Jeffsco

Back up a little and read Post #42...that is my first impression from last night. I'll post again in a week after some time with the unit.

Dean has hit it on the head...The HD is a viable tool. It sounds good. I've got several setLists worth of patches saved up and ballparked close to the final tone I require of them. They all need tweaking to become stellar. The main issue I have is that the "Tweaking" part takes far to long in comparision to what i achieved with my XTLive. I need to get my tones down..and move on. That's why the Kemper appealed to me...and I'm happy to report that it has lived up to that peformance specification. The other issue is cost. I haven't invested large dollars in an amp rig for a long, long time. My investment has been in my Live mixing rig and my Studio setup. I had the opportunity to sell off a lot of gear that I was no longer using in order to purchase the Kemper. In my day job, I own a cabinet shop. I can spend $15,000.00 + on a table saw.....or I can spend $3000.00. Both will cut the material I need. Is the $15K saw the same as the $3K? No...it will do things the $3K can't. But does that mean the $3k saw is crap? On the contrary..the $3k saw allows me to earn my living. It's a great tool. Would i upgrade to the $15k saw? If I had the money and felt the advantages it would give me were worth it...yes. In this case..The Kemper has done this for me. If I didn't have the financing for the Kemper...i'd be accepting and working thru the issues with the HD500. It's not a slam against the unit....simply a choice i've made.

I picked up my Kemper yesterday afternoon...took it home and started playing. Next time I looked up 3 hours had passed. Went and made supper. came down....played thru it for another hour. First impressions....very intuitive...easy to move around in. I consulted the manual, perhaps, twice and that was for some obscure deep editing function i was curious about. I was VERY suprised at some unexpected functionality under the hood. Some very cool things there. Sound / Tone?....Incredibley responsive to touch. I've never played anything like it....even when I had my Marshall / Boogie / Randal all tube rigs back in the day. The string to string / note definition is a joy to hear and feel. You can have a crunchy / Chunky / Distorted tone and yet it doesn't turn to mush...you can strum a chord and it still sounds open. The Cleans are CLEAN...no digital distortion / hash / overtones. THE TONE CONTROLS WORK! What I mean is....often times with amps and modellers you turn down the bass controll to remove some "Mud" from the tone but you end up losing your "meat" as well as the mud. The Kemper tonestacks...they way they explain them in the manual...is that they designed the tone stacks to give a player a much greater range of controll than what is actually modelled. So when i turn down the bass control to get rid of a little mud..it does EXACTLY that...it leaves the "meat" or "Body" of my tone intack and gets rid of the mud. The pick attack/ definition is outstandingand....when I back off my volume knob the sound of the patch actually cleans up. When I do that on most Modellers or actual tube amps , (depending on the amp)...not only does the sound "Clean up" , but it also gets thin. The Kemper doesn't do that. It gets clean and says full. The Kemper also balances out volumes between patches. You can change them and make them as loud or as quiet as you want but the basic starting patches are levelled out..no nasty volume jumps. All in all...I could have taken the unit and walked onstage last night...dialed in a dozen stock tones to cover the full range of material our cover band performs..and started playing. I found it to be that easy. I'm really looking forward to digging in deep to this thing. I'll post a more detailed comparision of the HD500 and the Kemper next week after I've had a chance to play with it some more. There are couple of things I noticed about the functionality of the HD500 that the Kemper doesn't have. I think people woould appreciate knowing that. So...the criticism has been asked...is it worth it paying $2,000.00 for the Kemper compared to $600.00 for the HD500? It's a valid point... does the Kemper sound THAT much better to warrant the cost difference? The answer to that is as individual as each person reading this. It's going to depend on what you value. Screaming metal band with 2 guitars pounding out at 115 db? Maybe not. Playing guitar behind a 4 piece horn section, lead vocalist and 3 backup singers? Maybe not....But for what I do, playing in a Cover band and recording in the studio, both situations where quality and nuance of tone as well as the ability to dial in sounds fast are the main criteria? ...Let's just say....I am not regretting my choice.

Some great points being made here...It wasn't so much the XT Sound or tone or whatever. vs the HD500....it's primarily an ease of use issue. And I spent months working with it, reading ad nauseaum all the posts and studying meandbobbo's pdf (which is stellar by the way..) . After all was said and done..I had a handful of good tones from the HD 500 but I took several years off my life in the process. You really had to work hard with the HD to get it to do what you required from it. I use Ozone and EQ / Tone match every patch I use with the original recording. Being able to use the Parametric EQ in the XT that read out in Hz was key. In using the HD I had bits of Meand Bobbo's pdf taped all over my walls in order figure out what frequencies i needed to alter to match what Ozone was telling me...all that time to dial in a 45% cut at what gain? And then you get a signal cain with the components you want and ...DISTORTION...cause something wasn't put in the same slot and was stereo instead of Mono??? Anyways folks...just got a call from the music store. The Kemper has arrived. I'm going down to pick it up this afternoon.I'll report back what I find in a few days.

