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It turns out there was zero work to do for the Beatle-esque thing. One of my jazz amp booster settings is perfect for it. I plugged in my Turser 12-string (looks somewhat similar to the Lennon Rick 325, but has two pickups), turned it on… and was done. So I have a ‘free’ channel with which to muck around.
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06-10-2023 09:25 PM
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Ok, I see where the “swarm of angry bees” comment comes from. But it’s not exactly accurate.
To truly access all features, you need to connect to a computer. Depending on the arrangement, this alone generates significant noise. Then when you create a ‘rock’ setting, at very low guitar volume you hear some noise.
But that all vanishes at band volume. And this little 50w amp has serious volume if you use it correctly. It also has more than enough bass for most guitar applications, again if set correctly.
My new ‘rock’ channel has the Clean amp type as its foundation. You need this to get some bass! The brown/crunch channels just don’t make it. So you get your fundamental sound by working with cabinet type and contour - global parametric EQ. You can achieve the clean sound of most of the classic Fenders, Marshalls, Hiwatts etc this way. As indicated earlier, do this all at a volume that matches your band context so you can hear how it will really sound.
From there, choose the signal path that matches up best with how you’d like it. And then before doing any effects, use the channel volume and gain to get as close to your baseline rock sound as possible. This way your pick attack alone can achieve some measure of crunch, somewhat like the old plexi amps. From there, the Booster completes the job.
Now you can begin to work on the other effects.
I will definitely be purchasing the speaker out gizmo. I have a 2x12 cabinet that is deep and dark. I am looking forward to hearing this all at volume thru a worthy cabinet.
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Well, I was at rehearsal volume... which is alot louder than "bedroom" volume, but not as loud as "un-miced gig" volume. Because we mic our guitar amps, at rehearsal and gigs. But even at that volume, it sounded like a bad distortion pedal to me.
And the Roland Blues Cube Artist was on another level- another universe, really. Which is interesting since they are basically the same company. (and I was even playing the Katana MkII through the Roland's speaker).
But hey, DSFDF, YMMV, etc etc
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Not that Roland needs any help selling** these amps…. but while YMMV always of course applies, if all you got from it is bad distortion pedal then you either had a bad amp or were insufficiently motivated to explore the amp.
I downloaded the gumtown floorboard MkII app. And I am floored by what I’m getting. The ‘sneaky’ amps are just the beginning. You get to customize the signal chain. The upper right has a field with an enormous list of amps/configurations. From that list, the Fender amps sound exactly like clean Fender amps… and the volume and gain controls give a very Fender-like experience. One of those is now my jazz clean amp.
Then there’s the 70s Marshall amp setup. This sounds almost exactly like my Marshall Major. And more than that, it responds like that amp (as do both the Plexi amp types). The sound is clean when playing more softly, and then when you hit it you get this luscious roar. I added a TubeScreamer to the input in the chain, with just enough sauce to supply more edge. So that when I hit it the roar is even more uproarious, while playing softly still gives a nice clean sound. Blackmore, Trower, Hendrix, Randy Bachman… all those sounds are right there. With nary a buzzing bee to be heard.
I’m not trying to convince you. You have your opinion and that’s fine. This post is for folks who are in the market for a versatile amp, and have not tried the Katana.
**word on the street is it’s the best selling amp around, for the past many years. Given the experience I’m having with it, I can fully appreciate that.
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Great insights! I have been working on replicating my Fender Twin and my Marshall 1987X and I feel I have come very close. The sound from the Katana Artist is huge. However, if patches already exist for these amps, I’d love to try them and either use them outright, or use them as foundations to create my own. Are those in the Sneaky Amps collection? Or in the Gumtown app you mentioned?
Side note, I’m really blown away by the deep editing capability in these amps. The effects are really very good. I think I mentioned it earlier, but I was playing the uni-vibe effect today and A/B-ing it with my Deja Vibe and it’s 95% spot on. The Blues Driver and TS-9 are eerily accurate. I’m looking forward to trying the stereo expansion capability too. Yes, I ordered another Artist to create a stereo rig.
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Cool, man. We all dig what we dig.
