Alright, I am trying this again. Still have a need for a "practice" amp, even though I have been using my Mark 5:25 with headphones lately to great effect. Just need something small/portable/simple that I can bring to the office/sit on the patio with/do a small jam with - a grab-n-go, y'know?
So, I picked up a Boss Katana 50
https://www.boss.info/us/products/katana-50/
It's small and light enough and importantly has a 12" speaker and in theory enough power for a jam, although I have only had it a short time and have not confirmed that yet, probably over the weekend. Also, it was quite inexpensive and I have always had good luck with Boss products.
Initial impressions are:
1. The stock speaker is truly awful. I installed a WGS ET-65 and the improvement was
dramatic.
2. Don't expect anything resembling a usable clean tone and you won't be let down. That's actually been my experience with all modelers, but in this case they are specifically marketing this thing as a "rock" amp and clearly have not put a lot of time into honing the clean tone.
3. It actually gets really,
really loud. It does sound as loud as a 40/50 watt tube amp but the proof is in the jam and we'll see if it disappears when the drums kick in.
4. Build quality is a bit better than I have seen in other brands at a similar price point. I had to remove the chassis to put the new speaker in and was quite surprised that the electronics are fully encased and there is a large aluminum heat sink on the underside that the amp chips are mounted to, kind of like a stereo amp.
5. The "Brown Sound" model is worth the price of admission. They took it from the uber-expensive Waza amp and it delivers. It is the best "feeling" model I have run across in a low-dollar practice amp and reacts very much like a tube amp to changes in the guitar volume knob. Nice!
6. The "crunch" and "lead" amp models, whatever they are based on, are budget amp standard fare. Unlikely I will use them, especially considering how good the "brown" model is, which I will likely simply program 2 versions of (high gain and low gain) into the presets.
7. The onboard effects are hit and miss. The Blues Driver, Analog Delay and Octave are killer. Most everything else, including the reverbs is meh, and the Touch Wah is utterly unusable. Fine by me, I only need 2 good sounds for the average jam.
All-in-all, it's a heck of a nice package for 2 bills. For an extra $70 to put a good speaker in I think I have what I want for a portable/inexpensive amp that I won't worry about.
It's not high-end by any means, but I do have to admit that the state-of-the-art is moving very quickly with modeling amps. The "brown" model is simply a great-sounding guitar amp and I am pretty impressed at this price point.
Does it sound as good as a tube amp? Probably depends more on the tube amp than on the Katana: it's not half as detailed, responsive, dynamic or organic as my Mark 5 (and shouldn't be for a fraction of the price). It's pretty much on par with some tube amps I have played that fall into the $500/$600 range though, and that's kind of impressive. As I said earlier in the thread, I feel certain that one day we'll all be playing modelers in one form or another - this makes me realize the biggest hill to climb is likely glassy-to-greasy clan tones. I have not heard a modeler come close to those yet.
