Around 5 years ago I switched from using a real guitar amp to a modelling rig, you can find more information about this here. I decided to switch over as my pedalboard was getting larger and larger and I was sick of carrying everything around! (You can see why I bought a modeler in this blog post).
I started off on a Line 6 Floor POD XT, I found this modeller not to sound too great and to be really complicated to use and create patches. I bought the unit cheap off eBay and it was old technology, the oldest review I could find 2002, the idea behind the purchase to see whether I would like a modelling rig, which it provided enough to show me I would. However I wouldn’t recommend this unit.
The next Unit I bought was a Kemper with a Foot Controller. The Kemper has a very interesting approach as it isn’t technically a modeler, it is a profiler. It works by recording the sound of an amp and creating a snapshot of the sound. This creates a really accurate sound and one model comes with a built in Power Amp so you can run it into a standard guitar cab. It sounded fantastic and running it through a guitar cab gave it a ‘real’ feel. The effects built into the Kemper are brilliant as well, particularly the Modulations and from what I understand, a recent update has introduced some fantastic Reverbs. There are a lot of distortion/overdrive effects built in and whilst having a solid group, but some feel not as good as standard as the rest. The foot pedal was really well built and easy to program, it was also lightweight which helped with the portability.
The downside to the Kemper was that if you couldn’t tweak the amp sound, you have an EQ on the front of the unit, but it works more like a PA as opposed to an Amp. Whilst you have a plethora of brilliant built in effects, you are very restricted as to where you can place them in the effects chain, so I felt like I had to use my pedalboard still with it which made the rig less portable. It also came with a case which broke within 6 months.
The only photo I could find of my Kemper setup with a Pedalboard.
Overall, I think the Kemper sounds fantastic, if you want to have just one amp sound that you don’t want to play around with, and you will either use a simple effects setup with the ones built in or if you want to use your own pedalboard. For me though, I wanted to have just one unit to cover everything.
I understand that Kemper has released a floor unit now, which seems great and I have not used a unit in about 18 months so software updates may have changed the features I had issued with.