Gerry,
No I haven't tried it, and I probably won't because I won't even considyouer spending that kind of money on the thing, and yeah, you are looking at the ugly little toaster oven I was talking about.
Hell, I could go buy a Friedman SS100 for $3500, and that is a good tube amp, if I were interested in going to amp heads, which I'm not. The point is, that cheaper than the Kemper, and a hell of a lot easier to dial in your tone.
Wagener admits that he has to go back and redo the samples in the Kemper, because you can't capture all the nuances in one shot. So how many times do you have to profile an amp to catch everything it does? And if you have multiple amps like I do, you'd have to repeat that entire process with each one. That sounds like a big pain in the ass that never ends.
Yeah, you could go get a Bugera, and I'm sure MJMP will ride you like a horse about it. I've tried those a few years back, not the kind of overdrive/distortion I'm used to. Those are pretty cheap too, and so are Blackstar. It seems those are one of the more popular selling amps around here for the last couple of years. The local music shop down the street from me sells them, and I tried a couple of them. Good clean tone, but again like the Bugera, the Distortion is not me, so I wouldn't buy one of them either.
As I said in my last post, I'm through with modelling amps and their limitations, and I've already spent enough on them, in terms of time and money, to learn this. I'll stick with real amps because it's so much more satisfying.
As for brand names, whatever works. I've posted that several times here. Take me for example. I recently bought two Peavey Classic 50/50 power amps to replace the Microtube power amps I've been using for years. Now I'm basically a Fender/ADA guy for the most part, but I've been wanting to upgrade my sound to tube amps for years. I've been holding out for a T100S, but they are few and far between, and when one does come up, then I'm usually tied up in something else and can't afford it. So, f*ck IT! I bought the Peavey's. A brand name that most of their product line is shit with only a few notable items here and there, but the Classics WORK! I'm getting what I was after with the MP-1 Classic, and discovering a lot of surprises with the MP-2 with this amp.
I'm sure there will be a fair number of snob guitar players who'll turn their noses up at these amps, but it's my rig, not theirs, and I don't give a flying f*ck through a rolling donut. Deal with it.