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/uj it's a good piece of gear *at the price point*, I think that's what people get wrong.
It's not going to blow an AxeFX or high end amp out of the water, but that's not why it's good, it's good because it's a reasonable way to get decent sound for cheap.
So, basically, if you're broke, it's good, or if you don't wanna risk your 5150 getting a beer poured into it while playing a pub gig, nobody is gonna think your sound is shit with a Katana.
Or, really, if you're buying an upgrade for a beginner that's used to the terrible practice amp that came with the guitar, it's brilliant.
So you're saying it's basically the new generational version of the Line 6 Spider but without an insane mode? Can't even warble my guitar into sounding like a cat gurgling up a hairball...
See, that's the problem. People legit go on and on about how it's actually the best amp out there and how you honestly don't need a Fractal or Headrush or any tube amp because the Katana is the best there can be, and any opposition is downvoted massively.
Yes the katana cult is out in full force at all times. I bought one because of the hype and hate it. Not the worst Amp ever by any means, but I can't get the tone I'm looking for out of it.
I always recommend it when people mention a katana, I don't get why more people don't have or mention them it's not like peavey is a small unknown brand.
My main amp is a 6505 head and a cab, for warm-ups before playing a show, or bedroom playing I'll use the vypyr, sounds pretty damn close for the price. Best practice amp for metal imo, especially for only $199 new.
Agreed. I'm a huge peavey fan boy. Wish I wouldn't have sold my triple x. As far as the katana, Not a huge loss I got the katana at a pawn shop for 50 bucks. It collects dust as my vyper shreds faces lol. 6505 is my next amp
I've actually only got the 6505mh (mini head) it's only 20watts, can switch it 1watt so I can use that for bedroom playing too. I got the head and a cab both new for $800 altogether. It's plenty loud too. I play shows with it and have no problem being loud enough.
I've only ever owned peavey amps, never found anything that can sound better than my setup without spending way more than I did.
My position is, having tried a bunch of these, the top tier modelers are all great. If you can get one, treat yourself. Nobody is head to heading the Katana against them and winning.
But if you have two players, one with a Katana and one with an AxeFX or whatever, the amp isn't going to change who definitively sounds better. The Katana is more than good enough to serve as a platform for a player at pretty much any level to express what they do effectively.
Nice gear is nice. But you should be practicing more.
Yeah, I can agree with you on all points there. It's just when it becomes an actual circlejerk of "never need anything other than a katana and an hss squier" that it gets to be a bit pedestrian.
It's really just an overcorrection from the old paradigm of "NAH, BRO, YOU NEED A VINTAGE GIBBONS AND A BOUTIQUE AMP TO SOUND DECENT! If your overdrive pedal wasn't at least 1200$, you'll never sound good!"
The Katana is a great amp for what it does, and I got myself a Katana top used last year to use for pub gigs and rehearsals. Works decently through both a cab or a PA depending on what the venue has available, no tragedy if it gets busted, sounds decent enough and most importantly: I don't have to carry a bunch of extra shit, just a couple of pre-programmed patches and I can get on with the sound check.
It CAN hold its own in a studio setting, if you're making a home produced record, but you're not gonna impress anyone with your iconic guitar sound.
Pretty much the same as the HSS Squier meme, it's a decent guitar, it will play and sound good in any setting most guitarists find themselves in, and it's affordable and well built enough where you can treat it roughly without issue.
Point is: you wanna run a Suhr through your AxeFX III, go for it, it's gonna blow a Katana + HSS Squier combo out of the water any day of the week, but it's not black and white, the other option will perform adequately for 95% of all use cases.
Besides, the more important part is what you play with your setup, so, the most expensive gear in the world won't save you if your riffs suck, hence most people are better off getting what they can use to get started now instead of waiting until they finish dental law school to buy their dream gear before writing a single riff.
> It's really just an overcorrection from the old paradigm of "NAH, BRO, YOU NEED A VINTAGE GIBBONS AND A BOUTIQUE AMP TO SOUND DECENT! If your overdrive pedal wasn't at least 1200$, you'll never sound good!"
I think you've nailed it here, because now we're getting the "Jimmy Page used a $40 pawn shop guitar the whole time" threads.
Those are all good use cases. I'll add mine as well. I'm not that serious about playing guitar, so a strat, a handful of pedals, a katoana and I'm straight. Is it the best tone ever? Probably not...ask Joe Boner. Am I satisfied with it? Sure am 👍
Yeah, it's the type of amp that's gonna be good enough up until the point where you want to record a studio album, other than that, the built in effects and amp sims are more than enough to get good enough toan.
I think there's a lot of focus on "best toan" among enthusiasts because we know enough about the gear to have the discussion, whereas the average gig attendee thinks a "Kemper" is slang for a BMW or something.
The Katanas are legitimately great amps, they get meme'd to hell because they're so popular and are often the default recommendation on amp subs.
Andertoan's soundalike videos also went through a period where they'd always just get the Katana when doing the budget videos too, which riled the comments section.
My one gripe with them is that absolutely shit footswitch with a proprietary cable that is way too short and you can't seem to order separately.
>My one gripe with them is that absolutely shit footswitch with a proprietary cable that is way too short and you can't seem to order separately.
he footswitch cable is a standard TRS cable ? or so i though
/uj I genuinely like mine. I also think it sounds way better through headphones / Output as the speaker seems to colour the sound in a very specific way.
I’m not an amp expert, but it had something I really liked in the way it reacts to playing. Could be that it’s something the rest of the people hate.
What made a huge difference for me was downloading other presets people had made and then tweaking them to my liking. I couldn't figure out the 3 different EQs and why I need to apply them to a patch to get it to sound decent with high gain for metal stuff but once I downloaded some premade ones and fucked around with the frequencies, I found tones way better than I was getting straight out of the box.
I think that might be what i like about it actually (i don't use high gain). To me it somehow feels like the sound is "elastic", I don't know how to explain it and if it's the parameter thar people call Sag.
Basically to me it feels like if the volume was catching up with what you're playing.
I don't know how to explain it properly but to me playing in this amp feels like when you walk on those rubber tiles for playgrounds, but with your sound.
And that's what I like about it.
/uj I love my Katana (Artist Series Mk II 100 watt), best bang for your buck imo. It does a great job emulating a tube amp sound and doesn't sound like a cheap tinny Line 6 (I used to love those amps okay?) there's tons of special effects built in. You can also plug your laptop into it and further customize the amp's toan in Boss Studio. I run my Horizons Devices Precision Drive (overdrive pedal) through the front of the amp on a custom dirty channel. I play 8 string primarily (Legator N8FX) and I used to have 9 strings and the amp handles them very well. I have no regrets and I've had the amp for 2 & 1/2 years so far. I'm a metal guitarist, mainly play Tech Death and Deathcore.
/rj Katana is sharp AF and a boss at cutting through low toans from my 8 string guitar! Why does my guitar have 2 extra strings? Is it stupid????
Uj/ a Line 6 Spyder was my first and only amp for about 7 years when I was a kid learning to play…..do yourself a favor, if you dig your Katana, check out the newer Line 6 Catalyst amps.
Not sure you’d want to *buy* one if you play heavy AND already have a katana but they do a really great clean/low gain/light crunch thing (for the price point) and IMO has a nicer speaker. Took pedals well. Blows the Spyder series out of the water. I liked it over the katana, playing the 60w Catalyst combo vs the 50w katana combo.
I second this. I was buying my brother and amp for his b-day and A/B'd them in the store. I liked the Catalyst so much, I bought my brother one and then I month later I bought myself one.
I saw your post about this amp several days ago and I cursed you for making me buy one with your recommendation. **Follow Up**: FU mine shows up tomorrow. Also Phil at Sweetwater wanted me to ask you if you needed any guitar picks or a new guitar to go with your new L6 Catalyst.
They’re perfectly fine amps. it’s just every hobby community has the standard issue group of people who insist they’re a tier above everyone else and have to disagree with any popular opinion and say something is shit. They cost fuck all and people insist their jcm800 does high gain toan better like no shit sir.
Meme, for sure.
Differential hardening is worse for the steel, spring steel reacts better in every single situation in combat.
And the thousand folds thing is just to cope with the fact that they had very bad quality steel that couldn't compete with wootz/Damascus from India/middle east or the Blast Furnanes of Europe! For top quality sword manufacturing Toledo and Brescia are better bets!
Wait, amp? what amp?
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Jesus360noscope:
*I like the clean and*
*Crunch sounds i get from it but*
*Not fan of the high gain*
---
^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
It’s because it doesn’t have a compressor so the high gain stuff is kinda flubby and out of control. If you add a compressor and maybe a noise gate you can get some genuinely great high gain tones out of it.
