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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2018 18:27:31 GMT
I just noticed I was getting that Fender Champ 25SE sound using the Katana's acoustic amp setting. I knew 6L6s were clean and this sort of proves it. They really resist breaking up. This all makes sense as, when I researched my Fender Champ, I read a couple of times that people were finding them great as acoustic guitar amps. Now to get more grit and crunch than my Fender will do...without using the Champ's scary OD channel.  |
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Post by MartinB on Apr 2, 2018 18:34:00 GMT
I think there were a couple of different ODs and boosts I liked on it.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2018 18:35:24 GMT
The guy I bought the Bugera from used it for acoustic guitar playing mostly. Must be the 6L6s !
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2018 18:51:03 GMT
Did you ever find any need to use that USB link MartinB? |
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Post by MartinB on Apr 2, 2018 21:42:39 GMT
I changed the signal path and changed what FX were on @defjef
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2018 9:31:35 GMT
Yeah, I might go there and try out a few of the different effects - univibe, rotary and ring mod look interesting but I wouldn't want them as my options all the time!
I'm probably going to be using pedals into this so will probably leave the fx alone unless I'm just pootling around.
Must admit I left it on all evening and couldn't tell it was there until I occasionally picked up my guitar to help add atmosphere to the programmes on the TV.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 8:47:58 GMT
Well then, to sum up:
I know that originally I wasn't sure about it. I couldn't get it close to my Fender Champ 25SE's character but did get quite a good Peavey Classic 30 sound from it. It seemed rather bright and brittle sounding though. Not 'valve' enough. But better than a Blackstar ID Core that I have which hisses like Cleopatra's nemesis. Well with a week of it at home I've had more time to mess with it and realised that it has far more top end than my Champ. Adjusting the treble way down it started to lose that brittleness and got closer to my Fender sound. I soon also discovered that to get really close to the 6L6s on my Fender I needed to use the 'acoustic' amp setting which just goes to reaffirm what they say about 6L6s - they are beautifully clean and resist break up. In the end only the reverb needed fixing by tweaking it in the Tone Studio.
Using these settings as my global sound I then worked my way through the amp styles and liked everything I heard. I found that keeping the Master control on full and using the other Volume knob to control levels worked best for some reason. Some adjustments of volume on the amp or guitar were necessary as the gain styles increased but without too much extra fiddling I found useful sounds in all the amp styles with just a Telecaster and the Katana. I went into the online Tone Studio to set the breakup levels better for my taste and now have an 'edge of breakup sound' that entertained me all last night. PLaying softly or with the volume rolled down to 7 and with gentle tweakings of the Bill Lawrence 5 way wiring settings I could get clean sounds. Attack it harder or up the volume or tone a bit and the grit comes in. Really responsive.
Reverb is now nicer after the Tone Studio adjustment (not Fender nice but nice enough) and the delays and other sounds are useful for practice. Whether I would also find them good for recording is yet to be discovered. I think I'd rather re-amp if I can get my head around it and add the effects later just in case.
But the flexibility of fx use is poor and so I'll be trying pedals into it next. The Boss ME70 should be well matched to it so that is going to be an interesting ride. I also think it's time I put together a favourite pedal board that is easy to transport and swap in instead of my toy box of individual metal boxes and cables. Then I'll be giving the amp a go at a live gig to see if 50 watts of solid state is enough. 25 watts of Fender tube is for our sort of gigs so I'll take the Champ along anyway. I hope it passes the test because my Champ is a slightly hefty, delicate old lady and the Katana's a sprightly, lighter weight box with no glass bottles in it.
Oh, and rather like the Blackstar I hate the logos on the front. I'd rather have nothing - especially when it comes to that Japanese character - but despite taking the front panel screws out I couldn't seem to get the grille off to see how they are attached. I have no idea why those screws are there or how the panel has been secured. Must do some online research. "For sale: vintage Boss and Katana logos. Hardly used. Sensible offers only please."
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Post by salteedog on Apr 5, 2018 12:39:11 GMT
That was a great price on a Katana...really it was a no-brainer price.
Not sure if you have done it (might be too late now anyway) but my first suggestion would have been to do a complete reset on the unit in case the previous owner had messed with global-eq or presecnce anything like that. Probably worth resetting anyway.
Also - if the previous owner had played it frequently then the speaker may have already broken in. Otherwise you will find that the high end brittleness will become less as it breaks in. My initial experience with the Katana was like yours but now I find that if anything I am constantly dialing back the low end on the clean channel. Incidentally the on board panel EQ is very non-Fender like. Highs really need to be set lower on Clean channel than expected.
