Played a Boss Katana today.

jp_nyc

jp_nyc

Kick Henry Jackassowski
The Boss Katana 50 arrived at my local music shop. $200 for a 1x12 modeling combo. It sounds good with the gain down. The high-gain “brown” channel was typical shitty digital emulation of a 5150. For some reason delay and reverb can only be turned off by rotating the knob to off. There are buttons for switching between different modes (each has 3) but they can’t just turn the echoes off without adjusting the knob. I went back later with my pedalboard to try it with fuzz, but that just turned it into a buzzsaw. Pretty useless for post-Van Halen stuff, but not a bad choice for clean to early Sabbath sounds.
 
that bad? This amp is/was on my radar and has gotten mostly good reviews from the few people that have it. Doesn't sound like you were impressed
 
mystixboi1 said:
Doesn't sound like you were impressed
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I wasn’t. The clean and crunch tones were fine, but that’s true of every modeling amp made in the last decade. The high gain sounds were the same generic can-of-bees digital sounds found in most modeling amps. And, like most modeling amps, the UI for effects is shit. If you just want to play clean or crunchy stuff with a little delay or reverb, and you aren’t buying used, it’s not a bad option for $200. But I can’t imagine using it for much else.

It seems like the value of the Katana is that you can hook it up to a computer and program in a bunch of effects based on Boss pedals. It’s similar to the low-end Fender Mustang amps; to get real value from the amp you have to use a computer to build your tones. Except that Mustangs have more amp models and better distortion tones.
 
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