I know a lot of people love the Kemper and that's cool. For me, saying I greatly disliked it is a massive understatement. Living in an apartment, my back is against the wall when it comes to recording guitars. I'm thinking to either get the Undertone GB Tracker then re-amp my guitar tracks from the DAW to amp, which would cut down the amount of time I need a loud amp when recording, or I try something like the Quad Cortex. My fear is that I get the Quad Cortex and end up hearing things I greatly dislike after my ears become familiar with it, similar to my experience with Kemper.

My question is for people who had the Kemper, disliked the way it sounded for recording purposes, sold it, and got the Quad Cortex. Do you like the QC or did it fall short? If it matters, I don't do metal sounds much. I lean more towards Marshall, Fender, Vox, Supro, etc.

Why not investigating building or buying a noise isolation box to contain your amp/amp cab?

Totally pointless asking others opinions on x,y, or z gear. No different to reading countless posts of opinions on gear from people that have never owned or tried it, as many posts on gearspace are prone (especially in the guitar and so much gear sections).
The only way to evaluate any gear is to try it in your own space for a reasonable amount of time.

Buy second hand and flip it if you ain't sure and don't want to commit to new purchases.

Try the ToneX software. The Se version is cheap.

If you don't like it, you won't get happy with any software and need the placebo of tubes.

That’s a good suggestion. I looked into that several years ago and read a lot of mixed reviews. I will definitely give that another look. Didn’t even think about that.

Have you tried running pedals in front of your Kemper? There are some amazing analog pedals out there that can create whatever type of overdrive you like. I run my pedals into clean Kemper profiles.
I too learned not to like the sound of the Kemper for crunch and high gain, but with the pedals, that went away. Now I have all the effects and cabinet options of the Kemper, plus all the routing flexibility, but with the sounds/tones I prefer.

Vintage 50's Strat or Paul > Neve 1073 > 1950's Fender Champ (tweed) > U67 > 2nd Neve 1073 > to Daw or tape.

(add in an 1176 type comp/limiter if going to tape)

I can get amazing tones using two 1073s and an old fender amp at reasonable volumes. The 1073 will add thick great harmonic overdrive or back it off and EQ for bright/clean/sparkle and not be super loud. About as loud as strumming an acoustic guitar.

Between guitar and 1st 1073 you could add a 60's tonebender or Zonk machine and/or roland CE-1 chorus, and/or MXR script phaser, and/or rangemaster and/or WEM Copycat tape delay. These pedals with that setup you can cover 90% of any sound you want a guitar to sound like.

That's what I do at night when I don't want to be loud. It isn't cheap but damn hard to beat.

With the two guitars mentioned you can get this rig for under $100k in today's market. (add another $25k - $30k for the vintage pedals if you can find them)


Works good for re-amping as well.

Thanks for taking the time to lay out all those suggestions... I think. However, guitars, mics, amps, mic-pres, and pedals aren’t the issue. I have those. Not sure how all that even came into the discussion. Paper thin floors and walls, and not quite being the player I once was which requires a few more takes, adds up to my dilemma.

Any Kemper/QC owners care to chime in?

Thanks for a good suggestion. I sold the Kemper years ago though and unfortunately haven’t been able to spend much time on music in the past two years. In two months things will change and I’ll have much more time on my hands. Trying to prepare for that, hence this thread. :-)

Just another thing to try. Neural DSP, the company that makes the Quad Cortex, also makes plugins. You could give these a try - I'd expect they will sound much like the HW. There are free trials on the plugins.

https://neuraldsp.com/plugins

I track my guitars in apartment too. I have chosen to attenuate my tube amps and mic them up. I don't think my volumes are higher than the kid downstairs blasting hip hop and singing along. This is a building from 60's so the walls are not paper thin. I have done this for years and nobody ever has complained about my playing. Somebody outside commented to hear it when I had my window open and he was more like surprised to know about it.

I would suggest that you do what you already thought and get the Undertone GB Tracker and reamp your guitar tracks if you're worried about tracking too long.

I also live in an apartment.

I tend to practice/track with Tonex and reamp or get the final take with a 64’ Deluxe.

I think not many people would ever complain if you are playing well or re-amping a part every now and then.

Tubes are not a placebo. If anything is a placebo it's sims.

Tubes are the real thing, the original. Whether you like them or not.

Yeah, but you can't spot a digital amp in an ABX test. Cause you can maybe hear a difference, but you can't hear something inherently digital as much as you like to point out.

