Guitar Gear

Ever since I got my BOSS Katana 50, my world has been turned upside down with respect to what a “good” amp is. For years, like many, I was of the mind that good could only come from a tube amp with just a few exceptions. No way could a solid state amp match the tone, feel, and dynamics of a tube amp. Oh, solid state amps could definitely keep up with tube amps with respect to clean tones, but when you’d get into overdrive territory, the sound would be brittle with very little in dynamics on offer.

But when I first auditioned the Katana 50 in my local Guitar Center, I was blown away. On that fateful day, I was expecting to just get a clean platform to put pedals in front of, but even with the short amount of time I played with the higher gain models – and at low volume, mind you – I knew this amp was something special. I bought it on the spot.

I have since given my Katana 50 to my youngest child and am awaiting delivery of a Katana 100 Artist. And as I wait, it really hit me: No way would I ever had thought to even consider a solid state amp – even just two or three years ago!

Yes, there were Axe FX, Kemper, and the Helix amps/modelers out there, and have been there for several years. But all those were out of my price range, so I just stuck with what I could afford; or to put a finer point on it, stuck with my tube amps. Plus, after my experience with my old Line 6 Flextone III, the thought of spending hours twiddling with software or doing amp profiling just didn’t appeal to me.

But with the Katana 50, the default sounds worked for me. Oh yes, I did do some tweaking in the Tone Studio like unlinking the delay from the reverb, but that was all I did. I’ve been using BOSS pedals for years – not really my primary pedals – so I was familiar with them, and the default settings were just fine with me. And that really was the kicker for me. Roland made it easy for me to just plug in and go.

I really have been faced with a quandary since then: I literally have thousands of dollars invested in tube amps, and now I have an amp that costs a fraction of the price that I’d rather play over my tube amps. And with that thought, I asked myself: What makes this so special?

Compared to solid state amps of old, new solid state amps are also digital; that is, circuitry is controlled by software, or more precisely, embedded firmware on a chip. Old solid state amps had limited firmware, so the sounds they produced were basically a function of the physical electronics. But with the much more sophisticated software of today, the ability to tweak and tune the chips has increased dramatically, producing these great-sounding and great-feeling amps. Definitely not your daddy’s solid state amp!

And the fact that they can be produced much cheaper than a tube amp while providing comparable sound quality and feel and dynamics is a testament to how far technology has come. Digital amp technology has come so far now that I no longer think about the components, when evaluating amps. I just want to know if the amp has a good sound and the feel and dynamics I’ve come to expect from a good amp, damn the technology. And the Katana 50 has just continued to perform for me on all fronts, save recording, which is why I’m moving up to the 100 Artist.

But the first time I did a full show with my Katana 50 where it was really pushing air, I about fell over in shock. Up until that point, I had only used the amp at church. I knew it sounded great at lower volumes (< 90 dB), but hadn’t played it in a real live situation where I could really open up the amp. The big sound that the 50 produced was just incredible! It was full and rich and punched right through the mix when I did a solo. Plus it had sag, or at least the digital equivalent to sag. That was completely unexpected. Right then and there, I was forever sold on it! It just reinforced the idea that the playing field in the amp world is becoming quite level.

Roland is a pioneer in this field (think the Cube line). Yes, there were competitors like Line 6 when digital amps started making inroads to the industry. But Roland was really the first to make the technology accessible, and they did this by limiting options. As I mentioned above, I had a Line 6 Flextone III. Great amp, but I spent more time tweaking it than I did playing it, and that just frustrated me. The Cube 60 that I had, on the other hand, was straight-forward: Twiddle a few knobs and I was off to the races.

And now with the Katana 100 Artist that I have coming to my doorstep this morning, I will have what could be considered the pinnacle of Roland’s digital amp prowess.

But why the Artist as opposed to the 100 which is much less in price? I have a couple of reasons. First, based on what I’ve heard in A/B demos online, the larger cabinet and Waza speaker provide a much richer sound than the smaller cabinet of the KTN-100. Also – and it might be a minor thing to some – the controls are located on the front of the amp. I put my amps on a stand that leans them back when I’m gigging, and making adjustments is a pain when they’re located on the backside of the top of the amp.

But even more important than those two things above are two controls that are exposed on the Artist that are not present on the KTN-100: Cabinet Resonance and Line Out Air Feel knobs (shown below).

These settings are only available in the software with the KTN-100. And they’re HUGE features for me because especially when I play at church, I will be using the Line Out to go into the board. On one demo of the Line Out feature that I watched, the Line Out Air Feel made a big difference in the sound produced by the line out. And being able to dynamically set the cabinet resonance on the fly is so awesome. If I’m playing a brooding song with deep cleans, I can set to deep. As I said, these had to be set from within Tone Studio, but if I can set them at a venue without having a computer, that’s huge! And it’s what took it over the top for me.

Truth be told, I will not get rid of my tube amps, but I seriously doubt that I will buy more in the future. The amps I do have will be used mainly in the studio when I want a specific sound. I have to admit that I’m a little sad about this because they’ve become such great companions over the years. But there’s no denying that the versatility that the Katana brings to the table just can’t be ignored.