Originally Posted by coyote-1
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The rotary sim, like virtually all the other modulation effects on the Katana, is great. If you were to set up the stereo expansion, and have the amps right next to each other but angled 50-70 degrees or so away from each other, I’d wager your rendition of Ringo’s It Don’t Come Easy would sound stellar. That amp arrangement would also be great for the univibe effect, and for the phaser. Along with the ping-pong tremolo. Originally Posted by rolijen
The amp configurations I referenced are different than the sneaky amps list. I do not know whether they are simply patches based on the sneaky amps (likely) or some separate programming. All I can say is they exist in the Gumtown Katana MkII Floorboard for Windows 10, and the ones I’m using are exactly what I would hope to find. EDIT: they are found in the upper right, in the “Output select set to system” field. The list of sets is extensive, and many sets appear to have subsets.
The great thing IMO about this amp is that yes the editing is very deep… yet somehow, it’s intuitive. And the sounds are excellent. My encounter with Line6 some years ago was that the sounds were not great, and it was a PITA. Sometimes, progress is good!Last edited by coyote-1; 06-20-2023 at 09:55 AM.
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The other Artist combo arrived and I’ve delved into the world of stereo and it’s glorious. The stereo effects remind me of the first time I played a JC-120 back in the day. Originally Posted by coyote-1
This new setup opens up the stage and fills it with pleasant richness. I’m just getting started experimenting, but the dual expansion capability is really nice. Even the reverbs sound 3-dimensional. I’m working on some archtop patches with different reverbs,…nothing over-the-top. Keeping it subtle makes it interesting. For rock tones, I’ve been playing with the univibe and stereo chorus. The ping pong delay is cool but becomes tiresome pretty quickly. Moderation is called for. Will report back as I gain more experience.
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Stereo is more than double fun than one amp! Originally Posted by rolijen
One great stereoeffect is a Neo Instruments Mini Vent II Leslie-simulator.
mini VENT II – neo-instruments.com
The ’low motor’ and ’high motor’ accelerate and slow down in different speeds and it feels real in stereo!
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I have a MotionSound Pro3T. Used it with a Hammond A100, and ran the low rotor sim into a 200 watt Marshall Major w/ deep slant 4x12 cabinet. That is, when I wasn’t running my actual Leslie. I only gigged the Leslie a handful of times. Moving the Hammond was PITA enough. Originally Posted by Herbie
The simulations nowadays are excellent, and from a distance difficult to discern from the real thing. But up close there’s still nothing quite like actually whipping the air with a rotating horn.
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Thinking about getting a set of those Boss Waza Headphones. It’s a wireless transmitter and a Katana modeler built into the phones.
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It gets better. I used a bunch of comparisons. I got my Crate BX100 bass amp sounding like a Polytone, and a bud of mine left a Henriksen (see what I did there) in my studio for a week. So I dug into the Katana Sound Studio parametric EQ. I now have two distinct ‘jazz’ channels, one that sounds like a Fender and one that sounds close enough to a Polytone to be entirely acceptable to me.
IMO it now sounds better than the Bud; changing the pick attack makes a bigger difference on this Katana patch than on the Bud, and the amp just sounds bigger and less compressed. Those two things are of course related, as compression (if present) reduces the differences in pick attack. So to my ears, it sounds like the Bud might have some built-in compression. And the Katana 12” speaker has nearly four times the surface area of the 6” in the Bud, and that cannot help but make a difference.
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Would you be willing to share your Fender and Polytone patches with other Katana users? Originally Posted by coyote-1
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maybe… but this is something I’ve never quite grasped. My patches are based on the sneaky amps, accessed via the gumtown floorboard app. From there, it’s just about playing with a few settings until it sounds good to my ears. Originally Posted by rolijen
Would you be willing to share your Fender and Polytone patches with other Katana users?
So all the info needed to get a user where they might want to be has already been provided. From there, can’t they utilize their own ears and ability to turn a few virtual knobs until they’ve obtained the sound they desire?
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Rather than provide patches, here are images using the gumtown Floorboard. One is my custom signal chain, the other is the parametric EQ that takes the “Clean Twin” amp and makes it sound more like a Polytone. I’m still tweaking that.
