As powerful as the Kemper unit is, it was surprisingly quick and easy to get up and running within the first minute of using it. This unit had a handful of different amp and stompbox profiles preinstalled, near all of which I found to have an incredibly realistic sound with tons of tweakability, if you so desired. I actually didn't feel much tweaking was needed to get a wide range of tones - starting with a Marshal profile for a high gain setting, the only change I made was adding a TS9-inspired overdrive to the circuit with about 1db of gain, just to add a touch of additional saturation to make the distortion just a hair more complex and interesting. Quite honestly, I was blown away, especially when realizing this emulated sound was achieved with no more than 3 minutes of tweaking and could be captured "as is" by simply plugging into an audio interface. As someone who predominately records high gain electric guitars, the fact that this record-ready high gain tone was achievable this quickly greatly appealed to me, as recording distorted guitars with a clear and defined image can prove to be one of more difficult recording challenges. 

 

From there I jumped around to a handful of different amps, first getting a clean and warm clean tone for a jazzy feel. Then a slightly overdriven indie-rock tone (this one benefitted from a compressor stompbox and a touch of chorus). Finally, an effect-heavy proggy tone with a handful of delay from both stompboxes and the onboard studio-grade delay and reverb sections. After dialing in each setting and playing for 5 minutes or so, I always found myself forgetting I was playing through an emulation, and didn't actually have the actual amp and pedals directly in front of me. The accuracy of these profiles is truly world-class and I'm certain will be the quality benchmark for all future amp, cabinet, and stompbox emulations to come.

 

With how accurate these profiles are and how intuitive the layout is, this box is a clear winner for both studio and live guitarists who love to experiment with world-class quality. For a studio engineer, you cannot beat the access to nearly any amplifier to cover any genre, not to mention how easy it is to achieve a clear and focused high gain guitar recording. For the performer who plays in multiple different projects, or simply loves to utilize multiple different tonal voices within a single band, the Kemper really is a dream come true with its plethora of incredibly affordable (if not free) amp, stompbox, and cabinet profiles available to explore.