Over the Katana

[aging_rocker]

I'm about 3 and a half years in with my Katana, and I've just realised I've never used the headphone output, so I can't comment on it.

But yeah, common sense would indicate that the EQ requirements will be very different than those for driving a 12" speaker, and the Katana has plenty of EQ available.

I'd be tempted to invest some time into creating and storing a headphone-specific setup, if I was going to use headphones.

 

[fender4life]

I had one for about a year. I liked one thing about it....the ore toe *quality* was very good. But i soon learned the difference between tone QUALITY and TYPE of tone. For me lower quality tone but within reasonable limits but with great tone types is worlds better then what i got from the katana, which is tones types that i found odd and not great at all. Sounded like someone trying to create marshall tone but couldn't dial out something that just isn;'t right. Had a catalyst too, in fact still have it but only because it;s hard to sell when i am. But i find that very similar to the katana in the ways i described tho not so much marshall. Just odd sounding models that just did not feel or sound quite right to me. But my GTX 100 is great. It's very good in all regards but really excels live where i never find myself reaching over to the amp to "fix" whats not sounding or feeling right unlike the katana or catalyst that both had me tweaking in between and even DURING songs. I just keep coming back to it because it simply sounds and feels right and has a bunch of tried and true tones instead of those that just don't feel or sound right to me. Every time i try some other amp i always end up shlving it and asking myself why i even bothered when i'm so happy with the GTX. It's not perfect but no amp is. It just gets a heck of a lot closer than anything else i have tried including tube amps. Oh, and yes, i used sneaky amps a lot. Helps but still no cigar.

 

[tlsmack]

In it’s price range the Katana is one of the best amps you can buy. When you start looking to upgrade to the next level, $$$ start going up fast. The drive channels and most of the drive effects were disappointing. But the speaker is decent and the reverb and delay are very useable.
I stick to the clean channel and a Joyo American Sound for tone shaping. Looking at the price of a Blues Cube or Tone Master, I ‘ll be sticking with my Katana for a while.

 

[TequilaCaster]

I too was enamored with the Katana for a few months. I liked the power, the speaker, the editing software, etc... but the tone eventually still felt fake, like silicone breasts. Trickery, trickery, trickery!

 

[TequilaCaster]

 

[CinPA]

I’ve been in the market for a new amp for home practice and recording for a while. I eventually bought a Katana 50 from my local guitar store, half on impulse. I knew I wasn’t going to really know for sure if it was for me just trying it out. I had to have the amp and live with the experience of playing through it for a while before I could really know if we were vibing. You don’t really know if your room mate is crazy until you’ve lived together for a while. That kind of logic.

I’ve had the Katana for about two months now and I’ve never been wowed by any part of it. Except for the price, I suppose. I paid for this what I paid for a Line 6 Spyder when I was in high school. And the “bad” presets on the Katana (anything above “crunch”) are still miles ahead of that freaking “insane” setting on the Spyder.

I’ve played with tone studio and realized how much I am just not about tweaking settings on a computer. That’s not how I like to interact with my instrument. Not a huge deal. I got “good enough” out of just the clean channel on the Katana, and loaded the sneaky amps models of the Jazz Chorus and the Fender Twin to two of my channel buttons and called it good.

That all changed tonight. My wife, lovely as she is, got me a very nice pair of headphones to replace some old Audio Technicas lost some months ago. Primarily for listening to music but also as a means for extra quiet late night practicing. I had heard tell of how underwhelming the Katanas headphone out sounded, so I was ready to be underwhelmed even relative to the otherwise “meh” attributes of the Katana, but holy mother of trout.

I cannot overstate how bad the sound through the headphones was. It was a nostalgia kick. It sounded like a low quality MP3 you’d pinch off LimeWire. It’s like the engineers at Boss went to the brass and asked “So do you want it to be as piercing as a glass seagull’s death rattle, or as muffled as a walkie talkie at the bottom of a pot of mashed potatoes?” And the big shots said “yes.”