I now have both in a single patch/channel called Jazz Guitar. Frees up another channel, and makes shifting from Fender-ish to Polytone-ish as simple as hitting an effect switch on my AirStep KAT.
In a way this is a drag. You see, since I got my Crate BX100 to sound like a Polytone I’ve been looking for a cheap BFX100 (built in reverb). The intent was to chop down and rearrange the cabinet, to reduce its size and weight and thereby achieve a portable Poly-clone. But since used Katana MkII 50s are out in the market for less than $150, and can get the sounds I want and be much lighter AND much more portable AND much more versatile, there’s no point whatsoever in doing that project anymore. lol
Incidentally, I just don’t get the folks who claim this amp lacks bass. Set correctly, it has as much bass as you could possibly want for a guitar.
Last edited by coyote-1; 07-09-2023 at 12:50 PM.
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I have to write more on this. The key IMO to this amp is definitely the gumtown Floorboard. There’s a patch called Ritchie CalJam 1974 (or something like that), and it truly nails Blackmore’s tone in that era. I moved the chain a bit, as it was the preamp on his Aiwa that made a huge impact. And that of course came before the amp, so the tape delay also needs to be before the amp input.
Then I moved to a ‘rectifier’ tone. The stock sounds don’t stack up, but this one is great. Plugged in my PRS, and with a few small tweaks Oooo Salud! a Black Magic Woman emerged. Needs a bit more tweaking, but if you played it as-is no one would complain. And there’s almost no noise, unlike some stacked rectifier sounds.
Next up a shot at EVH. There is no great match for this that I could find quickly. However, I chose a patch that had a VH song title or something. It was meh. But then I replaced the amp type with the Plexi I & II sneaky amp, put a tube screamer in front of it… and I was at home on Mean Street. Truly nails the VH sound of the first few years. I then tried the “brown sound” amp type that comes with Katana, and it was awful! Which is odd, because that’s what EVH called his sound.
I’ve not yet found an SRV tone that really hits it for me, but there are some where the baseline stuff is right and they need tweaking. That’s for another day.
There are a handful of Polytone patches in the floorboard’s arsenal and some are very good, but none sufficiently wonderful to make me consider changing my jazz guitar patch.
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While (slightly clunky pick attack aside) the Katana is doing a great job of emulating the sound and responsiveness of my Marshall amps, it is coming up just a tad short on the Fender side.
My Princeton Reverb II came back from the shop with new capacitors, and the complexity of its clean tone and response is more broad than I had remembered. The Katana’s Clean Twin by comparison, while clearly good at Fender-ish tone and definitely good at response, does not manage the changes in tone that come from varying pick attack quite as thoroughly.
I’d still have no shame in utilizing the Katana (especially if the scenario called for effects), but the PRII would be my preference in most situations.
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With more time/experience in the Katana eco system now, I have to agree. For that unique Fender tone, my BFPR, TMTR, and BFSR are better than the Katana. That said, I have arrived at an edge of breakup Strat sound in the Katana that is fantastic. I really like it. It’s Fendery but not a dead on emulation. I find the more driven tones of modern Marshalls to be more easily emulated. I’m still working on a patch to emulate my Marshall 1987x and I haven’t quite figured out the nuances in the clarity of the higher end and richness of the upper mids. The Marshall sounds so rich and complex compared to where I’ve gotten so far.
All in all, I’m having fun with the Katana and I’ve managed to put together a few really great patches of my own for blues, rock, and jazz. I think the Waza speaker of the Artist model is worth the extra price. These Artist models sound much better than the other Katanas, especially for jazz. The bigger cabinet and better speaker make a big difference.
Verdict as of 7/15/23: I still love my Fenders, especially for jazz. But I enjoy the range of tonal options (massively adjustable EQ, wide range of effects, etc.), the configurability of the signal chain, the integration with the GA-FC footswitch, and the ability to dial in a sound by twisting knobs or driving deeper via Boss Tone Studio. Oh, and the built-in stereo expansion feature works very well. Color me impressed.Last edited by rolijen; 07-15-2023 at 09:28 AM.
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