NAD Boss Katana 100W Combo

Grumpyrocker

Not gigging at the moment and have too much gear filling up my house. So best way of solving this? Buy another amp.

My Boss Katana 100 Combo arrived about an hour or so ago and I'm mightily impressed with it. Wanted to try it before I slimmed down my collection. But I can tell already that my Laney Ironheart Head, Laney Cub 12R, POD HD500 and Orange Micro Terror will all be going on Gumtree soon and I'll have a lot more space in my study. 

I have a good speaker cab so the most natural option should have been the Katana  head. However once I realised I could use the Katana as an acoustic amp I decided a combo was the right move - I occasionally get asked to play at some of my wife's church events and a combo like this covers a lot of bases. And saves me lugging a 212 around.

So anyway, what about the amp? I'm super impressed with the sounds on offer. The controls are simple to dial in and you can have great sounds in seconds.  And bloody hell this thing is loud. Even on  the 0.25W it's plenty loud for home use. The 50 and 100 Watt settings are fecking loud.  I'd have no problems using it in a live setting.

Before the amp arrived I'd spent some time with the Boss Tone Studio software looking at the various effects I could store on the amp. What really surprised me though when I plugged my PC into the amp was that the effects types were saved per patch. I thought you just  saved the three effects per control to the amp and then the patches made use of those effects. But no - you can set  boost pedal types on one patch, and three completely different boost pedals on another patch. 

I also worked out you could set what the default effects are on the "panel" option, for when you're not using one of the four saved patches.  So really rather than single sounds - each of the amp's four patches (and panel setting) offer a completely different suite of effects.  The only downside with this is that most mere mortals are going to struggle to remember which effects are saved to which patch. 

I think I'm likely to settle on a clean set and a dirty set for effects rather than a completely different set of options per patch. But crikey this thing is powerful.

Favourite sound so  far is actually the clean channel with the in-built Guvnor pedal simulation. Sounds bloody marvellous. 

midlifecrisis

well done,   i bought mine about 6 months ago, gig it most weeks and impressed, hadly touch my other amps now too

Voxman

@Grumpyrocker is your Katana 100 the 1x12 or 2x12 version? 

LooseMoose

A common 'trick' that is emerging from some Katana users (me included, when I had one) is to max out the master volume and then use the other volumes/gain to control to taste - really thickens the sound out.  Funny, as my instinct would almost expect it to work the other way around!

Grumpyrocker

Voxman said:

@Grumpyrocker is your Katana 100 the 1x12 or 2x12 version?

It's the 112. Trying do downsize my gear so didn't want a big amp.

   @LooseMoose I've read that about the use of master volume. Haven't tried it yet.

darthed1981

I've got a Katana 50.

Does everything I need an amp to do.  I'd sell my little Blackstar Cores but I need amps in a few places in the house!

midlifecrisis

Grumpyrocker said:

Voxman said:

@Grumpyrocker is your Katana 100 the 1x12 or 2x12 version?

It's the 112. Trying do downsize my gear so didn't want a big amp.

   @LooseMoose I've read that about the use of master volume. Haven't tried it yet.

exactly the same, the katana 112 although not exactly featherlight is exactly half the weight of my laney vc30 212

ICBM

I have actually wondered if the head with its 5" speaker at 30W might be enough for tiny gigs, especially for an acoustic.

The Fender Acoustasonic 30 is 30W with an 8" speaker, and the old Trace Elliot TA35 is 35W with two 5"s… and both of those are.

Legionreturns

Damn it you should have bought mine!

Happy NAD! 

Grumpyrocker

So after a full weekend with the amp, what do I think? I'm still totally sold on it. Sounds absolutely wonderful. I've been noodling a lot with the crunch channel and a bit of plate reverb. 

Discovered I could use my cheap M-audio expression for volume with no further setup needed. Which is nice. 

After many years of faffing it's really refreshing to use an amp that just sounds great right away. You can use it as a convention amp and never bother with digital fiddling, but when you want to there's 55 high quality Boss effects there if you want them. Amazing stuff.

JayGee

After a couple of months of ownership I can safely say that mine (2x12 combo) is probably the first and only piece of gear I've ever owned to actually match the on-line hype about it and comfortable exceed my own expectations.

I'm still looking for a catch, and beyond slight grumpyiness at the absence of MIDI control on the combos there really doesn't seem to be one!

olafgarten

ICBM said:

I have actually wondered if the head with its 5" speaker at 30W might be enough for tiny gigs, especially for an acoustic.

The Fender Acoustasonic 30 is 30W with an 8" speaker, and the old Trace Elliot TA35 is 35W with two 5"s… and both of those are.

I tried the head in GG, It's good for practice, but the sound doesn't travel very far or spread very wide. It's definitely designed more for someone right in front of it.

Legionreturns

olafgarten said:

ICBM said:

I have actually wondered if the head with its 5" speaker at 30W might be enough for tiny gigs, especially for an acoustic.

The Fender Acoustasonic 30 is 30W with an 8" speaker, and the old Trace Elliot TA35 is 35W with two 5"s… and both of those are.

I tried the head in GG, It's good for practice, but the sound doesn't travel very far or spread very wide. It's definitely designed more for someone right in front of it.

