Guitar Gear

What? No review? Not just yet. As of late, I’ve been waiting to do a review until I’ve played gear live and have had some time learning to tweak it. I used to write reviews based on my home use, and even though I’d play the gear at a good volume, nothing really beats playing something live and in a band. So I’m holding off on a formal review until I’ve had a few live sessions with the amp.

That said, it doesn’t mean I can’t share my first impressions based on playing it for several hours a day since I got it a few days ago (it has been very late nights, indeed). Of course, part of spending so much time with it is having a new toy to play with, but to be honest, a lot of it had to do with preparing for Sunday, when I bring it to church. I wanted my channels dialed in beforehand. I will set up the EQ when I get there. Plus, I got the GA-FC foot controller and I want to make sure I’m comfortable with it. Also, I wanted to make sure I knew what to set for the Line Out. But with that, let me share what I think of it thus far.

First, as I expected, the speaker is going to take a bit of time to break in. When I first plugged it in and played it on Tuesday, the sound was really, really tight. Luckily, no one was home, so I could play it at 100 Watts and let it rip. But it was pretty stiff. Now on Friday, with me using the amp – especially with my acoustic that has a lot of lows, the sound has become noticeably richer. It’s still a little stiff, especially in the mids and highs, but it’s just going to get better.

Next, the Line Out absolutely rocks! When I recorded those initial acoustic clips the other day, I was using a regular instrument cable to run into my audio interface because the TRS cables I ordered were in a separate shipment. Based on that, I thought the Line Out sound was pretty good – good enough to plug into a board or DAW. The Line Out Air Feel knob helped a lot by setting it to Live to give the impression of a little distance between the cab and the “mic.”

But once I got a TRS cable, the difference in the sound quality was like night and day. And where the Air Feel “Rec” setting sounded horrible with a regular instrument cable, I actually now prefer that setting for recording acoustic guitar or plugging into a board. For electric guitar, I use the Blend setting with a Vintage Cabinet Resonance. It sounds a lot like a classic Greenback. For acoustic, I use the Deep setting. It makes the sound very rich.

Here are some samples:

Acoustic – Finger Style

Acoustic – Percussive Strum

Les Paul – Clean and Dirty

Mind you, if I was recording for real, especially with electric guitar, I’d either mic one of my tube amps or run it through an IR, or even mic the Artist, and I’d definitely mic my acoustic. But these tests were important because I wanted to make sure I could get a great sound going into a board or interface. But that said, for clean tones, and especially when I’m recording a reggae-style sound, I see no problem whatsoever using the Line Out on this little beastie.

I have yet to go into the software, though eventually, I will, especially to see if I can switch out and/or EQ the drive pedal models. As with my Katana 50, I am just not a fan of BOSS drive pedals. Never have been. Even the overdrives – where I expect much more dynamic response – are far too compressed for my liking. The overdrive of the amp itself is actually pretty nice, so truth be told, I’ll probably put one of my own overdrive pedals in front of the amp to interact with it.

Being a previous Katana owner, it was fairly easy to get to a good sound with the Artist, but it will take some time to tweak and break in. Though I kind of knew where to set things to my liking, though admittedly, with the larger cabinet and Waza speaker that provides much more bottom-end, I found myself adding more mids and highs to get a good, balanced tone. But make no bones about it. You have to make an investment of time setting up the amp. Like any amp, it takes a while to dial in the sound. And as the speaker is still a little stiff, I just need to play through it to loosen up the cone.

Mind you, I’m not trying to get it to sound like one of my Plexis or one of my Fenders. Just as I’ve said before with the Katana 50, it has a sound all its own and it takes time getting familiar with the amp. Besides, as I’ve mentioned, it seems as if the default settings were made for selling the amp in a store, not playing the amp, so tweaking the amp is absolutely necessary. Anyone who judges the amp on its default settings is doing themselves a real disservice. But then haters gonna be haters, ain’t nothin’ can be done ’bout that. 🙂

The GA-FC foot controller is essential. I’ve had a couple of days to play with it and damn! It sure makes things convenient. I thus far set up all four channels on each bank in similar ways. I’ve set up Bank A for electric guitar and Bank B for acoustic. For either bank, Channel 1 is clean with just a touch of reverb (Hall for acoustic and Spring for electric). Then all subsequent channels build on that.

I was a little unsure of the larger cabinet size and greater weight, but it provides a comparatively much richer sound than the small cabinet of the Katana 50. Combined with the Waza Craft speaker, the extra weight and size are really worth it, and it’s not going to be like lugging a Twin or a JC-120 that had to have casters to roll it. I’ve wanted a Twin for a long time, but the weight of that amp makes it totally impractical as a regular gigging amp.

Well, that’s kind of it in a nutshell for now. My initial verdict is that I will definitely be continuing my love affair with this line of amps!