Hi Kemper Lovers,
who says that FREE RIGs/PROFILEs are not that good, are not so wide, are not easy to access, in my opinion, is making a BIG mistake! Many FREE RIGs are at a professional level, just you need to dedicate time to understand and to select them in an appropriate way… I’m not saying it’s not worth buying commercial profiles, but that getting started / using / adding the FREE ones helps you better choose which ones you want most in terms of quantity!
In this section I am trying to help you to sort this work out; here you can download some very interesting FREE Packs that I really suggest to try, especially (but not only) if you are a beginner in the ‘Kemper World’. Most of these RIGs are not directly profiled by myself. I rather did another kind of work, that in some way required same effort in time and dedication:
I selected, tweaked and grouped RIGs and PRESETs absolutely FREE which I can affirm that are worth to try out since they are at a professional level!
From when Rig Manager was introduced is more easily to arrange and organize RIGs. Nevertheless, especially on the beginning or if we have the Kemper not connected to the PC, the main difficults using/comparing several RIGs that I try to override are:
* Volumes completely different between different amps/profiles/rigs that complicate a lot the research of a sound and the comparison among them switching from one to another
* Different profiles of the same amplifier are often not in order in the KPA
* Same amps related RIGs tipically have different Amp Name due to no Amp Name Convention
* Same level of GAIN of different amps are often not in order in the KPA
* Having in sequence RIGs strongly tweaked mixed with just simple RAW profiles with no effects is strange to manage
FREE RIGs (more than 2000 in total)
* 500 FREE RIGs “Best Of Rig Exchange 2012-2020” (Selected & Normalized by Maurizio70) – Updated on 2020
This is a special pack that required a lot of effort… Here is the story: I listened, over the past years, to almost all the RIGs present in Rig Exchange (from 2012 to 2020) and I selected 500 RIGs among them that I consider more rich/balanced and beautiful to my ears. I searched in particular for well balanced sounds, not boomy, not too dark, not too clear, well defined in all the frequency spectrum, that respond well on both single and humbucker pickups, with no phasing issues, with good results on both low/high guitar register.
Then came my further addiction: since the main problem on Rig Exchange is that RIGs are not homogenous in Volume, Tags, Noise Reduction, Input Settings etc… and it’s very difficult to compare them, I decided to normalize this selected group for a more easy sounds building.
I want to THANKS the FREE profilers for their BIG effort, just to name a few (sorry for the missing ones)…
– Feck for his 3 Monkeys Orangutan
– Brian Carl for his 65 Amps London, Fender Bassman
– Martin Suijs for his Fender Bassman, Fender Deluxe Reverb, Marshall 68 Superbass
– Simone Bertolotti for his Divided13 RSA31, Marshall Plexy60
– Gian for his Hiwatt DR103
– Deadlight Studio for his MesaBoogie Stiletto
– gun9undo for his MesaBoogie Mark V & RectifierTriple
– Don-XXX for his Orange DarkTerror, Orange Thunder 30, Randall RT503
– Thomas Kruck and Pete Turley for his Bogner Ecstasy
– Juanma Blanco for his Engl E670
etc….
* 80 FREE EFX & Special RIGs (Selected by Maurizio70) – Updated on 2020
I grouped here some ‘special’ rigs that I find over the years in the various sites/forum etc… and that any of us can use as inspiration to build ‘strange, particular’ sounds with the Kemper.
* 620 FREE Starting Pack from 2015 Maurizio70 Selection – Updated on 2015
In the past I made a selection of the available RIGs for free, I normalized them in volume, tags, noise reduction and I organized them in a custom order to go from clean to metal. When the rigs packs began to grow and grow I didn’t go ahead with this kind of organization, even if still I Iove it and I believe it is very functional. It worth to try it out for you and to listen to this selection that I made after my first 3 years with the Kemper.
The RIGs are a collection from the factory, from the signature packs and from the forum; note that the rigs starting with the character “$” (about 80) are “special” rigs already tweaked with effects, EQ, stomps, ready to use in a song or in a specific context, think of them as an exhibition/presentation of the capability of the KPA. The other Rigs are organized in Gain order from Clean to Crunch, Drive, Lead, Metal in a way that the Alphabetic Sorting algorithms works well both based on Rig Name or on Amp Name (original amp creator and other tags are always maintained).