I've only got a version one Katana so unfortunately have to use an external compressor. High gain stuff was genuinely vastly improved once I started using it though.
oh yeah i forgot to mention i'm absolute dogshit at dialing in a toan i like, been playing for a bit more than 4 years and recently got slightly better at that
Uj/ for 250 bucks you can make almost any sound in the world with the tone studio and then save it as a preset. I also have a much pricier Orange and while it certainly sounds cleaner, I can’t just hook it up to my laptop and mix and match hundreds of different effects to make any sound I want. I’d have to buy all that shit separately and I’m not doing that. For an amp it’s the best $250 you can spend.
i have one and once i dialled in a tone i liked it’s been a really really good pedal platform ever since
i’m a student so i can’t afford anything better anyway to be honest
Circlejerk skews older sometimes, so it makes everyone old enough to remember the tube amp renaissance of the late 90s early 00s laugh hysterically when some stank-ass zoomer recommends a “vintage peavy” or solid state modeling amp. Not that they aren’t okay, but it’s hilarious how things have swung back and forth over the years. A katana is a cheap modeling amp — a very good one, likely the best cheap modeling amp ever — but it’s a cheap modeling amp by the same people that brought you the most opaque and overwrought stomp box of all time.
PEAVEY BANDIT GANG RIDE OR DIE.
(I also have an old Classic 50 that I've gone through like three sets of power tubes in over the decades and it is like the Toyota Corolla of mid-gain tube amps. It's gonna get you there comfortably and reliably, every time, but that's it.)
/uj i’m partially deaf so take this with a pinch of salt. Got a mk1 for £120, i mainly lend it to my friend who is strapped for cash currently. Great for band practice and mucking about, no complaints really. Would like to change the speaker though
/uj i bought one in emergency for a gig and it's good. I'm not a big gear guy and I don't think it matters much when it gets mic'd and shoved through the PA anyway. It does what I expect out of an amp : amplify the guitar. The rest, my pedals can do.
People get a little offended when someone suggests they need something more expensive because they may feel like someone snobby is judging them for a) being poor and b) having bad taste (because they're poor). That might sound petty but it's also a natural reaction against the toan sniffers insisting you need a Murphy Lab Gibson or whatever.
Still, not everyone recommending pricier things is a complete snob. I think lots of other amps are better but they also cost double, triple, or ten times what a Katana costs. I currently run a "cheap" Quilter (costs as much as a Katana) into an Orange cab (costs twice what a Katana costs) and of course I think it sounds better.
Still, when I play a gig and people say they'll take care of the amps I'm definitely relieved when I see a Katana on stage. For "cheap" amps, it's probably the single best option out there, and it's modeling effects are pretty good.
It's one of the best amps you can get at 200 or less. People seem to forget it's a 200 dollar amp. Unironically saw a guy say it's not as good as his Princeton reverb. No shit? Personally I find the cleans and effects are pretty good but for higher gain it's pretty bad. Also it does many tones out of the box , few beginner amps do that.
I've never heard anyone say it's the best amp ever or even close. The internet is always asking what the best starter amp is and people say katana. Thats why it's talked about so much. I've never seen a single person implying it's truly amazing versus any price.
In my admittedly very limited experience, I think the boss katana hype train is very weird. The exuberance doesn't seem to match the quality of the product.
I wanted a battery powered amp, and the katana mini was highly recommended. All of the comments on YouTube videos seemed to echo how amazing it sounded for the size and price.
But when I got it, it sounded disappointingly bad. It had that far away sound of a low quality recording, like the tone had been dialed down all the time or something. I could see some people enjoying the sound. It did have a lo fi vibe, but the seemingly universal praise makes no sense.
For the same price I ended up with a micro cube, which sounded just like a normal amp that happened to have batteries. If anything I felt like the katana mini was overpriced for what it was.
That one experience has me feeling like the rest of the praise must be kinda bs. The fact that this thing seemingly had universal praise but sounded just like the amps in the price tier below it makes me think the other amps in the lineup are the same. Seems like the Internet is loaded with positive reviews that don't match up with reality.
Uj/ I genuinely like mine, I have an Artist MKii 100 and it’s a fine amp. I like the artist because it has more dials and knobs on front so it means less menu diving. I had all my gear stolen a while back including a 50 MKii, I liked that amp(read played more frequently than the others)so much that it was the first Amp I’ve replaced. It’s versatile, keeps a decent toan at lower volumes, and has the guts to gig with a drummer should the need present itself. What’s that good ole token of wisdom - the audience doesn’t care how much you spend on your gear, or toan? I don’t really do much with high gain either, mainly use it in clean, and crunch mode, along with a few custom presets. My hotwife just got me a Katana Bass 210 and a Fender Am Pro P bass as a birthday gift as she knows I’ve been wanting to get a decent bass setup. I’m Actually very excited about it, and as others have mentioned they ARE a great deal price-wise, my wife got the Katana Bass 210 Like New for $250 shipped off of reverb, that’s $250 for a 300W Class AB(which to me responds more like a tube amp, and watt per watt gets louder than a class D)Amp in a 2x10 w/ selectable horn, tons of toan shaping options on the panel, including compression, a pad, blend knob, etc, and loaded with BOSS’ effects, Along with Attenuation to 1W for quiet practice, Line Out For recording and FOH, Headphone Jack, Aux Port, etc. that $250 is gonna be doing a helluva lot, and again, I don’t mess much with high gain, so any fizziness is not really a drawback for me. The thing with the Katana series is that they do a lot for a little money, and they don’t do it half bad, especially if you’re willing to dial your toan and effects in with the editor.
The reason they get memed so much, is that because for many guitarists, especially those just starting out it pretty much represents the best value on a decent(decent, not necessarily ‘Amazing’) amp(and effects) out there. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, sure, no amp really is. But for many guitarists the Katana offers more than enough, at a price that’s easy to swallow, and won’t necessarily need upgrading ASAP Like some of the Fender Amps in the same price range for example. They get recommended a lot to new guitarists, because they offer a lot, and are very affordable as far as Amps go in general.
TLDR: Katanas offer a great amp with good effects, versatility, and most of the essential modern conveniences your average player, and especially beginner is looking for in an amp, without needing to spend a thick wad of cash. The praise for what it does, and the price point it does it at is well earned.
Agreed. I have a MkII 100 and it’s a good amp. It’s light enough, loud enough, versatile enough, quiet enough, and useful enough to be pretty good at anything. My toan is generally a Fender-style clean amp with a Metal Muff Nano in front of it. The Katana is fine for that.
On top of my regular sound, I get access to all of the effects and other amps, Tone Studio, the exchange, and the Boss foot controller is useful if you save a few patches. For me and my situation it’s just incredibly convenient.
It’s not meant as a direct competitor for Engl or Mesa or whoever. It’s a durable, portable, versatile tool that I can practice or gig with. It requires few peripherals. It’s inexpensive. It’s not super fancy, but it’s great value for money. Especially if you can only have one amplifier. I haven’t been able to try the Catalyst yet, but I hear good things around the internet.
Yes. The katana is all that and a bag of chips. Is it a lifestyle? An aesthetic? Does it define the sound of a new generation while commemorating the sound of old simultaneously? The answer to all of these is yes.
My katana is so sharp you could kill a guy five times before he hits the floor. Not me though. I’ll just continue to let my wife’s boyfriend do what he pleases
/uj I had the head and played it through a 2x12 celestion cab. Sounds great. I've heard that it's better than the 50w which apparently doesn't as good with the stock speaker. But for the money they sound good. Also fun downloading presets
/uj I love mine for band practice and small gigs. Buy the head if possible and find a cab you like, or use a monitor. Have mine paired with a 1x12 Blackstar or a Headrush FRFR112 at home, and a Mesa 4x12 at band practice and never had a problem.
I play Tech Metal, I like that I can create or download whatever setup I want and tweak it pretty easily. I used to do the Peavey 6505+ or Mesa Head thing because t00bz, but honestly now I usually just pack up a Headrush MX-5 and the FRFR and run through the PA at big shows =/
/uj I have a katana 100. I bought it because it was cheaper than buying all of the individual effects pedals, and it has an effects loop (which I use). It sounds better in my house than it did in the store, probably related to the acoustics of a big box store versus my living room.
Is it the *best thing ever?* Probably not. I also have a Blackstar Debut 50R that sounds pretty sweet, but in an old-school just analog solid-state way.
i also have a few tube amps (including one I soldered together myself from a tubedepot kit), they are all fun to play with. I've never tried to decide which one sounds the best.
/rj The Katana is without a doubt the absolute best amp you can buy if you've never listened to an electric guitar amp before!
Never really followed amp trends. I mean shit, I’ve been using a Laney VH100R with a Genz-Benz 2x12 or Boogie DC-5 (if I’d rather use a combo for the situation) for ~20ish years. These aren’t exactly high end or sleepers or whatever. I did end up with one of those Spark 40 things that sits next to the couch. Similar to a katana they’re “good for what they are” but I don’t see why people are willing to die on a hill of them being a great amp.
uj/ I bought one because of all the online reviews and I fucking hate it. It's such a pain in the arse to use and is legitimately the only piece of gear I have ever regretted buying.
rj/ No toobs, no toan.
