I love the sound of a well-miced up amp in a nice room, but the Kemper gets you anywhere you want to go if you?re patient enough to learn it?s inner workings, tweaking the settings offered (the offical tips & tricks videos will get you started quickly). Very cool, high-quality FX included as well. The possibility to split your signal to both the ?Kemper Amp? profile of choice, as well as a DI, just makes this thing even more flexible.
The stock profiles will give you plenty of sounds regardless of genre, and the Kemper community forum spits out new great (free) ones all the time, and there are plenty of commercial add-on libraries to keep you going for the rest of your life - suddenly pretty much every standard and/or boutique amp in the world becomes available at your fingertips. Even if you?re an amp collector, the Kemper deserves to be one of them. Profile your own amps and tweak them into something slightly - or completely - different. Jaw-dropping.
The one area where the Kemper doesn?t always shine is in combination with external FX pedals. This is highly dependant on the current profile you?re using (many work fantastic), but some profiles just won?t take a good pedal the same way a ?normal? amp would. This is to some extent a matter of fine-tuning the different settings of the troubling profile you?re using, but can be a bit of a vibe-killer if you have a band ready to record and you just can?t get their pedal board to play nicely. But so can two perfectly aligned amp mics getting the accidental kick, so there you go.
If you record a lot of guitar and need absolute consistency between takes, you should probably get a Kemper and call it a day. If you want to experiment with your guitar sound, this machine will get you everywhere you want to go. After I got my first Kemper, I soon bought a second unit for dual amp recording. I use mine in the studio primarily as amazing guitar amps, but occasion also as FX boxes for other stuff (vocals, synths etc.) and for getting great bass tones recorded. The KPA is versatile, great-sounding, and inspirational. Highly, highly recommended!