People make shit records with real amps and shit records with sims and people make great albums with real amps and great albums with sims.
And more and more bands use sims when playing live.
You can of course call them all tone deaf and not caring about their sound.
But that would be rather stupid.

No - YOU can't spot the digital amp. It takes experience, whjich you have just admitted you don't have. It's no different that telling a viola or cello part from a violin - the timbre is different in subtle but specific ways.

If you can HEAR a DIFFERENCE, as you say, you can learn which is which.

Well;, some people can, anyway.

In many cases it's not because the musicians are tone deaf, it's because raised expenses have made it difficult to impossible for many acts to tour with a proper traditional rig. I was just reading an article about touring expenses ( regarding PA systems, but it's true of backline gear as well.) The cost of fuel alone for one semi truck makes the cost deference between a 3 or 4 truck tour and a seven truck tour very significant. And then there's the (relatively few) seats takes up by the mix position is significant to the promoters, not to mention the speaker stacks.

And people have made crap records and great records for years and decades. Nothing new there.

Don't confuse economy with art - they are two different things, and often diametrically opposed.

I agree. I can hear the difference, and guitar is not my primary instrument. (I do practice every day, though.) And over time, I learned to hear the sound of amp sims. Once you hear it, you hear it. It can't be described with words. The closest I can describe it is real sugar vs sugar substitute. It is even more subtle than that, though.
Can you make great music with sims? Sure.
Morello recorded most of the Rage hits with a used beat up guitar he bought for nothing.
Musicians can do whatever they like. That's what makes us cool. But some of us can hear sims (especially when listening in solo, which is how we spend 90 percent of our time with our instruments.)
For example, I probably could not hear the difference between a good piano sim and a real piano. But I bet some dedicated piano players can.

The Kemper has made some people apoplexic

I know for a fact they can. I've seen it, even with some very good electronic pianos. With pianos one main issue is touch. electronic keyboards lack a certain subtlety which is obvious to most pianists and difficult to recognize by most others - who are still emotionally effected by it.

GREAT post, by the way.

It's NOT the Kemper. It's a certain portion of excessively aggressive Kemper aficionados.

I've used a Torpedo Captor using both the built in cab sim and the attenuator to the speaker miced up. It was pretty good. Got a good recording of my blackface Vibrolux that way. Might still be too loud for your apartment unless you go with something like a Champ or Princeton attenuated. You could also get the non-sim output and add the cab sim in the DAW.

My group has relied mostly on pedals and amp sims for our more contemporary sound. It definitely boils down to personal preference and work flow.

It might be worth a try, but honestly, you could probably make it work with anything.

Get a Tonex Pedal. 1/4 of the price of the Kemper, includes Amplitude 5 and the Tonex Software which is much newer and has better profiling than the Kemper.

I used the Kemper a lot, and it is still excellent - but it is 10 years old now and technology has made huge leaps since then.

The digital vs. tubes "discussion" at times reminds me of DIY garage guys claiming their SS Peavey combos sounded as good (or better) than Marshall, Fender and/or Vox tube amps...

Me thinks thars a lot of Self-serving bias involved in this discussion

Thank you, John.
I'm fine with the Kemper sonically if I use analog pedals in front of it to derive my gain. Indeed, I may be fine with it forever that way. My way of thinking these days is to find a good spot to merge the analog and the digital. If you find the right spot you can get the best of both worlds. If you rely just on one, then you have to deal with the compromise that comes with that.

There is a huge difference sonically between AI and sims.

I have no comment as I don't own or use a Kemper. But, there is a very active kemper community form that I am part of. I assume you posted there.

yeah.. i can sort of hear digitally character of sims.. but it all depends what sounds you are making. I think sims are great and sims are as good as you know how to use them. If you render and layer tape plugins on the track. you can get some great tracks that will fool any casual listener.

You may be dissatisfied with reamping as well, as you won't have the touch and feel sensitivity that you have going into an amp, especially if you don't use a lot of distortion. You might do better investing in a tube amp that has a 1 watt (or even 1/2 watt) output instead. Record it in your closet if necessary.

Yeah - garage bands like "Journey"!

Beauty is in the ear of the beholder - there's no such thing as the best sounding amp or the best type of amp - because everyone has different taste.

Well, Schon's Peaveys had power amp tubes, not the straight up SS preamp/poweramp budget amps I was referring to...

Skynard also used Peavey SS/Tube amps ;-)

Personally I like to experiment with fuzz, OD, distortion, delay & mod pedals, a *lot*, as such I always find 12AX7/EF86 based preamps to be *far* superior...

YMMV