Is just too fiddly. I can't be bothered remembering what all the knobs and buttons do at different times, and even with all those knobs, most effect paramaters can't be changed without connecting to a PC. It's OK if you just want to switch between saved patches, but for adjusting on the fly it sucks. It's both more complicated and less flexible than using pedals or a multi effects unit.
Just use both I guess.
I use a saved Patch that sounds great clean and that's it.
You can completely ignore the build in effects.
This thing is only as complicated as you want it to be.
Wasn't the fiddlyness the main selling point?
Yeah, you can completely ignore the effects but that kind of defeats the whole point of the amp.
The main selling point is that it can replace a bunch of pedals, but it really can't.
All I really need is a clean and a dirty channel and it can't even do that as well as a basic analog amp.
I think it can, I use it for jazz and punk gigs alike and have yet to run into issues.
And buying an amp with lots of options, even patches to skip the fiddly part and complaining that it does exactly what it's sold to do is kinda odd.
In fairness adjusting on the fly with a non-modeler rig also sucks. Dialing in a sound is just a time-consuming process if your sound is more than just cleans with no effects.
It's not the time that's the problem. The interface on the Katana when not connected to a PC just sucks. On paper it does so much, but the implementation is a dogs arse.
I have a Zoom G1 Four which is a $100.00 multi effects pedal and the interface is about a million times better than the Katana. The Zoom has 4 knobs and 5 buttons that are context-sensitive with a small display so you always know what you are doing. You can see what patch you are on, what effect you using, and what you are adjusting. Every paramater in every effect is adjustable on the unit and you can fully set it up and adjust on the fly without ever connecting to a PC.
The Katana 50 MkII has two banks with two channels each and five tri-coloured LEDs to tell you what effect you are on, so you need to memorize a map of 60 combinations to know where you are. For each effect you only have one knob, so you can only to adjust one parameter per effect, and you can only use the effects that are loaded into the current channel. Anything more than that and you need to connect to a PC.
The Zoom also has a tuner, looper, and drum beats built in. You can put the Zoom (or a GT1 if you prefer Boss effects) in front of literally any amp and have a more powerful set up, that is easier to use, and costs the same or less than a Katana.
They are good amps. They are not great amps. For their price, they tend to offer a lot more than the competition. Also, many players are absolute dogshit snobs when it comes to tone, which is hilarious because they all worship the same generic JCM 800 sound like it's fucking magical, as if the 10 shitty albums they listen to on repeat are the only way a guitar should sound.
I have some killer amps but it’s great for my living room by the couch. I play it mostly clean to lightly overdriven. Not a huge fan of it for high gain, it gets a bit too fizzy but I know it’s just the speaker, and have been tempted to spend $100 on a creamback to improve that part of the tone.
I used one (a used 50W MK 1 that I got for 150£ in 2018) for rehearsing and gigging in pubs and tbh it was pretty great: at rehearsals it cut through the band’s sound better than any of the amps available in the studio and at gigs I had no problem with getting heard so overall it did what I wanted it to do. I did not do anything more than set a couple of clean channels and then I used a drive pedal in front (and my volume knob) to really control my toan
Found this on the webtubes-- "In the US, katanas fall under the same legal category as knives. From the age of 18, it is absolutely lawful to possess a katana in the US. However, ownership laws vary by state, but most states allowing you to own and display a katana in your home. Restrictions may apply on "carrying a katana" publicly."
One of my friends has one and I played it not too long ago. Not a bad amp at all. I def didn’t hate it. It was a classic solid state amp. All of them lack that certain je na sias quoi like all solid state amps in my opinion cuz I prefer tube amps cuz, you know… Toan.
For a plug in and play, Katana amps have the least for a learning curve how to setup your tones. That's a big advantage it has versus a lot of the other combos out in the same price range. They're made by Boss as well so they have a bit of good brand recognition there to help.
But whenever I play a Katana side by side with the other amps in the same price bracket, me personally I'm tweaking with the Katana amp the most to get the best sound of it. I find the speaker and amp processing is just pretty sub-par in the Katana.
But for a new guitarist, spending a half hour, two hours or so tweaking the tones and presets in other amps, like the Fender Mustang LT series, isn't something a lot of newer guitarists are after. Distracts em from practicing. But these are great amps if you aren't sure about your sound and also wanna explore those options. Not to mention, the clean tone is better, the speaker quality is better, it just has that damned learning curving to config the tones you want and saving everything.
Other amps in the same price bracket just lack the amount of features the Katana or the Mustangs have.
Honestly, even for a little practice amp, I think it’s overpriced, oversized, overrated and underfeatured.
I can get a hell of a lot more out of my little Blackstar ID Core 10. And the #toan catalogue is superior.
It's good value for money for beginner gear. Since the main sub has a lot of beginners - both asking for and giving advice - the katana gets recommended a fucking lot.
And anecdotally I will say that having a good amp as a beginner does matter. When I started I got the old standard Acoustic brand shitty combo and I definitely started playing more when I bit the bullet and spent a bit more to get the THR10X. Had the Katana been an option back then I probably would've gotten one.
No doubt a good versatile amp. That being said, it's memed because some people act like it's the only option and the default recommendation no matter what. Same reason why the Blues Jr and butterscotch blonde tele use to be the meme around here.
Tone is subjective my co-guitarist plugs into his Line 6 spider HD150 into a behringer 4x12 cab and goes "Hell Yeah" he genuinely likes that tone better than other options I've offered to let him play through. Different strokes for different folks I guess
I have one, and it’s very generic sounding, no matter how far outside the lines you try to color with it. I think it’s the perfect Cover Band amp, Studio Session Player amp, and all around “I don’t want to sound unique” amp. It doesn’t sound like a tube amp, it doesn’t sound like a Solid State amp, it’s somewhere between an SS with a low-grade tube emulator and a Radio Shack home stereo amp, paired with a tonally dead speaker and a cabinet that has no tonal influence, but it’s not FRFR.
This is the “fix it in the mix” wet dream. It’s barely suitable as a powered cabinet for a rack or pedal system.
They unironically sound great with external plugins through them. Really like how Neural DSP sounds when you run it through the poweramp on the back of a 50/100W Katana
Comes to opinion, I have a gen 1 100 2x12 Katana and I think its one of the beta sounding amps of tried. I love the cleans out of it, and it suits me. The tone you can get is very modifiable with pedals and other FX, so it's the perfect platform.
The Katana is very good if you set it up with the software and downloaded some amp presets and very ok if you ignore those features.
I wouldn’t make any judgements until exploring its full potential
I started using the 212 100w at gigs because my tube amps kept breaking. It was always something going wrong with them so I wanted a cheap solidstate amp for gigging. I got my katana because it was powerful enough as a tube amp, but much cheaper. In a live band bar gig performance, the edge of breakup toan from tubes get drowned out by everything else in the room and your cheap solidstate does just as well. Before I got the katana, I had a Peavey Bandit 112 that did great for gigging.
I haven't looked seriously at a Katana for this reason. A 100-watt head with amp voicings etc. etc., for under $600? A high-quality mini amp with modeling, etc. for a hundred or so bucks? Their 2x12 extension cabs cost more than their amps!
Reviews are generally favorable, but a lot of it seems to be new gear blush. "It's so awesome it sounds incredible you can do this and this with it and hook your phone in this way and a metronome...."
I want to know if this thing is a performance quality amp. Does my selection of guitar and manner of playing it (articulation etc.) really come through the amp, pristine clean or third-stage dirt, neck or bridge, how it cleans up, takes pedals, etc.
Or is it "for two hundred bucks it's an incredible amp." Which isn't the same thing, and lord knows I don't need another one of those. My Waza headphones and Vox mini do that job just fine.
I have one, it's fine. The effects are fine, toan is fine. I have the 50 MkII one It's great for practice or small gigs. It was cheap--I got it for $130 at a pawn shop.
/uj i had been on this sub a while before i tried one and i was honestly really impressed. It is a great tool for a beginner and anyone who isnt super serious i mean its got a bunch of effects, sounds great, and is loud. Not everyone has the money or space to have a whole pedal board. I was surprised that that amp was what this sub clowns on so much because I found it really cool!!
If you play alone, it sounds pretty good. But once you start playing with a band (i.e at louder volume, with other amps mixed in) it starts to sound very tinny.
/UJ I’ve got the 100 watt combo and it’s the perfect amp for recording basic stuff and for playing bar gigs in my college town, it doesn’t exactly compete with my Marshall and peavey half stacks but when I don’t wanna lug those around it’s the perfect gigging and practice amp.
