NAD - Katana Artist has arrived!

Tenebrous

So you may or may not remember that, a while back, I posted a thread asking for help (re)building a setup that could do everything: great home sounds, recording, capable of being taken out and about, all that jazz. A lot of people recommended the Katana would cover pretty much all of that, but I was skeptical, honestly...

... But after doing a few more months of research, & most importantly, finding a good deal on a second hand one, I decided sod it, I'll give it a bash Worst case scenario, I don't like it, but I'll recoup most if not all of the money I invested. If I do like it, I can invest in a footswitch & happy keep it around.

What am I expecting? Something in-between. I don't think it'll fully quench my thirst for effects, and being limited to just one clean sound will probably be an issue at some point, but given that I wanted a setup for all applications, perhaps this will be the best solution: Keep the Katana for when I'm playing out and about, and then invest in something different down the line for home use & recording.

Honestly, it's probably a good thing I'm going into this with cautious optimism. Whatever happens, I'll be sure to give it the best try I can, & I'll keep you updated with my thoughts.

Anyone have some tips/tricks I should know in advance? I mostly play clean, & the only real dirty sound I like is full-on Muff style fuzz, so I guess I'll be dipping straight into the editor, haha.

Cheers

NelsonP

Congrats. 

I very nearly bought a Katana 100W head for exactly the same reasons. Will definitely be interested to hear on your progress.

Tenebrous

I'll keep you informed as I go along, but here's my initial impressions an hour in.

Build quality is unsurprisingly great, with the knobs & switches/buttons all having a real good feel to them. Aesthetically, it's not what I'd consider a good looking amp, but it's better in person than I expected it to be.

Tone wise, it cleans up really nicely, the EQ is very impactful, and the built in reverb tones sound great. Cleans sound very good (& will likely sound better when I delve into the editor to add some compression), & the crunch tones are good too, although I'm not yet in a place where I'd consider the latter something I'd be happy with indefinitely. There's definitely going to be some tweaking there, be it with the on board EQ, or with tweaking the software & trying different drive pedals in front of it.

So overall first impressions are positive, but nothing mindblowing as of yet.

Obligatory low quality picture:

dazzajl

You’re trying to show us your new amp and I’m totally lost, lusting after your Trouble Maker 

p90fool

I bit of very mild overdrive from the effects block brings the crunch channel to life in a way it never does on its own. 

Tenebrous

p90fool said:

I bit of very mild overdrive from the effects block brings the crunch channel to life in a way it never does on its own. 

Finding the same myself. Adding the D-Comp with high attack, neutral tone, and light sustain/level bumps makes both the clean & crunch sound better to my ears, and then the tubescreamer model with increased bottom end (as my master EQ is set with less bass) really does sound good through the crunch model.

The muff is obviously my favourite so far though Trying to get three usable & varied sounds in every slot before unplugging it & hopefully not plugging it back in for a while.

Tenebrous

dazzajl said:

You’re trying to show us your new amp and I’m totally lost, lusting after your Trouble Maker 

The pair of them go together like cucumber & egg (and I mean that in a good way - cucumber & egg sandwiches are amazing).

So I've had a few more hours with it, & spent some more time finding sounds I like. With the tele & the right crunch channel/presence/cab settings, it really nails the "Ball & Biscuit" kinda tone, so much so that I ended up jamming on it non-stop for a good 30 minutes, manually turning the knob to add the Muff Not the most eloquent solution, but hey, the amp really showed me something.

Also loving how simple it is to use once you've got your preset sounds built in. Have a spring/hall/plate reverb which I use with varying degrees of stupidity, tape/analog/SE delays which are of course dialed to the BPM of "Where The Streets Have No Name", despite me hating U2. Acoustic sim/Rotary/T-Wah for effects (sadly the T-Wah isn't the best with the tele, despite me trying a lot to make it work), Muff/TS/RAT for drives, and yeah... T-wah aside, I'm happy with a lot of the built in effects. Not sure I'll get much use out of the RAT, though.

Colour me impressed. A few more days like this, and consider me converted, with a footswitch (and probably a Helix FX to compliment) on the way.

Tenebrous

Picked up a footswitch from a local seller so now the amp owes me £400

I've nothing really more to add except that I'm convinced the inbuilt core tones have enough tweakability in them to satisfy my needs, but there's not enough effects (especially far-out crazy ones) to keep me entirely content on owning just this. Another device, likely a multi FX unit of some kind, feels inevitable, but that's not to say this isn't a very good sounding amp, or that the inbuilt effects are bad (hell, the inbuilt fuzz & delays sounds pretty damn good to me, and that's quite a big portion of what I use).

Yet to record with it yet, but I'll probably try do something with it tonight, see how the different settings react when plugged into Cubase.

Overall, I continue to be happy with it, and if I weren't into the weird & wonderful, I'd be content with it & it alone. But being a tweaker, I just need more