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.
Comments
@LooseMoose I've read that about the use of master volume. Haven't tried it yet.
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!
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.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Happy NAD!
My Trading Feedback | You Bring The Band
Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after youDiscovered 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.
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!
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.
My Trading Feedback | You Bring The Band
Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after youOne 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.
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.
As you suggest a bit further down the thread, someone who actually plays has *really* thought this stuff through from a usability perspective...