Pentatonic Wanker
Member
I know most of you guys up here use high end tube amps, but I thought I would leave this for anyone contemplating a Katana. I wished I had stumbled across a similar review before purchasing mine (would have saved me a bunch of time and aggravation).
Review of the Boss Katana 100
I purchased this with the Roland GA-FC foot controller.
What I was initially looking for: I purchased this amp after being out of the gigging business for over a decade. I had no gear, and I wanted a decent sounding amp that didn't cost a lot, and I didn’t want to initially shell out hundreds of extra dollars for pedals. For this, the amp delivered in spades. Overall the Katana is a decent amp, but at the end of the day I returned it, and instead went with the Orange CR-60 (and some pedals).
The Good:
* Decent range of distortion from mild crunch to Metal.
* Over 50 effects available with version 3 of the firmware. Most of them pretty good sounding.
* Plenty of volume - even in a loud cover band I never needed the 100 watt setting.
* Sounds decent at higher volumes (unlike many cheap amps).
* Works with regular foot controller to switch channels, or with Roland GA-FC. With GA-FC two banks of presets (4 each) are accessible.
* Line out with speaker emulation that does not change with master volume on the amp.
* Can export/import your settings to/from a Mac or PC, making setup of a second/spare Katana a breeze.
The Bad:
* Only a handful of effects are accessible from the top panel.
* You MUST have a PC or Mac available to access the other effects and tweak your tone to taste.
* Upgrading the amp (mine arrived with version 2) to version 3 and setting up the Macintosh software was “less than plug and play”. Not super difficult, but took more effort than it should have.
* The distortion sounds are very “hi-fi” sounding, kind of what you hear in over-produced recordings. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it difficult to cut through a mix in a band situation.
* After spending hours tweaking the T-Wah settings, I gave up and purchased a Morley Wah pedal instead. Most of the the other effects are decent to excellent though.
* No USB C connector (USB B only).
The Ugly:
* The Amp doesn’t make a great gigging rig because there is no easy way to tweak it on stage quickly unless you bring a laptop computer. Need a little more volume on preset three? Touch the volume knob and it jumps the volume to whatever the panel is set to at the time. Switch back to preset 2 to compare and you just lost your setting. This forces the guitarist into an endless cycle of “touch, guess, save, compare” before getting it right. This could take 30 - 45 seconds for an operation that should literally take 2 seconds.
* No iPad, Android, or iPhone app. Boss really missed the boat here. Every guitarist pretty much brings at least one iOS or Android device to a gig. No one brings a laptop. This is the amps biggest downfall. Without an Android or iOS app this amp just isn’t very gig friendly……making that 2 second single channel volume tweak mentioned above all but impossible to do quickly.
Bottom Line:
Great amp for the studio or bedroom. But if gigging is your thing, I would look elsewhere.
Review of the Boss Katana 100
I purchased this with the Roland GA-FC foot controller.
What I was initially looking for: I purchased this amp after being out of the gigging business for over a decade. I had no gear, and I wanted a decent sounding amp that didn't cost a lot, and I didn’t want to initially shell out hundreds of extra dollars for pedals. For this, the amp delivered in spades. Overall the Katana is a decent amp, but at the end of the day I returned it, and instead went with the Orange CR-60 (and some pedals).
The Good:
* Decent range of distortion from mild crunch to Metal.
* Over 50 effects available with version 3 of the firmware. Most of them pretty good sounding.
* Plenty of volume - even in a loud cover band I never needed the 100 watt setting.
* Sounds decent at higher volumes (unlike many cheap amps).
* Works with regular foot controller to switch channels, or with Roland GA-FC. With GA-FC two banks of presets (4 each) are accessible.
* Line out with speaker emulation that does not change with master volume on the amp.
* Can export/import your settings to/from a Mac or PC, making setup of a second/spare Katana a breeze.
The Bad:
* Only a handful of effects are accessible from the top panel.
* You MUST have a PC or Mac available to access the other effects and tweak your tone to taste.
* Upgrading the amp (mine arrived with version 2) to version 3 and setting up the Macintosh software was “less than plug and play”. Not super difficult, but took more effort than it should have.
* The distortion sounds are very “hi-fi” sounding, kind of what you hear in over-produced recordings. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it difficult to cut through a mix in a band situation.
* After spending hours tweaking the T-Wah settings, I gave up and purchased a Morley Wah pedal instead. Most of the the other effects are decent to excellent though.
* No USB C connector (USB B only).
The Ugly:
* The Amp doesn’t make a great gigging rig because there is no easy way to tweak it on stage quickly unless you bring a laptop computer. Need a little more volume on preset three? Touch the volume knob and it jumps the volume to whatever the panel is set to at the time. Switch back to preset 2 to compare and you just lost your setting. This forces the guitarist into an endless cycle of “touch, guess, save, compare” before getting it right. This could take 30 - 45 seconds for an operation that should literally take 2 seconds.
* No iPad, Android, or iPhone app. Boss really missed the boat here. Every guitarist pretty much brings at least one iOS or Android device to a gig. No one brings a laptop. This is the amps biggest downfall. Without an Android or iOS app this amp just isn’t very gig friendly……making that 2 second single channel volume tweak mentioned above all but impossible to do quickly.
Bottom Line:
Great amp for the studio or bedroom. But if gigging is your thing, I would look elsewhere.
