a couple amps that I like and go with them? I found a JCM800 and Plexi profile that sound good to my ears. Sometimes I think all the various profiles and re-amping bogs me down and I worry about a sound more than just playing the parts and laying down a solid performance.

Any thoughts?

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

I would agree with your last sentence generally. I can spend forever tweaking a profile to get it perfect instead of writing and learning new theory concepts and playing techniques. But it's also important to have a tone that sounds good when you play it. I have a favorites list in my Kemper Rig Manager with a 5150, a JCM800, a Soldano for leads, and a clean delay/acoustic thing. I only use those when I write so I don't get bogged down in tone fiddling, then I reamp at the very end.

 

[Pharaoh's Curse]

I would agree with your last sentence generally. I can spend forever tweaking a profile to get it perfect instead of writing and learning new theory concepts and playing techniques. But it's also important to have a tone that sounds good when you play it. I have a favorites list in my Kemper Rig Manager with a 5150, a JCM800, a Soldano for leads, and a clean delay/acoustic thing. I only use those when I write so I don't get bogged down in tone fiddling, then I reamp at the very end.

So you still record a DI and reamp with the Kemper at the end? Maybe I will do both at the same time (DI and a regular track) that way if the sound I chose really isn't cutting it, I can reamp the DI.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

So you still record a DI and reamp with the Kemper at the end? Maybe I will do both at the same time (DI and a regular track) that way if the sound I chose really isn't cutting it, I can reamp the DI.

Yeah, I just set the normal output for my Kemper to master when I'm writing/dicking around and change it to master/git left when I record, and record to a stereo track. Then if I feel the need to reamp later, split the stereo track to mono left/right and send it back through the Kemper for re-amping.

 

[Jormyn]

In general my Kemper is set to Git / Mod Mono or something - I'll use the delay and reverb for monitoring on leads and stuff, but I don't want to print them. I've got a few profiles that are my go-to "will work decently for putting a song together" tones, and then if I feel like something different I just pop the input over to SPDIF, add a hardware send from the DI track, and hit play.