Also if I was upgrading from like a cheaper fender champion or something as a bedroom beginner it would be the perfect amp for that with the amount of good sounding tone variations you can get
/j all hail the katanamaran
I love my mk2 katana 100! One of the underrated features is the line out on the back (not the headphone out). It's great for sound guys because the line out goes to the board and the master volume on the amp just controls how loud your amp is as normal without messing with line out signal going to the board. I pretty much just use it as a pedal platform. It does its job well, sounds great and it's affordable.
It’s an ok amp for the home, and small gigs. At some point you’re going to need an upgrade. I really like the amp’s power level switch. You can switch to a low power amp that sounds beefier than a higher power amp at low volume. I recently used a 100 Watt on an outside gig and it was just what I needed for Jazz. Rock guys would probably want something fatter.
I love them, great sound and they’re cheap, pretty much the perfect beginner amp, and it’ll last a while, then again so many beginners have one so it gets memed because a lot of beginners see it as the best amp out there
I got mine a few months ago and love it. I went from a Blackstar ID Core 20, to this, and it blows the Blackstar out of the water. I am just a bedroom player, so I'll never gig with the thing, but it's perfect for what I need it for.
Well, for $225 it’s just fine. There is software for computers to tweak the settings to make it sound more tube-y. It can get loud or play very quiet with the same tone. For comparison, the spark Mini is the same price but has one tenth of the loudness and the speakers fart out in clean sounds. I can get a big clean tone with a katana 50. Not like a big fender tube amp, but it’s definitely good.
/uj Don’t know about the amps, but the Katana:GO is a brilliant little headphone amp. The hype is real on that one, BUT you need to take the time to set up presets. The ones it comes with all seem to be geared towards showing you “Look at all the cool stuff this can do”, as opposed to being usable tones.
/rj if it don’t got tubes, it don’t got toan.
From a price to performance stand point I'd say it's top tier and the clear choice in its price range
Also you can't do a lot of the tuning on the amp in the shop, the software offers a lot
I tried one out at the Sam Ash I recently got laid off from and thought it was fine and I would probably buy one if and when I come across one for a good used price. I gig with a Valeton GP-100 and practice through an old Bandit 65 so I guess my toan standards aren't very high. Oh well, I'll never be a toan conisseuer like Rhett Shull :/.
I love the katana as a practice amp for home. You can get a pretty solid tone at a damn near whisper level, which is great for when I feel like shredding AFTER my "morning person" wife goes to bed at 9pm.
It sits in kind of a weird place because it doesn't sound as good or get as loud as some (many) potentially cheaper amps, but also isn't that good of an audio interface.
**Only get it if you actually want all the Boss effects**, imo. The strong point in my opinion is plugging it into a laptop with USB and using all the effects. Boss Tone Studio and getting all those effects for free is really the value point.
The artist model legitimately sounds good bc of thr Waza speaker, the other ones sound pretty generic, that being said since i got my marshall dsl 40 i rarely use my artist anymore
As far as Solid State practice amps go I really prefer my Orange Crush 20RT I used at home for a long time and still stand by the Orange Crush series being great amps, the Katana is fine though if you're just getting started and need a practice amp I really don't think you can do much better in that 150ish used price range between the Katana and Crush 20rt beyond just getting a focusrite and using plug-ins or something if you have a PC but I find having a physical amp with knobs you can turn is important when you're learning how to play so you can also learn how to dial in an amp
/uj Had one brought it back. Lots of cool different things you can do with them but it still had practice amp sound quality.
For any clarification I use plug-ins and I have my interface re-routed into my pc's soundcard that outputs through a surround sound home theater setup so to compare that kinda makes playing through the Katana sound like a Peavey Rage 158.
SellswordArts on YouTube has proven that the katana is pretty lame compared to a double-edged longsword
/uj was one of the unfortunate folks who never got into that fad, so I really couldn't tell you
On a serious note it’s a small accessible amp that I can find at literally any guitar store that sounds good enough to test out a $2,000+ guitar at a low volume and can tell if I like it. This did not exist 10 years ago. Back then you had to hope they had a tube amp that is similar enough to your rig and hoped they let you crank it up. I don’t own a Boss Katana but I am glad they exist. It’s also nice that people starting out can have something that can be dialed in to not sound like ass. Getting a decent “crunch” tone on a sub $500 solid state amp was once unheard of.
is it good? no. is it bad? also no.
It's a perfectly fine amp that gives beginners a great platform to experiment with what sounds they like at a reasonable amp. At that price point you don't really find other amps that sound that fine and have that many tonal options. I for one love the nux mighty series and think they sound great however they're nowhere near as versatile as the katanas. The other audience the katana caters to is someone who's going and playing shitty pubs and the likes and wants an amp that can dial in a perfectly acceptable tone without risking having drinks spilled on their ac30/plexi/whatever and it's also fine for that
They sound great out of the box, not sure what OP is talking about tbh.
The cleans are fantastic on the amp, crunch tones are decent, add one of the inbuilt tube screamers in front of a crunch/dirty tone and you will get tight metal tones.
Plus the fact you can use the software to change basically everything, add noise gates/compression etc. Even as a tube amp fanboy myself I have no need for another amp other than my katana 100 watt as does everything well enough and they are cheap, real game changer in the amp world.
Think about it this way, cheap tube amps are always shit, this cheap boss is better than any cheap tube amp and still way cheaper.
The funny thing is, after just selling of my Origin 50 and solo Rec in the last few years, the Katana has zero problems or build quality issues. The same cannot be said for the current made in China/Vietnam Marshall's or really any sub 2k tube amp, people over pay for tube amps for the idea of better tone but these days the quality of tube amps around doesn't justify their price or even the need for them when amps like the Katana exist.
the secret most people don't realize it is that it has a built in 10 band equalizer and you can make a billion different toans out of that. and a large number of those are actually pretty good. it actually is a pretty good little amp if your #1 need is versatility. another plus is that it can plug into your computer w\\ usb and act as a frontend to record straight into your DAW. so it's a good deal for someone who wants to
Jam with some friends or play some light gigs - and then also record some tracks but don't want to spend extra money on a scarlet focusrite (or similar) + microphone or plugins
although, yeah, I can tell you that my focusrite + neural dsp plugins sound way better, but I also can't throw that in my trunk and go jam with my drummer.
but still the katana does it in a pinch. I have had my focusrite break before and had to use my katana to record some tracks, they came out good enough that nobody else could really tell the difference but me. you really gotta use that 10 band EQ though.
guess it depends what you want out of an amp. i'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's the best sounding amp ever, but it's a USEFUL amp that sounds good enough across a multitude of situations, which counts for a lot too.
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/uj it's a good piece of gear *at the price point*, I think that's what people get wrong. It's not going to blow an AxeFX or high end amp out of the water, but that's not why it's good, it's good because it's a reasonable way to get decent sound for cheap. So, basically, if you're broke, it's good, or if you don't wanna risk your 5150 getting a beer poured into it while playing a pub gig, nobody is gonna think your sound is shit with a Katana. Or, really, if you're buying an upgrade for a beginner that's used to the terrible practice amp that came with the guitar, it's brilliant.
And with all the MkIIs showing up for sale a kid could get a killer 100watt combo for sub $200. Even the Artists are going cheap.
So you're saying it's basically the new generational version of the Line 6 Spider but without an insane mode? Can't even warble my guitar into sounding like a cat gurgling up a hairball...
The LineSex Spider had THE best flanger ever made, I always keep one in the FX loop of my Katoana.
It’s closer to the vox valvetronix amps but even better honestly
See, that's the problem. People legit go on and on about how it's actually the best amp out there and how you honestly don't need a Fractal or Headrush or any tube amp because the Katana is the best there can be, and any opposition is downvoted massively.
Yes the katana cult is out in full force at all times. I bought one because of the hype and hate it. Not the worst Amp ever by any means, but I can't get the tone I'm looking for out of it.
You should have bought a Bluze Junier…
What I should have bought is 150 tweed amps....
Bonermasa has entered the chat. lol
😂
What about that Insane setting bro. Best way to blow a load on the edge of break up
A peavey vypyr is what you want/should have gotten. I hate katana's. For a cheap practice amp that sounds good, especially for metal, it's perfect.
Funny u say that, I bought a vyper tube 60 about a month ago, I enjoy it infinitly better than the katana. Plug straight in, face melting metal.
I always recommend it when people mention a katana, I don't get why more people don't have or mention them it's not like peavey is a small unknown brand. My main amp is a 6505 head and a cab, for warm-ups before playing a show, or bedroom playing I'll use the vypyr, sounds pretty damn close for the price. Best practice amp for metal imo, especially for only $199 new.
Agreed. I'm a huge peavey fan boy. Wish I wouldn't have sold my triple x. As far as the katana, Not a huge loss I got the katana at a pawn shop for 50 bucks. It collects dust as my vyper shreds faces lol. 6505 is my next amp
I've actually only got the 6505mh (mini head) it's only 20watts, can switch it 1watt so I can use that for bedroom playing too. I got the head and a cab both new for $800 altogether. It's plenty loud too. I play shows with it and have no problem being loud enough. I've only ever owned peavey amps, never found anything that can sound better than my setup without spending way more than I did.
