Boosted crunch channel issue..

skunkwerx

Not a huge issue as I suspect I know the problem.. 

Today I was messing about with my Katana 50 on its 1 watt setting, clean with the only effect in my chain on being the Friday Club fury six. 

When I bought it on a whim, andertons had it described as a high gain pedal, which It aint really, its more of an overdrive. On a clean channel with its gain maxed its hardly distortion territory. Thats how I use most of my drives/distortions, into a clean channel.  

Anyway! I tried using it into a dirtier amp setting and while it sounded great and gainy and more metal, I soon realised I was hearing things that sounded like the amp was overloaded..

Hard to describe but it didnt sound good. A powerchord around the 7th fret would just fart and seemed to me like it was cutting out, amp sounded boomy whilst it happened. 

Individual notes sounded ok ish I think, tbh I didnt mess with it for long! 

I’m guessing the amp couldnt hack its own distortion/gain on the crunch channel + the pedal.. 
I’m guessing thats because its not a tube amp, though I don’t know the science. 

I’ve seen a recent andertons video in which they pushed a gainy katana 100 with a tube screamer and a mjolnir without issue though.. so I wondered.. 

So, is this something that sounds about right? Or am I doing something wrong. 

I’ve heard you can use a drive pedal to push an already gainy amp by setting the pedals gain to really low, and turning the pedals volume up. But I’m not sure what that achieves? Would it not just boost the volume? 

Or have I just gone wrong by having the pedals gain maxed, volume at unity, into a crunchy channel? 

Cheers for any schooling!

smudge_lad

Was it still only on the 1 watt setting? If so I would guess that there’s not enough headroom in the amp at that setting, to deal with the pedal boosting it.

im not totally familiar with the Katana amps and settings etc, but like you’ve said - a lot of people would boost a dirt channel with a pedal volume high and gain lower but there’s not really a set rule. Adjust to taste.

but I suspect it will have a lot to do with running at 1 watt

timmysoft

I use an Overdrive as a crunch booster. I tend to set the pedal for the classic saturation boost, volume max, gain minimum and tone just boosting the highs. I use a liquid sunshine or Keeley phat mod for this although your Fury6 will do it easily too. 

I believebthe F6 is kind of Rat2 based but with more bottom end and slightly less gain.

all you’re really looking to do is push the input stage of your amp as hard as you can, you don’t need gain for that, you just need volume. If you get it balanced right the tone should just have a bit more top end, tighter lows and what I’d describe as “gush” from the gain saturation. It’ll make chugs tighter, pinched harmonics will be easier and more aggressive. The downside is the loss of dynamics and it’ll show up any mistakes! 

ICBM

Digital modelling amps often don’t like pedals being used like that... in fact some valve and many analogue solid state amps don’t either.

Heavy distortion sounds have a wide bandwidth, with more bass and treble than the original guitar signal, and that can overload the amp. Tube Screamers tend to work better because they narrow the bandwidth into the midrange, which is more like an exaggerated version of the guitar’s own frequency response.

You aren’t doing anything wrong by using the pedal as an actual distortion pedal, rather than pushing the amp harder with it - in fact it might be *less* likely to cause trouble - but you’re still probably just giving it an input signal it can’t cope with.

Using the pedal as more of a boost than a distortion is popular - what it achieves is increasing the amp’s own distortion more than using the pedal’s sound - but I’ve never found it useful either...

TheBigDipper

I've been doing a lot of playing around with a GT-100 (stick with me here). I hear people say the Katana shares some technology with that, but don't own one. Does the Katana do some digital modelling in its signal chain? If so, you might like to make sure the analogue signal you're sending into the amp isn't so high that there is too much gain for the AD converter or you're not adding more digital gain before the signal pops back into the analogue world again.  You can't overdrive a digital modeller with a analogue pedal in the pleasing way you can overdrive a valve preamp. Or if you can, I need an explanation of how to do it, because I can't...

skunkwerx

Cheers all. Had a play and it certainly does sound better doinng the classic rolling all the gain off and volume up, but if Im honest I would just use the amps distortion, in my case with the gear I have and the scenario, it just sounds better using amps gain. 

Well it was a fairly impulse buy, and makes for an ok low gain (to me anyway) pedal, but I don’t often use much except all the gain for bedroom use haha.. 

I’m toying with keeping it for crunchy tones though as no doubt its a use for when I learn songs that dont require distortion... but then retail estate... hmmm! 

timmysoft

skunkwerx said:

Cheers all. Had a play and it certainly does sound better doinng the classic rolling all the gain off and volume up, but if Im honest I would just use the amps distortion, in my case with the gear I have and the scenario, it just sounds better using amps gain. 

Well it was a fairly impulse buy, and makes for an ok low gain (to me anyway) pedal, but I don’t often use much except all the gain for bedroom use haha.. 

I’m toying with keeping it for crunchy tones though as no doubt its a use for when I learn songs that dont require distortion... but then retail estate... hmmm! 

I find that keeping the amps gain down a bit lower and then boosting it, gives a much heavier and clearer tone, especially at band volumes. It also tends to cut through better