A cooler head might prevail, but right now, I’m ready to call it and move on. I’m not going to stay married to an amp I didn’t even really get a honeymoon period with. It’s fine, I don’t despise it. It just isn’t a great fit for me. If anyone has suggestions, I’d be very interested in hearing them. My criteria:

1. Decent headphone sound. I will be playing a large part of the time through headphones. But not always, so the exclusive headphone amps aren’t for me.

2. Sounds good at low volumes. And I mean low. If I add any gain to the Katana, I switch to the .5w setting. An attenuator would be awesome.

3. I don’t care about models or tweak ability. I’m open to it, but I don’t want to have to get an app or connect to a computer to get the most out of it.

4. Stuff costs what it costs, so I’m not setting a super firm price limit, but I probably won’t be spending more than 1k anytime soon.

That’s it. Like I said, open to suggestions. I play mostly clean, some reverb and delay. I’m not precious about tone. I’m at the point where I’m after something that sounds of a certain quality, and acts as a solid base to build off of while I get better. I’ve recently had a Mustang LT25 that I didn’t get on with very well. Just didn’t care for the sound through the speakers so much. The Katana sounded better in the room than the LT but much worse through headphones. I also had an Orange Crush 35RT that was just way too loud to get an appreciable sound out of. I know they make smaller ones but I worry about speaker size at a certain point. Orange makes a really underrated clean amp sound, imo.

Before buying the Katana I’d been considering:

The Katana Artist. The additional knobs and improved speakers were big factors. I’m assuming it would suffer from the same headphone issues though so I imagine I can just cross this right off.

Fender GTX100. Was personally worried Id spend a little too much time in menus. Though the idea of lining up a bunch of presets that are just plain amps is kind of enticing.

Jazz Chorus 22. Love the classic JC sound. Bit worried the magic would be lost on the smaller model and speakers but the 40 ain’t tame able to living room volume.

Briefly considered the Iridium as well.

Any advice I’d appreciate. Sort of lost at this point but I’m 99% sure I’m over the Katana now.

I still have a Line 6 Spider ll as my only amp. The presets are horrible and I’ve stopped using anything but the clean channel and get all OD and effects from pedals. Am I satisfied? No!

So, I bought an Egnater Tweaker 15 during Sweetwater’s Black Friday sale and told my wife her shopping for me was done. I still have another week before I can unwrap my present and check it out.

 

[bobio]

To each his own

I enjoy my Katana MKII Artist soo much, I also picked up a BOSS Nextone Special.
I also recently sold ALL of my pedals and picked up a BOSS GT-1000.
Why do I mention that, they all use the same BOSS Tube-Logic as the basis for the tone.

Roland - The Tube Logic Story

The Tube Logic Story

www.roland.com

A lot of people mention how much they hate plugging the amp into the computer to tweak the settings.
I don't mind it at all, probably something do with my 35 years and counting in IT
In fact, you can do it wirelessly with an Xsonic Bluetooth footswitch and an App for your phone.

 

[schmee]

I’ve been in the market for a new amp for home practice and recording for a while. I eventually bought a Katana 50 from my local guitar store, half on impulse. I knew I wasn’t going to really know for sure if it was for me just trying it out. I had to have the amp and live with the experience of playing through it for a while before I could really know if we were vibing. You don’t really know if your room mate is crazy until you’ve lived together for a while. That kind of logic.

I’ve had the Katana for about two months now and I’ve never been wowed by any part of it. Except for the price, I suppose. I paid for this what I paid for a Line 6 Spyder when I was in high school. And the “bad” presets on the Katana (anything above “crunch”) are still miles ahead of that freaking “insane” setting on the Spyder.

I’ve played with tone studio and realized how much I am just not about tweaking settings on a computer. That’s not how I like to interact with my instrument. Not a huge deal. I got “good enough” out of just the clean channel on the Katana, and loaded the sneaky amps models of the Jazz Chorus and the Fender Twin to two of my channel buttons and called it good.

That all changed tonight. My wife, lovely as she is, got me a very nice pair of headphones to replace some old Audio Technicas lost some months ago. Primarily for listening to music but also as a means for extra quiet late night practicing. I had heard tell of how underwhelming the Katanas headphone out sounded, so I was ready to be underwhelmed even relative to the otherwise “meh” attributes of the Katana, but holy mother of trout.

