Boss Katana combo ........which one 50 or 100 ???

professorben

fretmeister said:

Why they make the 50 without an fx loop is beyond me.

Stupid decision.

I dunno, it's prob aimed not so much at the gigging Guitarist, I suppose it's built to a price point rather than a spec, and if it's £85 to get 100w, 4 presets and a loop, most guys would pay the extra for it, where as anyone who simply doesn't need those features has a cheaper amp. 

fretmeister

Yeah - but if it IS loud enough to gig, then it should have one.

andyoz

fretmeister said:

Why they make the 50 without an fx loop is beyond me.

Stupid decision.

Marketing Dept told them too...

gubble

I tried the 100 watt 2x12 combo yesterday.

Was very impressed especially with the clean channel. It had a great tone and as you wound up the gain it broke up really nicely.

Also had that low end thump from a big amp which is often missing from modelling amps.

The store was out of stock on the 50 Watts which is what I'm planning to get as my home use amp.

ICBM

It will be because the manufacturing cost difference between the 50W and 100W verisons would otherwise be too small for it to be worth making the 50, since it would sell for almost the same as the 100… so they deliberately 'cripple' the cheaper model's features so they can charge more for the more expensive one.

Cynical, but it happens all the time - another good example is the Marshall DSL401 and 201 - they're identical except for the 201's slightly smaller transformers (cost difference about a tenner, to Marshall) and two less power valves and sockets (ditto) - so in order to make the difference bigger, they left off the second channel switch button on the 201 - even though the boards are identical, and support both - and fitted it with a really crap speaker. Even at that the price difference was small enough that most people bought the 401.

When I was about eight a boy at school had one of the first Rockwell pocket calculators - the cheaper model, without the memory function, although it still cost something like £99 in 1975! (His parents were rich.) The memory version was something like £149, and had some extra buttons. One day he dropped it and the front panel sprang off - under the blank part of the panel where the memory version had the buttons were… the extra switches! When he tried it they worked just fine, so he drilled holes in the panel so he could press them with a pencil. Instant £50 upgrade.

EricTheWeary

I'm not particularly convinced about how useful an fx loop is on a lower priced 1x12 combo - how many people it is aimed at would use it anyway and for small gigs the difference is usually pretty negligible, the extra hassle of running 4cm in a small space probably more of a concern than the sonic benefits ( I know some people say it isn't but those people don't play the tiny pubs I play!). Having said that if it is  on the 100 combo the savings of not including it on the 50 must be pretty tiny so I suspect it's more what ICBM is saying. 

GrahamG

EricTheWeary.you have just described my gigging life ,& the reason i chose the 50 over the 100.
To date i've only used the K50 at practice,but it seems like it's going to do the Job with our 3 piece G,B D, band with the Pub rock we play,another reason i opted for the K50,was the smaller cabinet size,(tight Pub gigs with no band space worth talking about a lot of the time)but the biggest plus for me with the K50,i have used Dual amps for years,which makes the smaller cab size important & for the cost of a K100 & GA FC,i can buy 2 K50's,which will sound way better than a single K100,to me

midlifecrisis

quite fancy a small lightwight giggable amp. i have a laney vc30212 and a cub 12 both have effects loops but ive never bothered with them so the katana 50 looks suitable, just need confirmation it is loud enough for small pubs, i dont mic up.  il wait until they hit the 2nd hand market.

Spikeedog

@GrahamG you play pub gigs through 2 Boss Katana 50s? Tell me more!

IanH

@Spikeedog, start reading https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/boss-katana-amplifiers.1744135/

Spikeedog

OK been through 6 of the 223 page.. Any idea what the but about using 2 K50s is?

Spikeedog

Where the bit!

monquixote

The most interesting thing I learned from the TGP thread was that the 50w has a lower quality speaker. 

I'll definitely be getting the 100w if I get one.

GrahamG

In response to Spikeedog,i may not have been clear in my post,i currently have one K50,which i have only used at a couple of practice sessions & a third today,but if i'm happy after i've used the K50 at a gig,i will buy a second for a Dual amp set-up.
The point i was making was that,although on the Katana threads i'm following the majority of posts are saying the K100 is the better buy(more of everything)for my gigging i don't need or use the majority of the features,plus to access the 4 channels etc,the GA-FC is required,which means that for the cost of the K100/GA-FC,i can buy 2 K50's to make a Dual Amp set-up & from my past experience 2 x K50,will give me a far better sound than a single K100(just my opinion),with more flexibility.
In response to monquixote,obviously the K50 speaker magnet is smaller than the K100,but that dosen't  have to mean it's lower quality just less power handling .

Spikeedog

@GrahamG nice. Anyone know which speakers are in the 50 and the 100. I'm trying one out next week. Oh and the guy that fixes my amps - a real old stager - says I should check if you can get spares for these amps coz some of the other modern SS/ digital modeller type Amps, he can't so he can't repair them!

