Guitar Gear

I could simply start off and say that after my church gig last night, the Katana 50 delivers on all fronts for me, and leave it at that. I could simply start off and say that all the dynamics that I was expecting were present in a big way, and leave it at that. I could simply start off and say that just based on sound alone, this amp just does it all for me, no matter what I paid for it, and leave it at that. But I’m not going to leave it at that… The big test for me with any gear that I get is how it performs in my church gig. For those of you who would pooh-pooh the venue as not being a valid venue just because it’s “church music” that’s being played (believe me, I’ve gotten ribbed about this in the past), then let me just say this: Playing in a church is one of the hardest venues to play in simply because the limiting factor is volume. The trick is sounding good – and more importantly, consistent – whether you’re playing at 70dB or 100dB. Believe me, having done this for over 20 years, that consistency is difficult to achieve. But based on my playing the amp every day for the week leading up to playing my gig, I had a feeling that the Katana would perform extremely well with respect to consistency. As a digital amp, it is designed to operate consistently at various volumes. The great thing about that is that the performance is predictable. I can set up the amp to have particular sound and dynamics, and know that they’ll stay the same irrespective of my volume. I realize though, that there is a certain magic when you up the SPL’s, and the Katana is no exception to this. Despite it sounding good at lower levels, it REALLY sings at high volume. When the speaker is pushing air, the sound becomes a lot more dimensional and space-filling, which is why I recorded my studio test song with the mic placed 3-4 feet away from the amp. I wanted to capture the sound at a distance. 🙂 Of course, I couldn’t open it up at church, but regardless, it sounded great!