I cannot overstate how bad the sound through the headphones was. It was a nostalgia kick. It sounded like a low quality MP3 you’d pinch off LimeWire. It’s like the engineers at Boss went to the brass and asked “So do you want it to be as piercing as a glass seagull’s death rattle, or as muffled as a walkie talkie at the bottom of a pot of mashed potatoes?” And the big shots said “yes.”

A cooler head might prevail, but right now, I’m ready to call it and move on. I’m not going to stay married to an amp I didn’t even really get a honeymoon period with. It’s fine, I don’t despise it. It just isn’t a great fit for me. If anyone has suggestions, I’d be very interested in hearing them. My criteria:

1. Decent headphone sound. I will be playing a large part of the time through headphones. But not always, so the exclusive headphone amps aren’t for me.

2. Sounds good at low volumes. And I mean low. If I add any gain to the Katana, I switch to the .5w setting. An attenuator would be awesome.

3. I don’t care about models or tweak ability. I’m open to it, but I don’t want to have to get an app or connect to a computer to get the most out of it.

4. Stuff costs what it costs, so I’m not setting a super firm price limit, but I probably won’t be spending more than 1k anytime soon.

That’s it. Like I said, open to suggestions. I play mostly clean, some reverb and delay. I’m not precious about tone. I’m at the point where I’m after something that sounds of a certain quality, and acts as a solid base to build off of while I get better. I’ve recently had a Mustang LT25 that I didn’t get on with very well. Just didn’t care for the sound through the speakers so much. The Katana sounded better in the room than the LT but much worse through headphones. I also had an Orange Crush 35RT that was just way too loud to get an appreciable sound out of. I know they make smaller ones but I worry about speaker size at a certain point. Orange makes a really underrated clean amp sound, imo.

Before buying the Katana I’d been considering:

The Katana Artist. The additional knobs and improved speakers were big factors. I’m assuming it would suffer from the same headphone issues though so I imagine I can just cross this right off.

Fender GTX100. Was personally worried Id spend a little too much time in menus. Though the idea of lining up a bunch of presets that are just plain amps is kind of enticing.

Jazz Chorus 22. Love the classic JC sound. Bit worried the magic would be lost on the smaller model and speakers but the 40 ain’t tame able to living room volume.

Briefly considered the Iridium as well.

Any advice I’d appreciate. Sort of lost at this point but I’m 99% sure I’m over the Katana now.

There seem to be many comments on the JC22 and JC40 about background noise. I was looking at one or the other a couple years ago. Just a heads up on that, not sure what the issue is, but it surprised me. using headphones that may be a deterrent for sure!

 

[kookaburra]

“muffled as a walkie talkie at the bottom of a pot of mashed potatoes”

I actually laughed out loud at this. There’s something about mashed potatoes in an audio context that I apparently find very funny!

 

[Leonardocoate]

I just did the the same thing, and like you, I have decided that I'm not a tweeker. I was still able to returned mine and while I was returning it I saw a Gamma G25 for $100. What a nice little amp with a sweet little 10" speaker. My pedals work nicely with it. They also make a G50 which is a 12" 50 watt that will keep up with a drummer (so I'm told). Simple is best for me

 

[Leonardocoate]

There seem to be many comments on the JC22 and JC40 about background noise. I was looking at one or the other a couple years ago. Just a heads up on that, not sure what the issue is, but it surprised me. using headphones that may be a deterrent for sure!

I had the JC22 and didn't have a problem with background noise unless I played it on a none grounded circuit. Then it was real bad. Overall I didn't think it was all that versatile and I was looking for something louder.

 

[AquariumRock]

I just did the the same thing, and like you, I have decided that I'm not a tweeker. I was still able to returned mine and while I was returning it I saw a Gamma G25 for $100. What a nice little amp with a sweet little 10" speaker. My pedals work nicely with it. They also make a G50 which is a 12" 50 watt that will keep up with a drummer (so I'm told). Simple is best for me

Haven’t heard much about the Gammas, those seem kind of interesting, honestly. I’m with you, simple is best for me.

