Boss Katana 50 Mk II : My recommendation for a great inexpensive amplifier that gets loud
Regular readers know that I am a big supporter and recommender of Spark amplifiers from Positive Grid. However, from time to time, I get requests to suggest an amp that costs similar to a Spark 40 but that can get louder and feels like a “real” amp. I’m guessing that means you can feel it pushing air. So I am overdue in doing a deeper review of the amp that I have recommended for some time for guitarists for great sound and low cost, the BOSS Katana 50 Mark II. As is common, I want to acknowledge the team at The Arts Music Store for working to make this deep dive possible. You should check them out, they are a really player oriented guitar shop.
Boss Katana 50 Mark II - What Is It?
The Katana 50 Mark II, that from now on, I will just refer to as Katana is a 50 watt Class A/B solid state amplifier using Digital Signal Processing for amp tone and effects generation. There are 5 different amp sims, each with two tones and five effects blocks, with three options in each. The effects list is extensive and as you would hope are all proven BOSS effects. It comes in a very tough, but pretty lightweight cabinet that includes a custom designed 12” speaker that does in fact push a good amount of air. The amp tone comes from what BOSS calls Dynamic Tube Logic, their name for amplifier simulations. If you have experience with the BOSS IR-200 or BOSS IR-2 where the BOSS names are aligned with the actual amps being simulated that is not found here. There are also no cabinet IRs. The Katana is designed to be perfect for plug and go, with all the important settings via knobs on the top deck. There are different models in the Katana family. The images that I use are from the Katana 50 MkII.
BOSS Katana 50 Mk II top deck
The cabinet of this combo amp is open backed to allow sound out the front and out the rear, not unlike classic combo amps of the past. In the small box that it is, this is a nice feature for creating a larger sound field.
Using the Katana 50 Mark II Directly
The amp is designed to be used directly for players who don’t want to fiddle with computers. The Katana is fully controllable from a laptop over USB, but I will come to that later. The top deck has a simple layout as you can see from the image above. First you choose the amp tone that you want. The options are;
Acoustic - suitable for plugging in a piezo equipped acoustic guitar
Clean - simulates an amplifier that stays clean as you turn it up
Crunch - simulates an amplifier that experiences preamp overdrive as you turn it up
Lead - simulates a high gain amplifer with overdrive moving. into distortion as you turn it up
Brown - simulates the Edward Van Halen “Brown Sound” a thick distorted sound
This is followed by a Gain control and a Volume control, think preamp gain (controlling pre amp overdrive) and then power amp volume. Then we move to the three stage tone stack offering Bass, Mids and Treble controls. These controls have a lot of impact, so some getting used to is required if your prior tone stacks did not seem to have much effect. Then we move into the built in effects controlled by three knobs, two of which are dual controls. The first is Booster / Mod where the knob tip controls the level of boost and the outer ring controls the level of the modulation effect. The second knob controls FX / Delay where the knob tip controls the level of the FX pedal in use and the outer ring controls the level of the delay effect. The third knob controls the level of the reverb effect. Above these knobs are LEDs that glow green, orange or red depending upon which of the three different effect slots for each effect is active. At this point, they don’t mean anything, so we will look further on to see what they mean.
Next we see a Master Volume so you can control the overall loudness of the amp as well as that power control which offers STANDBY, 0.5 watt, 25 watt and 50 watt output options. The 0.5 watt setting is perfect for home practice, the 25 watt and 50 watt settings great for jams and even small gigs. The STANDBY setting allows the amp to run with no speaker output at all. This is an ideal setting for home recording in silence.
Above this set of controls are the tone selects. CH1 and CH2 activate presets and PANEL activates the physical control panel.
Getting Down Into the Works
The BOSS Katana 50 Mk II can be played as it comes, but its real capability requires a computer running either Windows or macOS. For those who may have concerns, the software runs on the latest versions of the OS options, Windows 11 23H2 and macOS Sonoma as of this review. You connect the amp via a USB A to USB B cable to your computer, and run the BOSS Tone Studio application. You must download BOSS Tone Studio from your local BOSS website. BOSS Tone Studio is REQUIRED to get the most from the Katana.
In this example image, we see a top level screenshot of BOSS Tone Studio as it was set for some early test recordings.
Wrap Up
It’s been my practice to recommend this Katana as a terrific starter amp for the player who wants to get a lot for a low cost of entry. Professional player John Cordy wrote an article last year about how he gigged with a Katana and it was completely successful, so don’t assume that a Katana is a dead end. It can get reasonably loud, although if your drummer hits really hard, you might need to send the output to the house PA to be heard at a distance. The Tone Studio software is a must have, and there is a learning curve to it. I do not think that it is hard to learn, but the design follows Boss’ own flows, and some people find them to be less intuitive. I have been told that the Line6 Catalyst is good alternative but as I have never tried one, I can offer no commentary.
At a CAD MAP of $379.99 the Katana Mk II 50 is a real value buy. If you want more output power, the 100w version is CAD MAP $549.99
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