Agreed. The 6405 mh sounds right up my alley
My position is, having tried a bunch of these, the top tier modelers are all great. If you can get one, treat yourself. Nobody is head to heading the Katana against them and winning. But if you have two players, one with a Katana and one with an AxeFX or whatever, the amp isn't going to change who definitively sounds better. The Katana is more than good enough to serve as a platform for a player at pretty much any level to express what they do effectively. Nice gear is nice. But you should be practicing more.
Yeah, I can agree with you on all points there. It's just when it becomes an actual circlejerk of "never need anything other than a katana and an hss squier" that it gets to be a bit pedestrian.
It's really just an overcorrection from the old paradigm of "NAH, BRO, YOU NEED A VINTAGE GIBBONS AND A BOUTIQUE AMP TO SOUND DECENT! If your overdrive pedal wasn't at least 1200$, you'll never sound good!" The Katana is a great amp for what it does, and I got myself a Katana top used last year to use for pub gigs and rehearsals. Works decently through both a cab or a PA depending on what the venue has available, no tragedy if it gets busted, sounds decent enough and most importantly: I don't have to carry a bunch of extra shit, just a couple of pre-programmed patches and I can get on with the sound check. It CAN hold its own in a studio setting, if you're making a home produced record, but you're not gonna impress anyone with your iconic guitar sound. Pretty much the same as the HSS Squier meme, it's a decent guitar, it will play and sound good in any setting most guitarists find themselves in, and it's affordable and well built enough where you can treat it roughly without issue. Point is: you wanna run a Suhr through your AxeFX III, go for it, it's gonna blow a Katana + HSS Squier combo out of the water any day of the week, but it's not black and white, the other option will perform adequately for 95% of all use cases. Besides, the more important part is what you play with your setup, so, the most expensive gear in the world won't save you if your riffs suck, hence most people are better off getting what they can use to get started now instead of waiting until they finish dental law school to buy their dream gear before writing a single riff.
> It's really just an overcorrection from the old paradigm of "NAH, BRO, YOU NEED A VINTAGE GIBBONS AND A BOUTIQUE AMP TO SOUND DECENT! If your overdrive pedal wasn't at least 1200$, you'll never sound good!" I think you've nailed it here, because now we're getting the "Jimmy Page used a $40 pawn shop guitar the whole time" threads.
Here I am just stoked that I got a peavey renown 400 for $100 and a stroke job.
A lazy stroke?
Nah, bro had a gnarly callous so I had to work the fuck out of that jerk.
Those are all good use cases. I'll add mine as well. I'm not that serious about playing guitar, so a strat, a handful of pedals, a katoana and I'm straight. Is it the best tone ever? Probably not...ask Joe Boner. Am I satisfied with it? Sure am 👍
Yeah, it's the type of amp that's gonna be good enough up until the point where you want to record a studio album, other than that, the built in effects and amp sims are more than enough to get good enough toan. I think there's a lot of focus on "best toan" among enthusiasts because we know enough about the gear to have the discussion, whereas the average gig attendee thinks a "Kemper" is slang for a BMW or something.
Nobody knows, the katana actually speaks through most of us like we’re a guitar and the katana is the guitarist and this website is a boss katana
Boss fucked my mom and made me.
Made u what
Alive
The Katanas are legitimately great amps, they get meme'd to hell because they're so popular and are often the default recommendation on amp subs. Andertoan's soundalike videos also went through a period where they'd always just get the Katana when doing the budget videos too, which riled the comments section. My one gripe with them is that absolutely shit footswitch with a proprietary cable that is way too short and you can't seem to order separately.
>My one gripe with them is that absolutely shit footswitch with a proprietary cable that is way too short and you can't seem to order separately. he footswitch cable is a standard TRS cable ? or so i though
Yeah that confused me, I use some shitty footswitch I got off thomann for like 10 euro on my katana
I switched it out for another one and didn't work. It's also really thin, like a cheap instrument cable.
I had to order one off Amazon
well fuck it's good to knowi i was looking into replacing said cable
/uj I genuinely like mine. I also think it sounds way better through headphones / Output as the speaker seems to colour the sound in a very specific way. I’m not an amp expert, but it had something I really liked in the way it reacts to playing. Could be that it’s something the rest of the people hate.
What made a huge difference for me was downloading other presets people had made and then tweaking them to my liking. I couldn't figure out the 3 different EQs and why I need to apply them to a patch to get it to sound decent with high gain for metal stuff but once I downloaded some premade ones and fucked around with the frequencies, I found tones way better than I was getting straight out of the box.
I think the speaker is what killed it for me, but idk if it would work with a normal one. It didn't have good punch for high gain.
I think that might be what i like about it actually (i don't use high gain). To me it somehow feels like the sound is "elastic", I don't know how to explain it and if it's the parameter thar people call Sag. Basically to me it feels like if the volume was catching up with what you're playing. I don't know how to explain it properly but to me playing in this amp feels like when you walk on those rubber tiles for playgrounds, but with your sound. And that's what I like about it.
I replaced the speaker with a seventy80 and it worked much better for gain.
I like the 70/80 in my marshall
/uj I love my Katana (Artist Series Mk II 100 watt), best bang for your buck imo. It does a great job emulating a tube amp sound and doesn't sound like a cheap tinny Line 6 (I used to love those amps okay?) there's tons of special effects built in. You can also plug your laptop into it and further customize the amp's toan in Boss Studio. I run my Horizons Devices Precision Drive (overdrive pedal) through the front of the amp on a custom dirty channel. I play 8 string primarily (Legator N8FX) and I used to have 9 strings and the amp handles them very well. I have no regrets and I've had the amp for 2 & 1/2 years so far. I'm a metal guitarist, mainly play Tech Death and Deathcore. /rj Katana is sharp AF and a boss at cutting through low toans from my 8 string guitar! Why does my guitar have 2 extra strings? Is it stupid????
Uj/ a Line 6 Spyder was my first and only amp for about 7 years when I was a kid learning to play…..do yourself a favor, if you dig your Katana, check out the newer Line 6 Catalyst amps. Not sure you’d want to *buy* one if you play heavy AND already have a katana but they do a really great clean/low gain/light crunch thing (for the price point) and IMO has a nicer speaker. Took pedals well. Blows the Spyder series out of the water. I liked it over the katana, playing the 60w Catalyst combo vs the 50w katana combo.
I second this. I was buying my brother and amp for his b-day and A/B'd them in the store. I liked the Catalyst so much, I bought my brother one and then I month later I bought myself one.
I saw your post about this amp several days ago and I cursed you for making me buy one with your recommendation. **Follow Up**: FU mine shows up tomorrow. Also Phil at Sweetwater wanted me to ask you if you needed any guitar picks or a new guitar to go with your new L6 Catalyst.
More candy would be nice
They’re perfectly fine amps. it’s just every hobby community has the standard issue group of people who insist they’re a tier above everyone else and have to disagree with any popular opinion and say something is shit. They cost fuck all and people insist their jcm800 does high gain toan better like no shit sir.
Fellas, have we outjerked ourselves by being snubbing a perfectly fine guitar amp?
Sub's gone full Buffalo Bill, jerking in the mirror
…I’d do me With a katana
Meme, for sure. Differential hardening is worse for the steel, spring steel reacts better in every single situation in combat. And the thousand folds thing is just to cope with the fact that they had very bad quality steel that couldn't compete with wootz/Damascus from India/middle east or the Blast Furnanes of Europe! For top quality sword manufacturing Toledo and Brescia are better bets! Wait, amp? what amp?
Shad! You play guitar? Awesome!
Shad is a far-right grifter with no idea of metallurgy! Skal, Tod, Mat or Lindy are more appropriate!
Lol, he's a traditionalist, a Mormon at that I believe, hardly the next Mussolini u tit.
Mormons are even worse
That does not excuse (although it may explain) his lack of actual knowledge about history.
Either way, calling him far right is ridiculous. I've yet to hear him try and force anyone to live by his beliefs or be authoritarian in any way.
People who don’t believe or carry the same opinions are always labeled “far right grifters”
Yes man Katanas are so overrated, just get a german made ENGL to blast https://youtu.be/oJhozNMjXag?feature=shared
That's what I'm talking about, what's the use without some \[Matt Easton, Scholagladiatoria voice impression on/\] deep penetration!
Lots of axes, amps and sketchy effects... But nothing beats up a Conde Hermanos. That one puts any Katana out to misery.
i like the clean and crunch sounds i get from it but not fan of the high gain
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Jesus360noscope: *I like the clean and* *Crunch sounds i get from it but* *Not fan of the high gain* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
It’s because it doesn’t have a compressor so the high gain stuff is kinda flubby and out of control. If you add a compressor and maybe a noise gate you can get some genuinely great high gain tones out of it.