 

[Blrfl]

I just did the the same thing, and like you, I have decided that I'm not a tweeker. I was still able to returned mine and while I was returning it I saw a Gamma G25 for $100. What a nice little amp with a sweet little 10" speaker. My pedals work nicely with it. They also make a G50 which is a 12" 50 watt that will keep up with a drummer (so I'm told). Simple is best for me

Jeez, I dunno, the $140 MSRP for the G25 seems awfully high for an amp Made in China. Shouldn't cost any more than about $49.

Kidding. If the YouTube demos are any indication, they'll sell a bunch of those, and more power to 'em. Basic, inexpensive amps have been missing from the landscape for a long time.

 

[Leonardocoate]

Jeez, I dunno, the $140 MSRP for the G25 seems awfully high for an amp Made in China. Shouldn't cost any more than about $49.

Kidding. If the YouTube demos are any indication, they'll sell a bunch of those, and more power to 'em. Basic, inexpensive amps have been missing from the landscape for a long time.

GC had a big stack of each size and now they are almost gone

 

[Jim85IROC]

I never bonded with my Katana. Every tone was just... generic sounding, especially the cleans. I couldn't stand them. I ended up putting a Joyo American pedal in front of it and loved the sound, which made it pretty obvious to me that I wanted Fender cleans, so I wound up getting a Super Sonic 22 head and built a matching cabinet, and that's what I play in the house now instead of the Katana. Then I bought a Spark amp, and that did the "practice amp" thing way better than the Katana, so I ended up trading the Katana off.

Now for the majority of my playing, I run a Klone into the Super Sonic and a volume pedal in the effects loop. Even at volumes low enough for my wife to watch TV on the other side of the room, it sounds great. I don't miss the Katana one bit. I just wish I could get the back bow out of the neck that I traded the Katana for.

 

[buster poser]

Hi OP, you can find my thread(s) about it around, but for whatever it's worth I went from a Katana 100x112 to a Revv D20 (though I scavenged the speaker/cab).

I can't play very loud either and do 90%+ of the time in my office through a pair of JBLs and actually loved tweaking the sounds on my computer and had the foot switch to make that all pretty easy, but I get it. It's not for everyone and when it came time to choose again, it wasn't for me either.

There's a little of that tweakability with the TwoNotes IR loading software, but I just sort of set it and forget it. Seven 'cabs' available from the front is plenty. It's a proper tube amp, sounds incredible, and seems extensible if I ever play out again.

Aside: One thing I liked about my time with the Boss was it gave me some time to consider what pedals I might like and so I got some of those too, what I consider a basic-ish pedal setup to replicate what I favored inside the Boss's unit: Compressor, EQ, Gain, Delay, Reverb/Trem (Keeley, GE-7, Sunset, Flamma FS03 and Flint). Those cost me another $1k or so. Not strictly necessary I guess, but they were all effects I used either all the time or often enough (delay, gain).

GL and happy hunting!

 

[AndrewG]

I’ve been in the market for a new amp for home practice and recording for a while. I eventually bought a Katana 50 from my local guitar store, half on impulse. I knew I wasn’t going to really know for sure if it was for me just trying it out. I had to have the amp and live with the experience of playing through it for a while before I could really know if we were vibing. You don’t really know if your room mate is crazy until you’ve lived together for a while. That kind of logic.

I’ve had the Katana for about two months now and I’ve never been wowed by any part of it. Except for the price, I suppose. I paid for this what I paid for a Line 6 Spyder when I was in high school. And the “bad” presets on the Katana (anything above “crunch”) are still miles ahead of that freaking “insane” setting on the Spyder.

I’ve played with tone studio and realized how much I am just not about tweaking settings on a computer. That’s not how I like to interact with my instrument. Not a huge deal. I got “good enough” out of just the clean channel on the Katana, and loaded the sneaky amps models of the Jazz Chorus and the Fender Twin to two of my channel buttons and called it good.

