New Amp Day: Boss Katana MK II 50

[tdq]

I play mostly acoustic these days - mostly jamming, a gig now and then, but from time to time I do go to electric jams and my little Fishman Mini just doesn't cut it. When I saw the Katana MK II had an acoustic setting I was intrigued - I don't use the mic channel at all on the Fishman so thought this might be an option. Did a bunch of youtubing/googling (couldn't try one for real) and decided to bite the bullet.
I'm actually quite pleased with the acoustic sound, and as I like a clean electric sound I'm finding the acoustic channel is working well for my electric too, as a base. It has a "tone-studio" with lots of effects to tweak but I want to avoid that rabbit hole and to find two or three base settings - one for acoustic, one for electric blues and one for clean jazz, with a pedal or two coming from the guitar so I don't have to fiddle at the amp.
Early days but I'm pleased, so far.

[raysachs]

Originally Posted by tdq

It has a "tone-studio" with lots of effects to tweak but I want to avoid that rabbit hole and to find two or three base settings - one for acoustic, one for electric blues and one for clean jazz, with a pedal or two coming from the guitar so I don't have to fiddle at the amp.

They’re good little amps. I had one but never tried the acoustic setting - glad you like it.

I’d say if you just want two or three base settings, get to know the in-amp settings a little bit, whether you want to mess with the computer or not. You can ”save” four groups of settings and easily recall them on the fly, including with the full compliment of built in Boss effect pedals. Figure out your few groups of settings, assign each to one of the buttons on the amp, and you shouldn’t need to run any physical pedals between your guitar and amp. The only reason I ever used pedals in front of that amp was if I wanted to use a looper and wanted the looper at the end of the effects chain. You can’t do that with just the amp because there’s no effects loop to get the looper after the onboard effects (the Katana 100 has that feature). But if your not running a looper, it won’t take long to figure out the in-amp pedals, set up one “bank” (I think they call them banks) for acoustic, one for clean jazz, and one for electric blues, and call each up when you need to with the touch of a button. Then you can just carry the amp and your guitar(s) around, and no pedals… You should be able to get it there without ever hooking your amp to a computer, but you’d have WAY more choice of effects if you do. It’s not something you’d need to do except up front - once you get the three sets of settings and assign each to a button, you’d never have to mess with it again (unless you wanted to change settings later).

Enjoy!

-Ray

[capefisherman]

I bought a Katana 50 a couple years ago for use with my rarely used electric and was very pleasantly surprised how good it sounded with my acoustics w/K&K's. However - NOT the "acoustic" channel, which is muddy sounding. I use the "clean" setting and it sounds every bit as good as quite a few acoustic amps I've owned over the years. Just be aware that this amp has a lot of pre-set gain as most amps designed for electric guitar do, so feedback is always lurking if you're not careful, especially with bass-heavy dreadnoughts. But at the price point and with pretty decent reverb this is an excellent value.

[tdq]

raysachs - I'm comfortable using the computer/daw so I'd pretty much going to use it as you suggested. The only pedals I'll probably use is a boost and my tremelo as I'd like to use them without reaching back to the amp mid-song.

capefisherman - Like you mention, I had read in a couple of places that the clean channel was prefered over the acoustic but for me that isn't the case. At least so far - haven't given it a "real world" run yet! Also I rarely strum, I'm more of a fingerstyle or flatpicker. Maybe that makes a difference? As always, everyone (and guitar) is different.