When I hear the statement "Tone is in the fingers" I take it with a grain of salt and I strongly differentiate between the concepts of "Tone" and "Sound" I've seen/ heard footage of Edward Van Halen noodling thru a small practice type amp during a Party at his house. It's a little practice / Champ type affair with a little 8" non descript speaker. Doubt there was even tubes in it. The tone is HORRIBLE....but the playing, the riffs,the attack of the strings, inflections, etc... It's sounds like Edward Van Halen. No mistaking who's playing. So....his "Tone" sounds like the terrible, consitpated / small speaker sputtering that those hideous little amps produce. It does not sound like the first Van Halen album..or any album in between. Now..I've heard him at NAMM, plugging in thru an assorted array of the 5150 series amps. Sounds Edward Van Halen...sounds like the Albums we know / love/hate... That's his tone..that's the amp and guitar and the settings he used. A musicians "sound " is in his fingers...but the "tone" he gets is dependant on the amp, gain settings, distortion pedal, EQ at the amp, EQ at the board, and our perception of that sound is further augnmented / distorted by the accuracy of what we are listening back on. So....while a piece of gear will not change a musicians sound...that piece of gear has EVERYTHING to do with creating a musicians TONE! That's another reason why I'm pursueing the Kemper route....in addition to ease of use there is a difference in the unit's ability to produce tone.

I will post my impressions of the Kemper after a couple of weeks . Like I said....not ditching the HD500 entirely. There are some FX I will use from it, and having it onstage will be a means of a backup should anything go wrong with the Kemper rig. The more I read about the Kemper from the manual....the more impressed I am. It's like they listened in on the Line 6 / Axe FX forums, considered the complaints and criticisms of those units, found solutions and answers and implemented them in the Kemper. Line 6 needs to pay attention to this or lose it's market share.Or..perhaps that's not important to them. They are promoting the Live Audio stuff like you wouldn't believe in my part of the country. You'd hardly know that Line 6 even made Floor Boards, FX or amps.

Not bashing the HD ,Toneman....for the sake of bashing it. I'm just relating what I have experienced. It simply doesn't work well for me. I used my XTLIVE for gigging for the past year as I struggled thru the HD. The XT worked for me...the HD didn't. The XTLive isn't in the same league as the HD tonally...but for ease of use and ease of creating tones that match the covers I'm paid to play..the XT did it for me. I found working with the XTLive so much easier that the tonal improvement of the HD proved moot. What's the point in having great tones if it takes you forever to tweak them? That is precisley why so many Axe FX2 users I know are selling off those units and going to Kemper or other units. The tonal advantage is negated by virtue of the difficulty in achieving ones goal. It should be about making tthe music...not expending disporportionalty large amounts of time and effort. That's not to say someone elses experience with the HD won't be different. There are lots of folks here who love the HD and use it to it's fullest. It just hasn't worked out for me. And I've done my due diligence with the unit, I've spent months and months throught the past year working with the HD500 in my Recording Studio and in Rehearshal.... and so I can credibley say that it isn't my cup of tea. The tools I prefer to use to craft my tones with the XTLive are not there with the HD500. Biggest being Parametric and graphic EQ's that reads in Hz rather than percentage. That's key to nailing recorded tones in a Cover band. It's a non negotiable. A good 3rd of the tones and Amps I crafted in the XTLIve will not translate over to the HD500. I simply prefer the old to the new. Why does that reality cause you to state..."here we go again"???? Many times Posters to this Forum have stated something along the lines of ..." If it doesn't work for you...move along! Find something that does !" Well...I have done so....the Kemper arrives next week..

Buying a Kemper Profiling Amp. Arrives in 1 week. Had enough of struggling to get what I need from the HD500. Never had to put this intense amount of effort into my POD XTLIve (which I still have and use...). I've spent weeks...no Months reading and re-reading and applying what I've learned from this forum and MeAndBobbo and others, and while it has helped immensley....it should be easier. And yes.. I am very adept at using technology and computers, electronics, and gear. The HD series...while sounding head and shoulders above the XTLive or X3...just fall short of the mark in terms of practical usability. I will be using the HD500 as a Midi Controller for the Kemper...and apparently..there is a very easy way to run the HD500 into the Kemper's FX return and thereby utilize the HD500's sounds if i want to. Certainly..the Kemper has not yet implemented the range of FX that the HD has....but what they have are VERY, VERY good. The HD's computer inteface is great but Kemper will have that soon. Most importantly..the Kemper's architecture is set up such that they have positioned themselves to have the freedom to alter or change things down the road. The HD series needs to take a look at that. ...or rather....what ever Line 6 is cooking up to replace it. Mostly...I'm very tired of the limitations of the HD500....waiting forever to get new amp models, amp models I don't want, fizzy high end that needs EQ'ing out...and the dreaded Mono/ Stereo input issue and all the problems it can and does cause. I've read all about it...played with it for months and months and am just going to move on. I appreciate all the input the Forum members have given me. I'll visit time to time...but for now...my HD becomes a glorified Midi Controller.