That all changed tonight. My wife, lovely as she is, got me a very nice pair of headphones to replace some old Audio Technicas lost some months ago. Primarily for listening to music but also as a means for extra quiet late night practicing. I had heard tell of how underwhelming the Katanas headphone out sounded, so I was ready to be underwhelmed even relative to the otherwise “meh” attributes of the Katana, but holy mother of trout.

I cannot overstate how bad the sound through the headphones was. It was a nostalgia kick. It sounded like a low quality MP3 you’d pinch off LimeWire. It’s like the engineers at Boss went to the brass and asked “So do you want it to be as piercing as a glass seagull’s death rattle, or as muffled as a walkie talkie at the bottom of a pot of mashed potatoes?” And the big shots said “yes.”

A cooler head might prevail, but right now, I’m ready to call it and move on. I’m not going to stay married to an amp I didn’t even really get a honeymoon period with. It’s fine, I don’t despise it. It just isn’t a great fit for me. If anyone has suggestions, I’d be very interested in hearing them. My criteria:

1. Decent headphone sound. I will be playing a large part of the time through headphones. But not always, so the exclusive headphone amps aren’t for me.

2. Sounds good at low volumes. And I mean low. If I add any gain to the Katana, I switch to the .5w setting. An attenuator would be awesome.

3. I don’t care about models or tweak ability. I’m open to it, but I don’t want to have to get an app or connect to a computer to get the most out of it.

4. Stuff costs what it costs, so I’m not setting a super firm price limit, but I probably won’t be spending more than 1k anytime soon.

That’s it. Like I said, open to suggestions. I play mostly clean, some reverb and delay. I’m not precious about tone. I’m at the point where I’m after something that sounds of a certain quality, and acts as a solid base to build off of while I get better. I’ve recently had a Mustang LT25 that I didn’t get on with very well. Just didn’t care for the sound through the speakers so much. The Katana sounded better in the room than the LT but much worse through headphones. I also had an Orange Crush 35RT that was just way too loud to get an appreciable sound out of. I know they make smaller ones but I worry about speaker size at a certain point. Orange makes a really underrated clean amp sound, imo.

Before buying the Katana I’d been considering:

The Katana Artist. The additional knobs and improved speakers were big factors. I’m assuming it would suffer from the same headphone issues though so I imagine I can just cross this right off.

Fender GTX100. Was personally worried Id spend a little too much time in menus. Though the idea of lining up a bunch of presets that are just plain amps is kind of enticing.

Jazz Chorus 22. Love the classic JC sound. Bit worried the magic would be lost on the smaller model and speakers but the 40 ain’t tame able to living room volume.

Briefly considered the Iridium as well.

Any advice I’d appreciate. Sort of lost at this point but I’m 99% sure I’m over the Katana now.

I haven't like the sound of any amp through headphones and mine are ok (Grado SR80). You just discovered that amps designed for performance generally aren't suited for the living room. If you haven't tried the Marshall DSL1CR for example (1 watt with an attenuator button for 1/10th of a Watt), you should; tiny everything but big Marshall tones, just shrunk down. I used one for a while but bought the 5W version, which also has an attenuator.

 

[AndrewG]

I thought that video was familiar. I had given it a "thumbs down" a while ago because he dissed the Peavey Bandit.

Yes, a much underrated amp among the valve-sniffers! I've gigged several iterations of the Bandit over the years and like them very much; good tones, versatile and bomb-proof reliability.

 

[Doutorfunga]

I’ve been in the market for a new amp for home practice and recording for a while. I eventually bought a Katana 50 from my local guitar store, half on impulse. I knew I wasn’t going to really know for sure if it was for me just trying it out. I had to have the amp and live with the experience of playing through it for a while before I could really know if we were vibing. You don’t really know if your room mate is crazy until you’ve lived together for a while. That kind of logic.

I’ve had the Katana for about two months now and I’ve never been wowed by any part of it. Except for the price, I suppose. I paid for this what I paid for a Line 6 Spyder when I was in high school. And the “bad” presets on the Katana (anything above “crunch”) are still miles ahead of that freaking “insane” setting on the Spyder.