I agree the effects aren't very tweakable unless you use the tone-studio. Luckily the amp works great without any need to go to the Tone studio at all. 90% of the time I play mine with just the onboard blues driver boost and a bit of plate reverbs. Sometimes some delay as well. If I feel the need for some FX then I hook up to the computer (I can never remember what I've stored in the panel or preset settings!). There is a sneaky amp that give close to Fender cleans but it's not worth the hassle really - I find the JazzChorus voiced clean channel to be just fine. There is humongous EQ capability under the bonnet too (FX EQ, Channel EQ and Global EQ) but again it not really worth the hassle unless you have particular frequencies you want to boost or cut.
One other handy thing about the Katana is that you don't need the computer to save a preset - just hold the button down (car clock radio style) if you find a tone you like.
From reading the Katana facebook group most of the guys who gig with it (including plenty players in Guitar Town itself (Nashville)) use it as a clean pedal platform. Several gig the 50watt sucessfully although it does not suit the cover band crowd because of the footswtich limitations (they prefer the head or the 100w). Jazz or super-clean twang types have trouble getting enough headroom with he 50 if they have a loudish drummers. Anyone playing with crunch or distortion have more than enough volume unless the drummer is insane. I suspect the 50 will be loud enough for you but it depends how clean you need to keep it.
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Post by salteedog on Apr 5, 2018 12:44:30 GMT
BTW - these day my tone of choice is using the Clean channel with gain set pretty low (9:00), onboard blues driver engaged, master volume set very high, amp at 25w setting and control volume using the guitar vol. So not a million miles away from what you have landed on!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 13:15:38 GMT
You lads are having so much fun with that box Im thinking to get one too  I hope you had a good vacation saltee! Im off to Morocco tomorrow and am back next Friday!I hope its not just rain over there at this time! |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 13:19:08 GMT
Thanks for that insight from your end salteedog. Seems we've sort of discovered the same things. I did do that reset thing (I think) when checking what version of software I had before updating. It was very annoying, "Press this whilst holding that but don't hook up yet. Now hook up and press..." no thanks! Yeah it was a booster setting that I was playing on the clean channel last night and it was great. I'd avoided them before setting my own in the Tone Studio because they were all too aggressive but I've set them now. I'm not sure I totally understood the software interface and seemed to undo things sometimes. Particularly couldn't work out if I was setting a preferred volume level for each amp style so that they were all balanced. I tried to but seemed to fail there. I'm guessing it is possible to set two delays, a short and a long at the same time? Probably. Might do that one day. I stick to the panel settings rather than presetting the two channel buttons 'cos, like you I can't remember what I've set and the amp gives no clues! And like you I found that the 25w setting is great at home but I'm looking forward to seeing what 50w does at rehearsal or live. We'll see about that clean headroom. At our last gig we got a lot of praise from a sound engineer for how hifi we had sounded and the reason for that had been not playing too loud. It's a lesson well taken on board. The onboard effects would be better served if they did what Blackstar did on their ID Cores (minus the hiss of course). Here the amp has a separate knob for the amount of effect vs the amount in the mix. So you can have a long or short tail delay, a big or small reverb but choose how present it is in the mix. The Katana just seems to allow one type of tail and then you mix it in. Not great unless you are plugged in to the Tone Studio software. Talking of presence, I noticed there was a knob for that on the software but left it alone because, as we all know, nobody really knows what that means! I'm sure there are a lot more things I could do in the software if the need arose but I'm no fan of that business and don't think I would ever really master it so it became second nature...heck my Boss ME70 still baffles me regularly, once at a sound check! But in another way I'm a huge fan of these software controlled amps because the previous owner never understood it and wanted to get rid of it for peanuts. Hooray for baffling USB hookups.  |
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Post by salteedog on Apr 5, 2018 13:22:04 GMT
Got back from Paris yesterday evening. France has gone crazy with strikes so we were lucky to get out in time - managed to get a lift so we avoided the SNCF chaos and also Air France very kindly were not on strike yesterday!
Enjoy Morocco - it's a country I've never been to that I'd love to visit.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 13:29:15 GMT
Oo-er I did Morocco many years ago as a student. T'was a real eye opener.
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Post by salteedog on Apr 5, 2018 13:30:46 GMT
@defjef You cannot change the volume for each amp style unless you decide to allocate a preset channel to it. eg. Ch1 = Clean, Ch2 = Crunch, Ch3 = Lead etc. The setting of the volume knob is stored with the preset. However the setting of the master volume is not.
One other thing...if you decide to try out the onboard USB recording interface you will most likely find that the recorded level is very low. This can be adjusted in tone studio but even at the max it's still quite low.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 13:34:00 GMT
How silly. Wonder why the level is so low. Very dopey.
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