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David Martin wrote:... you can carefully tailor the sound of each channel to replicate the Hank sound you want.

Does that mean you could also recreate the sounds of Duane Eddy, Bert Weedon, Les Paul, George Harrison, Eric Clapton etc? Or, to put it another way, is the Katana the ultimate do-it-all amp?

Yes you can, and yes it is. (But you need to learn, in order to get the best out of it....)

This falls in line with my view that as well as learning to play your guitar, you need to learn to 'play' your amplifier!

I've just "Bit the Bullet" and ordered a Boss Katana Head Amp and am awaiting delivery.Can any Katana owner give me any advice re getting a reasonable Hank / Shadows sound? I would be very grateful. Sure, I will experiment once I receive the unit, but help from those more experienced than me might speed up the process.
Many thanks in advance!
Dave

Have the amp, your computer, and music source within easy reach.

Decide which Shadows tone you want to emulate and play the track over and over while you're finding and loading the Tone Studio and drivers - try an easy tone like Shane to start with..

Connect everything up, then using the on-screen controls select the Clean voice, use relatively little gain, over half volume, and play with the screen tone knob settings to get as close as you can, by comparing your tone with the record.

(Bear in mind that the speakers in the head are small, so it will sound different through a cab.)

Now, rummage around in Tone Studio to find the Speaker settings, which have a subtle effect, and the graphic and parametric eqs. Be quite ruthless with the eq and slice everything above 5k off and use the vintage speaker drive setting. How does that sound in comparison to the track?

Too much or too little of something? Adjust the eq accordingly. Don't be frightened to be radical... (You might, however, want to save your sound after each adjustment so you can return to it.)

Now switch in your external echo unit. Does it alter the tone? If so, tweak the eq.

Listen to the track again and compare. Does it have a touch of additional reverb? Find those and experiment. Is there a little compression? Find that and add it. A touch more gain for a slightly "pushed" sound a la FBI ?

Experimentation, particularly with the graphic eq , is the key to really nailing all this... and it all takes a while to learn your way around.

Dont forget to save your work and backup your settings to the computer.

OR

You can just twiddle the knobs and buttons on the amp if you like...

Hi David. Many many thanks for your reply. That all makes good sense to me. My unit will arrive tomorrow (Wednesday) and I can’t wait to start “Tweaking” I have 1 x 12 cabinet with a Jensen P12NB speaker.
Dave

I’ve had my Katana Head Amp for a week now. Phew! Quite a learning curve! The amp is truly amazing - as is the Tone Studio.
I like the Sneaky Amps download too!
I also bought the GA-FC foot switch and although expensive it’s a very useful tool. Nicely made too!
My only regret is that I didn’t buy the amp sooner!
Dave

Gruntfuttock wrote:I’ve had my Katana Head Amp for a week now. Phew! Quite a learning curve! The amp is truly amazing - as is the Tone Studio.
I like the Sneaky Amps download too!
I also bought the GA-FC foot switch and although expensive it’s a very useful tool. Nicely made too!
My only regret is that I didn’t buy the amp sooner!
Dave

Pleased to hear that you are enjoying it!



D

I brought the Katana in and rigged it up with the computer today - absolutely great !

I wish I’d looked into it sooner but the amp worked as I wanted it to out of the box, so I just made the adjustments and plugged in my Vox Tonelab and later, my Helix. I do have the foot controller for the Katana and with that I can set up eight different sounds and recall them at the touch of a button, but I need to use my foot volume pedal with it to do the swell thing.
With the Helix, I use a clean sound on the amp and all my changes are from the Helix, which has two different echo units set up on it, the Meazzi and The Binson. I have programmed it to allow foot-switchable heads on and off, four of them, along with other buttons set up as ‘Tone Bender’, ‘Tremolo’, ‘Chorus’ , ‘Octave’ , ‘Reverb’ and Compressor. At the touch of a footswitch I’m able to dial in whichever echo pattern I need - or not, then add any of those others to mix with the overall sound and it works for me as there’s an expression pedal built in.

Getting back to the Katana and extra programming from the computer, I’m looking at setting up an external Tone Bender and Volume pedal, so that I can do a show with the eight choices that can be stored on the Katana pedal. That would make the Helix redundant, but whether or not it is doable remains to be seen, as I also need an acoustic option too. With the amount of stuff I need to cover, there is only room for one Shadows patch, so maybe the Hall & Collins may come into play at some point. I started this today so it’s all new
As always, I am having tremendous fun doing this, which is what it’s all about.

my setup for the last year or so now has been the katana with a Zoom G3x. This gives me all the options i possibly need with the volume pedal and the echo patches etc on the G3x and i love it. Never had a problem with it and an endless supply of sounds with nice lightweight package.