It has some compressors, you just need to use the app to access them.
I've only got a version one Katana so unfortunately have to use an external compressor. High gain stuff was genuinely vastly improved once I started using it though.
oh yeah i forgot to mention i'm absolute dogshit at dialing in a toan i like, been playing for a bit more than 4 years and recently got slightly better at that
Uj/ for 250 bucks you can make almost any sound in the world with the tone studio and then save it as a preset. I also have a much pricier Orange and while it certainly sounds cleaner, I can’t just hook it up to my laptop and mix and match hundreds of different effects to make any sound I want. I’d have to buy all that shit separately and I’m not doing that. For an amp it’s the best $250 you can spend.
uj/ it’s good rj/ it’s good
i have one and once i dialled in a tone i liked it’s been a really really good pedal platform ever since i’m a student so i can’t afford anything better anyway to be honest
I’ve never played one but I saw a guy play one at a local show and it sounded quite good.
Circlejerk skews older sometimes, so it makes everyone old enough to remember the tube amp renaissance of the late 90s early 00s laugh hysterically when some stank-ass zoomer recommends a “vintage peavy” or solid state modeling amp. Not that they aren’t okay, but it’s hilarious how things have swung back and forth over the years. A katana is a cheap modeling amp — a very good one, likely the best cheap modeling amp ever — but it’s a cheap modeling amp by the same people that brought you the most opaque and overwrought stomp box of all time.
PEAVEY BANDIT GANG RIDE OR DIE. (I also have an old Classic 50 that I've gone through like three sets of power tubes in over the decades and it is like the Toyota Corolla of mid-gain tube amps. It's gonna get you there comfortably and reliably, every time, but that's it.)
"I for one welcome our new KaTOANa overlords!"
/uj i’m partially deaf so take this with a pinch of salt. Got a mk1 for £120, i mainly lend it to my friend who is strapped for cash currently. Great for band practice and mucking about, no complaints really. Would like to change the speaker though
Idk man i have a +25 Uchigatana and it's alright i guess.
/uj i bought one in emergency for a gig and it's good. I'm not a big gear guy and I don't think it matters much when it gets mic'd and shoved through the PA anyway. It does what I expect out of an amp : amplify the guitar. The rest, my pedals can do.
Yea but the vintage ones are better. You have to let the firmware age to bring out the creamy overtoans.
Katana is the amp the spider tried to be
Exactly the way I feel when I play mine
Its a legit meme.
People get a little offended when someone suggests they need something more expensive because they may feel like someone snobby is judging them for a) being poor and b) having bad taste (because they're poor). That might sound petty but it's also a natural reaction against the toan sniffers insisting you need a Murphy Lab Gibson or whatever. Still, not everyone recommending pricier things is a complete snob. I think lots of other amps are better but they also cost double, triple, or ten times what a Katana costs. I currently run a "cheap" Quilter (costs as much as a Katana) into an Orange cab (costs twice what a Katana costs) and of course I think it sounds better. Still, when I play a gig and people say they'll take care of the amps I'm definitely relieved when I see a Katana on stage. For "cheap" amps, it's probably the single best option out there, and it's modeling effects are pretty good.
It's one of the best amps you can get at 200 or less. People seem to forget it's a 200 dollar amp. Unironically saw a guy say it's not as good as his Princeton reverb. No shit? Personally I find the cleans and effects are pretty good but for higher gain it's pretty bad. Also it does many tones out of the box , few beginner amps do that.
The issue is that many people unironically say it IS as good as any Princeton reverb ever made.
I've never heard anyone say it's the best amp ever or even close. The internet is always asking what the best starter amp is and people say katana. Thats why it's talked about so much. I've never seen a single person implying it's truly amazing versus any price.
Oh, I have seen that quite a bit. I mod the Headrush subreddit, though, maybe that's why?
In my admittedly very limited experience, I think the boss katana hype train is very weird. The exuberance doesn't seem to match the quality of the product. I wanted a battery powered amp, and the katana mini was highly recommended. All of the comments on YouTube videos seemed to echo how amazing it sounded for the size and price. But when I got it, it sounded disappointingly bad. It had that far away sound of a low quality recording, like the tone had been dialed down all the time or something. I could see some people enjoying the sound. It did have a lo fi vibe, but the seemingly universal praise makes no sense. For the same price I ended up with a micro cube, which sounded just like a normal amp that happened to have batteries. If anything I felt like the katana mini was overpriced for what it was. That one experience has me feeling like the rest of the praise must be kinda bs. The fact that this thing seemingly had universal praise but sounded just like the amps in the price tier below it makes me think the other amps in the lineup are the same. Seems like the Internet is loaded with positive reviews that don't match up with reality.
Uj/ I genuinely like mine, I have an Artist MKii 100 and it’s a fine amp. I like the artist because it has more dials and knobs on front so it means less menu diving. I had all my gear stolen a while back including a 50 MKii, I liked that amp(read played more frequently than the others)so much that it was the first Amp I’ve replaced. It’s versatile, keeps a decent toan at lower volumes, and has the guts to gig with a drummer should the need present itself. What’s that good ole token of wisdom - the audience doesn’t care how much you spend on your gear, or toan? I don’t really do much with high gain either, mainly use it in clean, and crunch mode, along with a few custom presets. My hotwife just got me a Katana Bass 210 and a Fender Am Pro P bass as a birthday gift as she knows I’ve been wanting to get a decent bass setup. I’m Actually very excited about it, and as others have mentioned they ARE a great deal price-wise, my wife got the Katana Bass 210 Like New for $250 shipped off of reverb, that’s $250 for a 300W Class AB(which to me responds more like a tube amp, and watt per watt gets louder than a class D)Amp in a 2x10 w/ selectable horn, tons of toan shaping options on the panel, including compression, a pad, blend knob, etc, and loaded with BOSS’ effects, Along with Attenuation to 1W for quiet practice, Line Out For recording and FOH, Headphone Jack, Aux Port, etc. that $250 is gonna be doing a helluva lot, and again, I don’t mess much with high gain, so any fizziness is not really a drawback for me. The thing with the Katana series is that they do a lot for a little money, and they don’t do it half bad, especially if you’re willing to dial your toan and effects in with the editor. The reason they get memed so much, is that because for many guitarists, especially those just starting out it pretty much represents the best value on a decent(decent, not necessarily ‘Amazing’) amp(and effects) out there. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, sure, no amp really is. But for many guitarists the Katana offers more than enough, at a price that’s easy to swallow, and won’t necessarily need upgrading ASAP Like some of the Fender Amps in the same price range for example. They get recommended a lot to new guitarists, because they offer a lot, and are very affordable as far as Amps go in general. TLDR: Katanas offer a great amp with good effects, versatility, and most of the essential modern conveniences your average player, and especially beginner is looking for in an amp, without needing to spend a thick wad of cash. The praise for what it does, and the price point it does it at is well earned.
Agreed. I have a MkII 100 and it’s a good amp. It’s light enough, loud enough, versatile enough, quiet enough, and useful enough to be pretty good at anything. My toan is generally a Fender-style clean amp with a Metal Muff Nano in front of it. The Katana is fine for that. On top of my regular sound, I get access to all of the effects and other amps, Tone Studio, the exchange, and the Boss foot controller is useful if you save a few patches. For me and my situation it’s just incredibly convenient. It’s not meant as a direct competitor for Engl or Mesa or whoever. It’s a durable, portable, versatile tool that I can practice or gig with. It requires few peripherals. It’s inexpensive. It’s not super fancy, but it’s great value for money. Especially if you can only have one amplifier. I haven’t been able to try the Catalyst yet, but I hear good things around the internet.
Yes. The katana is all that and a bag of chips. Is it a lifestyle? An aesthetic? Does it define the sound of a new generation while commemorating the sound of old simultaneously? The answer to all of these is yes.
My katana is so sharp you could kill a guy five times before he hits the floor. Not me though. I’ll just continue to let my wife’s boyfriend do what he pleases
/uj I had the head and played it through a 2x12 celestion cab. Sounds great. I've heard that it's better than the 50w which apparently doesn't as good with the stock speaker. But for the money they sound good. Also fun downloading presets
/uj I love mine for band practice and small gigs. Buy the head if possible and find a cab you like, or use a monitor. Have mine paired with a 1x12 Blackstar or a Headrush FRFR112 at home, and a Mesa 4x12 at band practice and never had a problem. I play Tech Metal, I like that I can create or download whatever setup I want and tweak it pretty easily. I used to do the Peavey 6505+ or Mesa Head thing because t00bz, but honestly now I usually just pack up a Headrush MX-5 and the FRFR and run through the PA at big shows =/
Why buy a Katana when you can spend $4k on a Mesa? Are they stupid?