NAMING CONVENTION – AN ORGANIZED APPROACH
Every RIG where it is present almost only the AMP/STACK section is named as ‘AmpFactory Model GainLevel PUType’, for example
– “FEN Mach Crun NE” means Fender Amp, Machete Model, CRunch sound, best suitable for NEck Pickup
– “MAR JTM45 Cl BR” means Marshall Amp, Model JTM45 Clean sound, best suitable for BRidge Pickup
* 900 FREE Kemper Packs from some best vendors (Grouped by Maurizio70) – Updated on 2020
Over the years lots of commercial vendors started to profile amps and to sell them. Many of this profilers gave for free many rigs to allow us testing their professionals skill. Here I grouped many FREE Packs together so you can easily give them a listening and choose which are the best to buy for your needs. This pack is again normalized in Amp Names (Tags), RIGs Volume, Noise etc…
Finally I want to THANKS the Commercial profilers for their BIG commitment, just to name the ones who I liked more in these years and give also lots of FREE rigs to try …
– And44 (The Amp Factory), love him profiling style from the beginning of Kemper History
– Michael Britt for his unique profiles
– Tone Junkie for his tremendous collection of Amp Profiles, never get tired to use them
– Fero72 for his special and unique catalog of overdrive/distortion/fuzz profiles
* 110 FREE Demo Rigs Ready to Play Classic Rock Songs (by Maurizio70) – Updated on 2020
In this FREE Pack there are Kemper Rigs ready to play songs. It is a little collection of 100 sounds for various artists just to give you some demonstration on how amp and effects can be used efficientely together.
Among these rigs you can find mainly Classic Rock sounds plus some others. I’m building more refined rigs using latest Kemper Releases, generally richer in terms of versions and quality; they can be found on the Commercial Section of this site.
I also add here 10 “special” rigs (starting with the letter ‘$’) with Kemper Remote Settings ready to On/Off Stomp/Effects to use our Kemper like a classic ‘old’ Pedal Board.
FREE PRESETs for Kemper Amp
In this section there are Kemper Presets for Stacks, Stomps & Effects (updated on 2018). All these presets can be imported putting them into the USB pendrive in the directory “Shared” and push Import on the Kemper menù. There are NO profiles between them, only my best presets collected over the years using all the embedded effects modules included in the Kemper Software.
To have additional information on how to use presets efficiently read this page:
https://www.maurizio70guitarist.com/kemper-amp/kemper-rig-creation/
REPLICATON of Famous STOMPs with Kemper Effects modules.
In the Single Stomp Standard and in the StompS presets are included the ones to recreate as much as possible some pedals (search for audio samples and other details in the following dedicated pages):
- STACK/AMP PRESETs – They are ordered by Gain from Clean [CL] to Crunch [CR] to Drive [DR] to Lead [LD] to Metal [MT]; all these PRESETS are normalized in VOLUME Output tweaking of the AMP VOLUME. In this way, when you search for a type of sound instead that for a type of AMP, for example CRUNCH you can go one by one all the crunch list to compare them. Naming convention examples are:
– ‘CR FEN Twin NE‘ that means Crunch sound, Fender AMP, Twin Model, suitable for Neck pickup
– ‘DR Corn Harlequin BR‘ that means Drive sound, of a Cornford AMP, Harlequin model, suitable for Bridge pickup
- EFFECT/STOMP Presets – There are here more than 300 EFFECTs/STOMPs PRESETs including COMP, BOOST, DRIVE, EQ, CHORUS, PHASER, WHA etc…
The Delays and Reverbs are updated to 2016 where there were only the Legacy ones, my plan is to revisit all of them and add presets using the modern Rev/Del implementation
- EQ ToneStack Presets (Only for KPA HEAD Version) – Useful ToneStack (EQ of the Amp Module) to quickly change Amp EQ to find sweet spots
Come back sometimes … I hope to add some new things in the future!
Maurizio70 (updated on Jan 2021)