Guitar Gear

I recently got ripped on by a reader who said the usual line that a solid-state amp will never sound as good as a tube amp and in the process kind of backhandedly insulted me by saying those of us who like the Katana must like “cheap sound.” Yada-yada-yada… I’ve heard all those comments before, and I used to say the same thing about most solid-state amps. But since the Katana came out and I played one – and have subsequently purchased two since then – I’ve been loving the line. They sound great to my ears and have a response that I expect an amp – any amp – to respond.

As someone on a forum said, “As a player, all I care is that it sounds and responds in a manner that I like and has features that work for me. The tech running it should be irrelevant.” I couldn’t have said that better myself. All I’m interested in is if I get the feel and dynamics and great sound that I’m expecting. That’s all that matters. Oh, and by the way, tube amp snobs, you can’t make a blanket statement that tube amps in general sound and respond better than all solid-state amps. I’ve played lots of tube amps that sound and play like shit.

But that said, one of the main reasons I’m such a big fan of the Katana is why I’m a big fan of lots of other gear that I have: I don’t have to do too much tweaking to get a good sound. It’s also a reason I haven’t gone to the real heavy-hitters like a Kemper or a Helix. I really just want to twiddle a few knobs and play.

Admittedly, with my new Katana Artist, I did spend a lot more time dialing it in than I did my Katana 50. But the amp does much more than the 50 – especially with the Line Out – so I was willing to invest more time to make sure my Line Out sound quality was reasonably on par with my speaker sound. That investment of time paid off this past weekend when I played it at church. I was able to keep my stage volume really low and use the PA to get my sound out. It worked like a charm! Plus, I got the GA-FC foot controller to switch channels, so I spent time dialing in sounds and matching volume levels.

But enough about the Katana. Like I said in the title, I’m a fan of great gear. And great gear to me is gear that inspires me to play. I’m not a bedroom player. I gig and record and occasionally do session work, so the gear I use has to work in the real world. In fact, I don’t think I own any gear that I’ve never used outside my home.

And that gear can be expensive or cheap. But as long as it performs well for me, who am I to judge it based on its cost or components? Remember the Bad Monkey overdrive? I got that puppy used for $20 and used it for quite some time before I donated it to a young man who needed a drive pedal. And for quite a while I’ve used an EHX Soul Food – $70.

One of my first electric guitars was a beat-up, old Ibanez Strat (I still have it but it needs work) that my little brother “lent” me decades ago. I used that guitar in many shows, including doing some pit work for local community theatre orchestras. This thing looked like shit! But it played like a dream. A bassist whom I played with originally laughed at it until I let him play it. Then he bugged me for months to buy it off me. But I knew that he just wanted the neck which was like butter to play.

But the point here is that I don’t just get cheap gear. I have some fairly expensive gear as well: Lots of amps and guitars and a bunch of boutique pedals. But I really do follow my bliss with respect to the gear I play. And writing this blog for the last 12 years has helped me open my mind to all the different gear possibilities and focus less on the technology and more on sound and playability. If those come from technology that’s considered inferior to the gear cognoscenti, well, all I can do is give ’em a shrug. I’m still going to play it because it makes me happy to play, and when I’m happy to play my audience responds accordingly. And let’s face it: They don’t give a shit what gear you play as long as you rock them.

Look, I get it. What I happen to like is purely subjective. I love the sound of the Katana amps. And I realize it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But I’ve learned to let people follow their own bliss. If they’re rocking it up with what they’ve got, more power to ’em.