ICBM

GrahamG said:

In response to monquixote,obviously the K50 speaker magnet is smaller than the K100,but that dosen't  have to mean it's lower quality just less power handling .

Not really - lower sensitivity and usually less bass response. Those things are much more related to the magnet size than power rating is - which is more a function of the voice coil. (Magnet type and general construction being the same, of course.)

Not necessarily better or worse, some people prefer the more midrangy/lower-sensitivity sound of a smaller-magnet speaker, eg a Greenback compared to a G12H-30. But the 25W Greenback has a much larger magnet than the 50W Rocket 50... which is also a terrible, weak and tinny-sounding speaker.

ICBM

Spikeedog said:

@GrahamG nice. Anyone know which speakers are in the 50 and the 100. I'm trying one out next week. Oh and the guy that fixes my amps - a real old stager - says I should check if you can get spares for these amps coz some of the other modern SS/ digital modeller type Amps, he can't so he can't repair them!

This is actually going to become a serious issue for all repairers, not just old stagers… there are a lot of modern digital pedals and amps which can't be repaired economically, if at all - not only are the surface-mount chips difficult to replace (although feasible, with the right tools and skills), some of them are literally unobtainable once the production run has ended and the surplus stock has been used up.

Quite a lot of modern repair work is modular - ie you replace a whole circuit board or sub-assembly rather than a failed component. That's fine - and makes the repair easy, if a bit more expensive - until the factory runs out of replacement boards, then you're totally stuffed. This has already happened with even some basic analogue circuitry - for example there's a series of Yamaha acoustic guitar preamps which Yamaha have run out of boards for. These are simply unrepairable and have to be replaced with something different.

Travisthedog

Yep I'm getting the 2x12 100w - I've been agonising over a back up - the sone sounded better than the blackstar and the marshall equivalent by some margin

ChrisMusic

ICBM said:

Spikeedog said:

... Oh and the guy that fixes my amps - a real old stager - says I should check if you can get spares for these amps coz some of the other modern SS/ digital modeller type Amps, he can't so he can't repair them!

This is actually going to become a serious issue for all repairers, not just old stagers… there are a lot of modern digital pedals and amps which can't be repaired economically, if at all - not only are the surface-mount chips difficult to replace (although feasible, with the right tools and skills), some of them are literally unobtainable once the production run has ended and the surplus stock has been used up.

Quite a lot of modern repair work is modular - ie you replace a whole circuit board or sub-assembly rather than a failed component. That's fine - and makes the repair easy, if a bit more expensive - until the factory runs out of replacement boards, then you're totally stuffed. This has already happened with even some basic analogue circuitry - for example there's a series of Yamaha acoustic guitar preamps which Yamaha have run out of boards for. These are simply unrepairable and have to be replaced with something different.

In response to @ICBM 's point about built in obsolescence by the design and manufacturing process, although not really part of this thread about the Katana, so bear with me:

The same redundancy is rife with all new technology, and while it's advances pave the way to new sounds, new opportunities, reduced costs, etc, there are serious issues about future access and repairability.

For instance, recording technology, mostly proprietary, the digital formats have changed often since the early DAT and other video based technologies.  There is the issue in trying to gain access to any session, or even finished product recorded over the last few decades.  Is the medium still intact, is the medium still playable, i.e. video formats look at an old VHS recording and at the potential issues of tracking due to tape stretch, cassette warping etc, can you find a machine to even play it back on?

What about the redundancy of software formats ?  Do you have access to the original, proprietary, software ?  Do you have access to a machine to run it on ?  Can you plug in any other necessary hardware, and are the drivers functional ?  Is there a risk of damage having already occurred to the data files, and if so, are they in a format which is potentially resurrectable ?  Is the company still in business, and if so are they prepared to support an archaic format ?  What about the impact of access to protection, effectively product kill strategies, like the infernal lost dongle, access to internet based services and authorisation codes to run software or plug ins ?

There are cases of reissued compilation albums, where despite finding several of the old machines, the original tapes would not play, and the final reissue of one track track was taken from a vinyl album playback, not the digital masters !

The price we pay for the steady march of technology at prices we are prepared to pay, is the complete lack of 'future proofing' that previous generations largely took for granted.  And even there the access to valves and transformers, etc, is becoming an issue for the future, as has been talked about in previous threads on this very forum.

The same issues face the photographic community, and anyone with an interest in archival.  A digital object, whether image or sound file, or text, is more ephemeral than it has ever been.  Once gone there is often no sign that it ever existed.

In fact I think this is valuable enough as a topic for contemplation that it may be worth posting as a separate thread on here...
and done...
http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/95238/future-proofing-our-intellectual-property#latest

usedtobe

Well that's cheered me right up!