Kemper Amps has announced the release of a Profiler Rig Pack from Michael Britt, guitarist of the renowned country band Lonestar.
With the advent of the Profiler, some might think that getting the sound of a guitar amp into the digital domain is easy now, and that basically anyone can do it: just order a head from a retailer for 30 days, profile, and send it back, right? Well, this may work for some people but, to be honest, the real art in designing sounds for guitarists is about far more than just the electrical devices you happen to use.
When a great chef prepares a culinary masterpiece, they’ll need knives, various other tools and of course the ingredients. But what determines the quality of the result – i.e. the plate of delicious food – is about so much more than just equipment and ingredients.
Let’s just do a breakdown of all the elements that go into making a great profile, and a great guitar sound: We start with an idea – someone needs a certain sound, and they have an idea about how they want to achieve it. A guitar sound consists of a player, a guitar, pickups, a cable, maybe a stomp box (drive, eq, buffer, etc.), an amp, a cabinet, certain speakers in that cabinet, a room for the cabinet to breathe in, the best position for that cabinet in the room, a microphone or a selection of microphones, and the positions of the microphones in front of the cabinet and in the room. Then the mic feed goes into a preamp – shall we use compression, or no compression? And what about EQ settings? So, here is your guitar sound, right? No, not yet, because now every single one of these ingredients has to be adjusted individually – and here is where the human factor kicks in.
There is at least one person that puts all the above ingredients together, and this person has to decide which guitar to use, which pickup to use, define the tone settings on the guitar, and adjust the pedals in a certain manner. Then you try and listen. Maybe ask a friend, a buddy, an engineer? Their opinions are important, as is their taste, and where they are coming from.
Now, you get where we are going here – this guitar sound you are about to profile already consists of so much more than just an amp and the Profiler. If you were to provide the same set of gear to various people you will likely get very different sounds from each of them – because it is the human factor that determines the kind of sound that will end up in a profile. And then, even after all of this, you will still only have a raw profile – you won’t have a Rig yet. Now, you need to decide what kind of further tone-shaping should happen. Let’s not get into the unique possibilities with the Profiler to fine-tune profiles with the amp parameters, here. That is a whole other dimension. So, let’s just skip to the conclusion: A great guitar sound is about the cook(s) that put the environment together, select and adjust the ingredients and – last but by no means least – the players themselves. How someone works the strings with a pick, a tap, a strum and with what kind of guitar… you get the idea.
This is why we are so excited about the new Kemper Profiler Michael Britt Rig Pack, because Michael Britt is known the world over for his great sounding, tasty Rigs.
The Michael Britt Rig Pack is available to download from the download section on the Kemper website.
More information: Kemper Amps
