Guitar Gear

I’ve made no secret that I play music at church; specifically a Catholic church. I’ve got a full band and we indeed rock it up; well, within reason because after all, we do have to play within the context of the Mass plus, we just can’t go all-out with the volume and melt people’s ears off.

But a few times a year, I get to go on youth retreats. There, volume is NOT an issue, so I can usually play a much higher volumes than at church, but normally, it’s just me on acoustic guitar with several teen singers. I can only rock so much playing by myself…

But this past weekend, it was different. On this retreat, I had an entire band playing with me: Two guitars (incl. myself), a bass, keys, and drums. So I brought the full rig for the weekend, which included my California Blonde for acoustic, acoustic guitar, my Les Paul with a Strat as a backup, and of course, my BOSS Katana 50.

As luck would have it, I only played acoustic maybe 10% of the time. The rest of the time was on my Les Paul cranking out rockin’ praise and worship music. And truth be told, this was my first full volume test of the Katana 50. And if I had any doubts about how it would perform at concert stage volume, they were completely laid to rest this weekend.

I already knew that the amp was loud. But as experience has shown, playing an amp in a controlled environment (in this case my living room) isn’t the same as playing it on stage where you have to compete with other instruments.

Unlike other venues I’ve played, I didn’t have the amp on stage with me because space was limited. Since the stage was only a foot and a half off the ground, I had everyone put their amps in the walkway at the back of the stage and tilt them against the wall. This would direct the speakers up so we could hear ourselves. That actually turned out to be a great idea because it allowed us to keep our stage volume under control so our sound guy could reinforce us through the mains.

And with the Katana 50, sound projection was not an issue at all. I could hear myself clearly, or if the band was playing all out, I could still isolate my sound. The Katana 50 kicked ass!

I originally purchased the amp as a high clean headroom platform that I could put my own pedals in front of. The built-in effects are incredible and quite honestly, the overdrive sound is pretty spectacular. But I have some great overdrive pedals that I haven’t put to much use lately and for this gig,

I decided to bring my Tone Freak Abunai 2 overdrive. This pedal has always been super-special to me and I have always loved its three different clipping sections. For me, the symmetrical clipping provides a very amp-like response and has the most gain and compression of the different clipping sections. This was the kind of thing I needed to run against a clean platform. The cool thing was that I could just set my amp’s base volume, then do fine adjustments at my guitar or on the Abunai 2 when I was playing dirty.

The Katana 50 took to the Abunai 2 as if they were made for each other. When I first switched it on and started playing a solo, the other guitarist in the band looked over at me and just shook his head laughing, then yelled out, “That sounds SOOOO good!” The thing about the Abunai 2 in the symmetrical clipping setting is that the distortion is pretty high-gain and simulates playing through a full stack. But at the same time, you get incredible note separation. It’s incredibly musical.

And to have an amp that provided that platform well, that was just kick-ass! Being just a 1 X 12 cabinet, it’s amazing how BIG the amp sounds when it’s pushing air. It’s hard to actually describe it in words but the effect is absolutely dramatic.

As far as clean tones are concerned the only thing I can say is, “Wow!” I dialed in just a bit of reverb from my TC Electronic Hall of Fame, then added some light analog delay texture with my Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay. When we were playing songs that demanded clean, clear tones, the Katana 50 delivered that in spades! Again, so very very inspiring.

Once we finished our first set Friday night, I just turned to the band with a shit-eating grin on my face. Not only had these kids done a great job – for which I gave them TONS of kudos – I also said that my tone was just spot-on. I was SO inspired by the sounds that were coming from the Katana 50!

Saturday was filled with several short sets of praise and worship and one really long, two-hour set in the night to cap off the day. Not once on Saturday did the amp let me down. Once I had it dialed in on Friday, I didn’t touch it except to add a bit more Master Volume because once our drummer got his confidence, he also got much louder – which is a good thing because I kept on having to remind him to play louder on Friday (imagine telling a drummer to play louder). 🙂

But the piece de resistance was yesterday morning’s final praise and worship set. For that set, I set the master much higher because we needed to be loud to finish up the retreat; plus with all the kids dancing and jumping, and singing along at the top of their lungs, I knew we’d have to cut through the crowd.

It turned out that even that setting wasn’t loud enough. 🙂 So after the first song of the set, I instructed the other guitarist to up his volume a bit (he was always pretty loud, but even he couldn’t cut through a screaming crowd) and I went back and cranked the Master to about 2pm, which is pretty freakin’ loud.

On the second song, I ripped into a quick intro solo by myself, then counted out the song. OH. MY. GOODNESS! 🙂 Talk about moving some serious air! That just got the band amped up and we finished up the set totally spent!

So no doubt, I LOVE THIS AMP! And imagine that its street price is only US$219.00!!! F-in’ A!

I am very aware of the doubters of this amp. One person on reddit called all the praise people were giving “paid shilling.” With all the buzz about the amp, it’s not a stretch that some might think this. But this amp really is that good! Every time I play it, I find another nuance that makes me love the amp even more!