I’ve played with tone studio and realized how much I am just not about tweaking settings on a computer. That’s not how I like to interact with my instrument. Not a huge deal. I got “good enough” out of just the clean channel on the Katana, and loaded the sneaky amps models of the Jazz Chorus and the Fender Twin to two of my channel buttons and called it good.

That all changed tonight. My wife, lovely as she is, got me a very nice pair of headphones to replace some old Audio Technicas lost some months ago. Primarily for listening to music but also as a means for extra quiet late night practicing. I had heard tell of how underwhelming the Katanas headphone out sounded, so I was ready to be underwhelmed even relative to the otherwise “meh” attributes of the Katana, but holy mother of trout.

I cannot overstate how bad the sound through the headphones was. It was a nostalgia kick. It sounded like a low quality MP3 you’d pinch off LimeWire. It’s like the engineers at Boss went to the brass and asked “So do you want it to be as piercing as a glass seagull’s death rattle, or as muffled as a walkie talkie at the bottom of a pot of mashed potatoes?” And the big shots said “yes.”

A cooler head might prevail, but right now, I’m ready to call it and move on. I’m not going to stay married to an amp I didn’t even really get a honeymoon period with. It’s fine, I don’t despise it. It just isn’t a great fit for me. If anyone has suggestions, I’d be very interested in hearing them. My criteria:

1. Decent headphone sound. I will be playing a large part of the time through headphones. But not always, so the exclusive headphone amps aren’t for me.

2. Sounds good at low volumes. And I mean low. If I add any gain to the Katana, I switch to the .5w setting. An attenuator would be awesome.

3. I don’t care about models or tweak ability. I’m open to it, but I don’t want to have to get an app or connect to a computer to get the most out of it.

4. Stuff costs what it costs, so I’m not setting a super firm price limit, but I probably won’t be spending more than 1k anytime soon.

That’s it. Like I said, open to suggestions. I play mostly clean, some reverb and delay. I’m not precious about tone. I’m at the point where I’m after something that sounds of a certain quality, and acts as a solid base to build off of while I get better. I’ve recently had a Mustang LT25 that I didn’t get on with very well. Just didn’t care for the sound through the speakers so much. The Katana sounded better in the room than the LT but much worse through headphones. I also had an Orange Crush 35RT that was just way too loud to get an appreciable sound out of. I know they make smaller ones but I worry about speaker size at a certain point. Orange makes a really underrated clean amp sound, imo.

Before buying the Katana I’d been considering:

The Katana Artist. The additional knobs and improved speakers were big factors. I’m assuming it would suffer from the same headphone issues though so I imagine I can just cross this right off.

Fender GTX100. Was personally worried Id spend a little too much time in menus. Though the idea of lining up a bunch of presets that are just plain amps is kind of enticing.

Jazz Chorus 22. Love the classic JC sound. Bit worried the magic would be lost on the smaller model and speakers but the 40 ain’t tame able to living room volume.

Briefly considered the Iridium as well.

Any advice I’d appreciate. Sort of lost at this point but I’m 99% sure I’m over the Katana now.

I'd honestly use that on a good usb audio interface, install a Digital Audio Workstation (odds are Ableton will come bundled with your new interface, it's a good one and very easy to use) and some good WYSIWYG amp Sims for your computer or iPad. These things are made to sound good on records, which need to sound good on phones. Voilà, good to amazing tones, as many effects as you like and infinite practice material!

 

[Doutorfunga]

I haven't like the sound of any amp through headphones and mine are ok (Grado SR80). You just discovered that amps designed for performance generally aren't suited for the living room. If you haven't tried the Marshall DSL1CR for example (1 watt with an attenuator button for 1/10th of a Watt), you should; tiny everything but big Marshall tones, just shrunk down. I used one for a while but bought the 5W version, which also has an attenuator.

Great call! These also have cabinet simulations on their headphone outs, which eliminate the usually dreadful sound these have (you're getting signal without a speaker filtering the lowest and highest frequencies, result is KRAAAAAAAAANGGG).