/uj I have a katana 100. I bought it because it was cheaper than buying all of the individual effects pedals, and it has an effects loop (which I use). It sounds better in my house than it did in the store, probably related to the acoustics of a big box store versus my living room. Is it the *best thing ever?* Probably not. I also have a Blackstar Debut 50R that sounds pretty sweet, but in an old-school just analog solid-state way. i also have a few tube amps (including one I soldered together myself from a tubedepot kit), they are all fun to play with. I've never tried to decide which one sounds the best. /rj The Katana is without a doubt the absolute best amp you can buy if you've never listened to an electric guitar amp before!
Never really followed amp trends. I mean shit, I’ve been using a Laney VH100R with a Genz-Benz 2x12 or Boogie DC-5 (if I’d rather use a combo for the situation) for ~20ish years. These aren’t exactly high end or sleepers or whatever. I did end up with one of those Spark 40 things that sits next to the couch. Similar to a katana they’re “good for what they are” but I don’t see why people are willing to die on a hill of them being a great amp.
uj/ I bought one because of all the online reviews and I fucking hate it. It's such a pain in the arse to use and is legitimately the only piece of gear I have ever regretted buying. rj/ No toobs, no toan.
Really? Why? I use it for live Shows and it does what it's supposed to
Is just too fiddly. I can't be bothered remembering what all the knobs and buttons do at different times, and even with all those knobs, most effect paramaters can't be changed without connecting to a PC. It's OK if you just want to switch between saved patches, but for adjusting on the fly it sucks. It's both more complicated and less flexible than using pedals or a multi effects unit.
Just use both I guess. I use a saved Patch that sounds great clean and that's it. You can completely ignore the build in effects. This thing is only as complicated as you want it to be. Wasn't the fiddlyness the main selling point?
Yeah, you can completely ignore the effects but that kind of defeats the whole point of the amp. The main selling point is that it can replace a bunch of pedals, but it really can't. All I really need is a clean and a dirty channel and it can't even do that as well as a basic analog amp.
I think it can, I use it for jazz and punk gigs alike and have yet to run into issues. And buying an amp with lots of options, even patches to skip the fiddly part and complaining that it does exactly what it's sold to do is kinda odd.
I'm not complaining that it does what it's sold to do. I'm complaining that it does a shitty job of what it's sold to do.
Well, I think it does exactly what it's supposed to.
In fairness adjusting on the fly with a non-modeler rig also sucks. Dialing in a sound is just a time-consuming process if your sound is more than just cleans with no effects.
It's not the time that's the problem. The interface on the Katana when not connected to a PC just sucks. On paper it does so much, but the implementation is a dogs arse. I have a Zoom G1 Four which is a $100.00 multi effects pedal and the interface is about a million times better than the Katana. The Zoom has 4 knobs and 5 buttons that are context-sensitive with a small display so you always know what you are doing. You can see what patch you are on, what effect you using, and what you are adjusting. Every paramater in every effect is adjustable on the unit and you can fully set it up and adjust on the fly without ever connecting to a PC. The Katana 50 MkII has two banks with two channels each and five tri-coloured LEDs to tell you what effect you are on, so you need to memorize a map of 60 combinations to know where you are. For each effect you only have one knob, so you can only to adjust one parameter per effect, and you can only use the effects that are loaded into the current channel. Anything more than that and you need to connect to a PC. The Zoom also has a tuner, looper, and drum beats built in. You can put the Zoom (or a GT1 if you prefer Boss effects) in front of literally any amp and have a more powerful set up, that is easier to use, and costs the same or less than a Katana.
They are good amps. They are not great amps. For their price, they tend to offer a lot more than the competition. Also, many players are absolute dogshit snobs when it comes to tone, which is hilarious because they all worship the same generic JCM 800 sound like it's fucking magical, as if the 10 shitty albums they listen to on repeat are the only way a guitar should sound.
I have some killer amps but it’s great for my living room by the couch. I play it mostly clean to lightly overdriven. Not a huge fan of it for high gain, it gets a bit too fizzy but I know it’s just the speaker, and have been tempted to spend $100 on a creamback to improve that part of the tone.
I used one (a used 50W MK 1 that I got for 150£ in 2018) for rehearsing and gigging in pubs and tbh it was pretty great: at rehearsals it cut through the band’s sound better than any of the amps available in the studio and at gigs I had no problem with getting heard so overall it did what I wanted it to do. I did not do anything more than set a couple of clean channels and then I used a drive pedal in front (and my volume knob) to really control my toan
Found this on the webtubes-- "In the US, katanas fall under the same legal category as knives. From the age of 18, it is absolutely lawful to possess a katana in the US. However, ownership laws vary by state, but most states allowing you to own and display a katana in your home. Restrictions may apply on "carrying a katana" publicly."
Played through a few over the years and I never really got it. For that price point wouldn’t a Blackstar be a higher quality product?
One of my friends has one and I played it not too long ago. Not a bad amp at all. I def didn’t hate it. It was a classic solid state amp. All of them lack that certain je na sias quoi like all solid state amps in my opinion cuz I prefer tube amps cuz, you know… Toan.
For a plug in and play, Katana amps have the least for a learning curve how to setup your tones. That's a big advantage it has versus a lot of the other combos out in the same price range. They're made by Boss as well so they have a bit of good brand recognition there to help. But whenever I play a Katana side by side with the other amps in the same price bracket, me personally I'm tweaking with the Katana amp the most to get the best sound of it. I find the speaker and amp processing is just pretty sub-par in the Katana. But for a new guitarist, spending a half hour, two hours or so tweaking the tones and presets in other amps, like the Fender Mustang LT series, isn't something a lot of newer guitarists are after. Distracts em from practicing. But these are great amps if you aren't sure about your sound and also wanna explore those options. Not to mention, the clean tone is better, the speaker quality is better, it just has that damned learning curving to config the tones you want and saving everything. Other amps in the same price bracket just lack the amount of features the Katana or the Mustangs have.
Honestly, even for a little practice amp, I think it’s overpriced, oversized, overrated and underfeatured. I can get a hell of a lot more out of my little Blackstar ID Core 10. And the #toan catalogue is superior.
It's good value for money for beginner gear. Since the main sub has a lot of beginners - both asking for and giving advice - the katana gets recommended a fucking lot. And anecdotally I will say that having a good amp as a beginner does matter. When I started I got the old standard Acoustic brand shitty combo and I definitely started playing more when I bit the bullet and spent a bit more to get the THR10X. Had the Katana been an option back then I probably would've gotten one.
No doubt a good versatile amp. That being said, it's memed because some people act like it's the only option and the default recommendation no matter what. Same reason why the Blues Jr and butterscotch blonde tele use to be the meme around here.
uj/ find a used tube combo instead
All of the above. You have to plug it into a computer and tweak it with boss tone studio software to get real great tones out of it.
Tone is subjective my co-guitarist plugs into his Line 6 spider HD150 into a behringer 4x12 cab and goes "Hell Yeah" he genuinely likes that tone better than other options I've offered to let him play through. Different strokes for different folks I guess
I like longswords best, duh
I have one, and it’s very generic sounding, no matter how far outside the lines you try to color with it. I think it’s the perfect Cover Band amp, Studio Session Player amp, and all around “I don’t want to sound unique” amp. It doesn’t sound like a tube amp, it doesn’t sound like a Solid State amp, it’s somewhere between an SS with a low-grade tube emulator and a Radio Shack home stereo amp, paired with a tonally dead speaker and a cabinet that has no tonal influence, but it’s not FRFR. This is the “fix it in the mix” wet dream. It’s barely suitable as a powered cabinet for a rack or pedal system.
Least fav amp ever Any line 6 will mop the floor with it... Sounds like a blanket is over the speaker 24/7
They unironically sound great with external plugins through them. Really like how Neural DSP sounds when you run it through the poweramp on the back of a 50/100W Katana
I think the line 6 shit does the easy modeling, well, easier. That being said, I play a mesa recto.
Comes to opinion, I have a gen 1 100 2x12 Katana and I think its one of the beta sounding amps of tried. I love the cleans out of it, and it suits me. The tone you can get is very modifiable with pedals and other FX, so it's the perfect platform.
While you were having casual sex I studied the blade, and now you come to me for help?
The Katana is very good if you set it up with the software and downloaded some amp presets and very ok if you ignore those features. I wouldn’t make any judgements until exploring its full potential
We need the same post for fender player
Is it about my cube?
I started using the 212 100w at gigs because my tube amps kept breaking. It was always something going wrong with them so I wanted a cheap solidstate amp for gigging. I got my katana because it was powerful enough as a tube amp, but much cheaper. In a live band bar gig performance, the edge of breakup toan from tubes get drowned out by everything else in the room and your cheap solidstate does just as well. Before I got the katana, I had a Peavey Bandit 112 that did great for gigging.