I've got the head now. If you run it on 100w it's roughly the equivalent of a 25w ss amp. I reckon you could get away with it in an emergency

Grumpyrocker

Just ordered myself a GA-FC foot switch with some Amazon vouchers I had hanging around. Didn't want to get it until I'd tried the amp itself. But am now so sure about the amp I'm happy to invest in unlocking more functionality with the pedal. 

CountryDave

LooseMoose said:

A common 'trick' that is emerging from some Katana users (me included, when I had one) is to max out the master volume and then use the other volumes/gain to control to taste - really thickens the sound out.  Funny, as my instinct would almost expect it to work the other way around!

One of the guys working on the Boss stand at the Birmingham show told me the same thing.

Love my 50w Katana.  Mainly use it for in the house on the low setting but have gigged it a few times (mainly where there are flights of stairs involved) and it sounded good.

Voxman

Interesting re raising the master volume. In the original blue Valvetronix amps, the valves were for all intents and purposes placed in the amps power stage NOT preamp stage. By raising the master volume it pushed the valves to give power valve saturation distortion. I wonder if maxing the master volume in the Katana emulates that effect?

Grumpyrocker

So my GA-FC footswitch just arrived and I was really keen to see if it would do something I had been thinking about.

Normally if you move the FX controls on a saved patch this can alter several parameters that you had set in the editor studio. And while these changes weren't saved it meant  you couldn't turn off an effect save, the patch, and be sure you'd get the same settings again by turning the control.

However I'm delighted to discover the GA-FC solves this and works just as I had hoped. So I had this patch on channel 2 using the crunch amp, plus delay and reverb. What I wanted to be able to do is save this patch in the third slot but add a Tubescreamer effect. Then what I wanted to do was use the  footswitch to switch off the effects - the screamer, delay and reverb - and then I would save the patch again.

What I hoped would happen then was that my effects parameters would still be saved even though the effects were toggled off. But I could then switch to the patch with the GA-FC then turn on these saved effects when wanted. And yes, this works.  Without the footswitch one would tend to save the patch with the effects on, but being able to have them saved in the background is just what I wanted.

For example I want to set up a lead tone with the wah pedal (controlled by my M-audio expression pedal). But I'd want to change to this patch with the wah off as default. Now I'll be able to do this. 

Rickyd

CountryDave said:

LooseMoose said:

A common 'trick' that is emerging from some Katana users (me included, when I had one) is to max out the master volume and then use the other volumes/gain to control to taste - really thickens the sound out.  Funny, as my instinct would almost expect it to work the other way around!

One of the guys working on the Boss stand at the Birmingham show told me the same thing.

Love my 50w Katana.  Mainly use it for in the house on the low setting but have gigged it a few times (mainly where there are flights of stairs involved) and it sounded good.

I happened into Guitar Guitar in Epson a couple of weeks ago specifically to look at the Katana 50, and a lovely scouse bloke named Mark Harley was in store demonstrating the range. Really nice bloke and although he had the bigger amps out, when I told him I was after a 50 for indoors he sent someone off to fetch one, plugged it in and gave me 45 minutes of his time. The first thing he said was put the master volume to max. I was originally going to get a Yamaha THR but seeing the reviews for these changed my mind and it's a cracking little amp for not a lot of money. 

Grumpyrocker

Great. Not only does the expression pedal work great for Wah. On patches without wah the pedal automatically becomes a volume pedal, without having to change the input to the dedicated volume pedal input. Boss really has designed this amp very well.

JayGee

Grumpyrocker said:

So my GA-FC footswitch just arrived and I was really keen to see if it would do something I had been thinking about.

Normally if you move the FX controls on a saved patch this can alter several parameters that you had set in the editor studio. And while these changes weren't saved it meant  you couldn't turn off an effect save, the patch, and be sure you'd get the same settings again by turning the control.

However I'm delighted to discover the GA-FC solves this and works just as I had hoped. So I had this patch on channel 2 using the crunch amp, plus delay and reverb. What I wanted to be able to do is save this patch in the third slot but add a Tubescreamer effect. Then what I wanted to do was use the  footswitch to switch off the effects - the screamer, delay and reverb - and then I would save the patch again.

What I hoped would happen then was that my effects parameters would still be saved even though the effects were toggled off. But I could then switch to the patch with the GA-FC then turn on these saved effects when wanted. And yes, this works.  Without the footswitch one would tend to save the patch with the effects on, but being able to have them saved in the background is just what I wanted.

For example I want to set up a lead tone with the wah pedal (controlled by my M-audio expression pedal). But I'd want to change to this patch with the wah off as default. Now I'll be able to do this. 

Yep. Expands the usefulness of four (or five if you include the "Panel" option) enormously.

As you suggest a bit further down the thread, someone who actually plays has *really* thought this stuff through from a usability perspective...

midlifecrisis

ive been playing around with the tone studio software this afternoon, its quite good when you get your head around it, a bit complicated to start with but im doing it without instruction manuel and its making sense. the great thing with this amp is that you can get great sounds without it, ive done about 15 gigs with mine and am only now playing with the software. hoping to get my 4 channels all set up with relevant patches