Rather than haul around lots of amp heads and cabinets on tour, the Kemper Profiler Ampallowed guitarists to take thousands of accurately modeled amp sounds in one unit. Players were then offered tone switching control at their feet with the Remote, and more recently a complete package floor unit with the Stage. Now Kemper has returned to its original product, to treat it to the “ultimate cabinet solution” in the shape of the Kabinet.
Germany’s Kemper first announced the Kabinet and Kone at the Winter NAMM show in January, 2019, but has only now made them available to buy. As the name suggests, the Kabinet is a lightweight speaker cabinet designed to work exclusively with the Profiler Head or Rack Amp, which is built around a 12-inch full-range speaker that’s been exclusively developed for Kemper by Celestion.
That Kone speaker is driven and controlled by the Profiler’s digital signal processor using a dedicated algorithm. Kemper says that the Kone “has been narrowed towards the physics of a classic guitar speaker chassis, so that even the full range sound carries a distinct guitar speaker character.” All of which means that you can expect a much more guitar-oriented tone than you would get from standard PA speakers or monitors. Speaker behavior can further be tweaked to preference using Sweetening and Directivity parameters.
By activating the Profiler’s Monitor CabOff function, the Kone switches from full-range mode to Speaker Imprint mode. This puts 19 classic guitar speaker emulations at the player’s disposal for an authentic “amp in the room” sound. And any backing tracks played through the auxiliary input of the Profiler Amp will be rendered in full-range mode, while the guitar simultaneously rocks in Imprint mode.
The 24.9-lb (11.3-kg) Kabinet is priced at US$480. The Kone can be bought on its own for installation into a player’s cabinet of choice for $180. Two and four packs of the Kone are expected to be available in Europe from the end of the month.
Kemper releases a cabinet specifically designed for its Profiler Amp [New Atlas]