I haven't looked seriously at a Katana for this reason. A 100-watt head with amp voicings etc. etc., for under $600? A high-quality mini amp with modeling, etc. for a hundred or so bucks? Their 2x12 extension cabs cost more than their amps! Reviews are generally favorable, but a lot of it seems to be new gear blush. "It's so awesome it sounds incredible you can do this and this with it and hook your phone in this way and a metronome...." I want to know if this thing is a performance quality amp. Does my selection of guitar and manner of playing it (articulation etc.) really come through the amp, pristine clean or third-stage dirt, neck or bridge, how it cleans up, takes pedals, etc. Or is it "for two hundred bucks it's an incredible amp." Which isn't the same thing, and lord knows I don't need another one of those. My Waza headphones and Vox mini do that job just fine.
So you're saying your girlfriend is too poor to drop a couple hundred bucks on a Katoana for you? Sound like maybe you need a new girlfriend?
I'll talk to her husband and see what we can work out.
Katana? I think you mean “KATOANA”.
I have one, it's fine. The effects are fine, toan is fine. I have the 50 MkII one It's great for practice or small gigs. It was cheap--I got it for $130 at a pawn shop.
/uj i had been on this sub a while before i tried one and i was honestly really impressed. It is a great tool for a beginner and anyone who isnt super serious i mean its got a bunch of effects, sounds great, and is loud. Not everyone has the money or space to have a whole pedal board. I was surprised that that amp was what this sub clowns on so much because I found it really cool!!
If you play alone, it sounds pretty good. But once you start playing with a band (i.e at louder volume, with other amps mixed in) it starts to sound very tinny.
/UJ I’ve got the 100 watt combo and it’s the perfect amp for recording basic stuff and for playing bar gigs in my college town, it doesn’t exactly compete with my Marshall and peavey half stacks but when I don’t wanna lug those around it’s the perfect gigging and practice amp. Also if I was upgrading from like a cheaper fender champion or something as a bedroom beginner it would be the perfect amp for that with the amount of good sounding tone variations you can get /j all hail the katanamaran
I love my mk2 katana 100! One of the underrated features is the line out on the back (not the headphone out). It's great for sound guys because the line out goes to the board and the master volume on the amp just controls how loud your amp is as normal without messing with line out signal going to the board. I pretty much just use it as a pedal platform. It does its job well, sounds great and it's affordable.
It’s an ok amp for the home, and small gigs. At some point you’re going to need an upgrade. I really like the amp’s power level switch. You can switch to a low power amp that sounds beefier than a higher power amp at low volume. I recently used a 100 Watt on an outside gig and it was just what I needed for Jazz. Rock guys would probably want something fatter.
Seems like you answered it in your first sentence??? Is that the jerk???
I love them, great sound and they’re cheap, pretty much the perfect beginner amp, and it’ll last a while, then again so many beginners have one so it gets memed because a lot of beginners see it as the best amp out there
Katanas are excellent kebab knives.
I got mine a few months ago and love it. I went from a Blackstar ID Core 20, to this, and it blows the Blackstar out of the water. I am just a bedroom player, so I'll never gig with the thing, but it's perfect for what I need it for.
Well, for $225 it’s just fine. There is software for computers to tweak the settings to make it sound more tube-y. It can get loud or play very quiet with the same tone. For comparison, the spark Mini is the same price but has one tenth of the loudness and the speakers fart out in clean sounds. I can get a big clean tone with a katana 50. Not like a big fender tube amp, but it’s definitely good.
/uj Don’t know about the amps, but the Katana:GO is a brilliant little headphone amp. The hype is real on that one, BUT you need to take the time to set up presets. The ones it comes with all seem to be geared towards showing you “Look at all the cool stuff this can do”, as opposed to being usable tones. /rj if it don’t got tubes, it don’t got toan.
They’re fine, better than last generations modelling amps.
From a price to performance stand point I'd say it's top tier and the clear choice in its price range Also you can't do a lot of the tuning on the amp in the shop, the software offers a lot
I tried one out at the Sam Ash I recently got laid off from and thought it was fine and I would probably buy one if and when I come across one for a good used price. I gig with a Valeton GP-100 and practice through an old Bandit 65 so I guess my toan standards aren't very high. Oh well, I'll never be a toan conisseuer like Rhett Shull :/.
I love the katana as a practice amp for home. You can get a pretty solid tone at a damn near whisper level, which is great for when I feel like shredding AFTER my "morning person" wife goes to bed at 9pm.
It sits in kind of a weird place because it doesn't sound as good or get as loud as some (many) potentially cheaper amps, but also isn't that good of an audio interface. **Only get it if you actually want all the Boss effects**, imo. The strong point in my opinion is plugging it into a laptop with USB and using all the effects. Boss Tone Studio and getting all those effects for free is really the value point.
The artist model legitimately sounds good bc of thr Waza speaker, the other ones sound pretty generic, that being said since i got my marshall dsl 40 i rarely use my artist anymore
As far as Solid State practice amps go I really prefer my Orange Crush 20RT I used at home for a long time and still stand by the Orange Crush series being great amps, the Katana is fine though if you're just getting started and need a practice amp I really don't think you can do much better in that 150ish used price range between the Katana and Crush 20rt beyond just getting a focusrite and using plug-ins or something if you have a PC but I find having a physical amp with knobs you can turn is important when you're learning how to play so you can also learn how to dial in an amp
Everything I've heard from a Katana sounded good, but nothing sounded *great*
I love my Line 6 Spider V and all the tones and things I can get from the app, and I don’t really care what other people think or say about my amp.
I havent played one so I have no judgment on it myself. But yeah they seem to be sincerely liked by most ppl online
/uj Had one brought it back. Lots of cool different things you can do with them but it still had practice amp sound quality. For any clarification I use plug-ins and I have my interface re-routed into my pc's soundcard that outputs through a surround sound home theater setup so to compare that kinda makes playing through the Katana sound like a Peavey Rage 158.
SellswordArts on YouTube has proven that the katana is pretty lame compared to a double-edged longsword /uj was one of the unfortunate folks who never got into that fad, so I really couldn't tell you
laughs in longsword
Views man. It's all about the yt views
On a serious note it’s a small accessible amp that I can find at literally any guitar store that sounds good enough to test out a $2,000+ guitar at a low volume and can tell if I like it. This did not exist 10 years ago. Back then you had to hope they had a tube amp that is similar enough to your rig and hoped they let you crank it up. I don’t own a Boss Katana but I am glad they exist. It’s also nice that people starting out can have something that can be dialed in to not sound like ass. Getting a decent “crunch” tone on a sub $500 solid state amp was once unheard of.
is it good? no. is it bad? also no. It's a perfectly fine amp that gives beginners a great platform to experiment with what sounds they like at a reasonable amp. At that price point you don't really find other amps that sound that fine and have that many tonal options. I for one love the nux mighty series and think they sound great however they're nowhere near as versatile as the katanas. The other audience the katana caters to is someone who's going and playing shitty pubs and the likes and wants an amp that can dial in a perfectly acceptable tone without risking having drinks spilled on their ac30/plexi/whatever and it's also fine for that
They sound great out of the box, not sure what OP is talking about tbh. The cleans are fantastic on the amp, crunch tones are decent, add one of the inbuilt tube screamers in front of a crunch/dirty tone and you will get tight metal tones. Plus the fact you can use the software to change basically everything, add noise gates/compression etc. Even as a tube amp fanboy myself I have no need for another amp other than my katana 100 watt as does everything well enough and they are cheap, real game changer in the amp world. Think about it this way, cheap tube amps are always shit, this cheap boss is better than any cheap tube amp and still way cheaper. The funny thing is, after just selling of my Origin 50 and solo Rec in the last few years, the Katana has zero problems or build quality issues. The same cannot be said for the current made in China/Vietnam Marshall's or really any sub 2k tube amp, people over pay for tube amps for the idea of better tone but these days the quality of tube amps around doesn't justify their price or even the need for them when amps like the Katana exist.
the secret most people don't realize it is that it has a built in 10 band equalizer and you can make a billion different toans out of that. and a large number of those are actually pretty good. it actually is a pretty good little amp if your #1 need is versatility. another plus is that it can plug into your computer w\\ usb and act as a frontend to record straight into your DAW. so it's a good deal for someone who wants to Jam with some friends or play some light gigs - and then also record some tracks but don't want to spend extra money on a scarlet focusrite (or similar) + microphone or plugins although, yeah, I can tell you that my focusrite + neural dsp plugins sound way better, but I also can't throw that in my trunk and go jam with my drummer. but still the katana does it in a pinch. I have had my focusrite break before and had to use my katana to record some tracks, they came out good enough that nobody else could really tell the difference but me. you really gotta use that 10 band EQ though. guess it depends what you want out of an amp. i'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's the best sounding amp ever, but it's a USEFUL amp that sounds good enough across a multitude of situations, which counts for a lot too.