Katana 100 Gen 3

Folks and clients know that my generally recommended amplifier to deliver great versatility at a low cost of entry has been the Katana family for some time. With the recent release and wide availability of the new Gen 3 versions I wanted to learn what was new and to share this with all of you.

BOSS was very clear that there are such significant advances in the current Katana line that they would not call it a Mark III, that they determined sounded like an incremental release and instead chose Gen 3 to indicate a generational change. Being as suspicious or at least cautious of marketing statements, I wanted to better understand what is significant.

This analysis and review would not have been possible without the support of Fraser and the team at The Arts Music Store in Newmarket Ontario. It is a great store and they have both a fabulous physical store as well as an easy to use online store. The shop ships Canada wide. It’s worth your time to have a look.

Katana Gen 3

When I picked up the unit that Fraser had arranged for me, I had chosen the 100 watt version, despite my prior experiences having been mostly with the 50 watt combo or the Katana Air that vanished somewhere into the realm of my daughter. I wanted to get a good sense of how loud it could get, thinking in terms of one amplifier to suit use at home where other people may not appreciate the sound but extensible to playing a gig in a small club or bar.

We may be accustomed to the volume generated by an old Class AB tube amp. I wanted to find out if I could get similar volume levels out of the Reactive Class AB amp in the Katana Gen 3

The combo is space conscious, not too heavy and the controls are top mounted and fairly readable, eyesight depending. The knobs are spaced far enough apart that my sausage fingers can manipulate one without also changing two others. Too often, compact becomes unusable if you have large hands or fingers. Not so here.

The unit I received has a single 12” speaker. There is a 2 x 12 version that I would have preferred but one was not available for the review period. Please understand that is a personal choice as I found nothing at all lacking in the 1 x 12 unit and it is of course smaller and lighter.

Specifications

I have screen captured the specifications directly from Boss’ site to save on typing and to avoid errors on my part. Please note that these specifications are SPECIFIC to the Katana 100 Gen 3.

Differentiation

I do not have an older Katana to compare with, so looking down at the controls, I noticed a new sound preset called PUSHED. One of the new things to me is the number of different iterations exist in the Gen 3 family. The differences come down to fewer features drive a lower price point. Other reviewers have criticized this decision saying that anyone will really want the higher end models and it creates a sense of exclusion. I don’t buy into this. There’s no such thing as a free lunch and it’s not unreasonable to get what you pay for. Want more, pay more is not uncommon.

BOSS notes that the significant changes include the PUSHED channel as well as what they call an improvement to the tone of the BROWN channel. Aural memory is notoriously unreliable and as I never used the BROWN setting on the Mark II, I can offer no comment on the new iteration.

If you purchase the Head, the Artist or the Artist Head, you get another button called BLOOM that provides a different circuit path, providing a different sound for each amp preset. This is not on the Katana 100 Gen 3 so it was not tested.

BOSS has changed the USB connection to USB-C over the older USB-A which is nice, but does not include a USB-C cable, so be prepared to buy one to connect the amp to your computer, and if you hope to actually leverage the functionality of the amp you WILL want to be able to connect the amp to your computer, because you just cannot get to everything through the top panel.

If you choose any model from the Katana 50-EX on up, there is a solo boost button

If you choose any model from the Katana 100 on up there is a cabinet resonance selector and an EQ Contour selector.

If you choose one of the Artist models, you get a balanced XLR out with the new AIR Feel sound.

If I’m honest, while I understand creating different price points, I think that all these choices make selection tougher. Too many models creates option paralysis and could send a buyer into the Line6 Catalyst family because the choices are simpler. And as others have said, there is the risk of the buyer feeling nickel and dimed for features. That said, the Katana allows more than two effects concurrently and controllable from the top panel, which to me is a serious advantage.

Getting to All the Features

To get to all the capabilities of the Katana Gen 3 amps, you will need to download BOSS Tone Studio Gen 3 to your computer and connect the computer to the amp via USB cable. BOSS says that the UI on Tone Studio has been improved, but I really do not see much of a difference. Tone Studio is a MUST USE in my opinion, and while complex, it is usable with some practice and is the only way to set which effects correspond to the LED based selectors that offer green, amber and red selections in addition to off.

Changing the order of effects is improved to be drag and drop, a very positive improvement and for those who spend time geeking, you can upload JPEGs to replace the default pedal icons in Tone Studio. Given that the effects are all BOSS effects, I would have hoped that the company would have used representations of their own physical pedals, but they did not.

BOSS also features their BOSS Tone Exchange where users can create an account and upload their own presets for sharing in the Tone Exchange Community.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the amp a lot, but having to use Tone Studio to make any changes of significance and having to physically couple via cable to do so seems antiquated in the face of what the people at Positive Grid have done. At least however, BOSS’s solution works on a laptop screen that is large enough to read. Positive Grid could learn from that.

Connectivity

BOSS has taken a fair number of smacks to the head for making Bluetooth connectivity require the purchase of an accessory Bluetooth dongle. Count me in on whacking this idiot decision with a shovel. Bluetooth chipsets are cheap. Like under $5 cheap, and making customers spend $70 for bluetooth that is already available and built in to just about everything is both egregious and customer gouging.

If you do spend the money, you can then connect to the Katana using a download for iOS for iPads and iPhones and for Android called BTS. I will say that the UI on these platforms is really lame, and does not compare favourably to other bluetooth based UIs such as those in the Spark family. It looks old and half baked.

Practical Use

The Katana 100 can be really plug in and go. You choose the amp type, toggle the effects on and off, change the settings and away you are. The power output control lets you keep the overall volume down without compromising the tone to bedroom practice levels or let it rip for jams with an aggressive drummer or gigs. And yes, it can be loud enough to gig with.

Unlike a lot of these kinds of devices, the defaults don’t have all the effects set to CRINGE so you can be playing without having to throw up which is really nice. I do like the PUSHED channel a lot, particularly with single coils, and find myself using it a lot and using the volume controls on the guitar to control the level of PUSH. This is easier with low output pickups as expected, but still very usable.

The effects come from BOSS and sound quite decent. They’re never going to approach boutique or appeal to the cork sniffers out there, but for most people, particularly those on a normal budget, there is a lot of stuff here for the money, including some effects that you cannot get in a pedal anymore like my old favourite the Slo-Gear.

I have looked at similar amps from other vendors and one of the greatest advantages that BOSS brings is not just the sixty plus effects built in that sound pretty good, but that you can have more than two active at the same time, and that there are physical knobs on the amp that you can use to adjust one variable for each effect. I understand that other options have lots of good effects, but if I can only load a maximum of two and control them on the amp, I have to ask what the point is of those things. If you are looking at an amp like this, pay CLOSE attention to this part. All the effects in the world are pointless if you cannot use more than two of them together.

While the Katana 100 has a power amp in jack so you can bypass the entire front end of the Katana, for use with an external device, I ask who will be doing this, spending a lot of money on a dedicated modeller and then on an amplifier that is designed from the ground up to be self-contained.

There is an effects loop and I like that and candidly expect one on any modern amp.

There is a footswitch jack and the Katana 50-EX and up models can use either of the optional GA-FC and GA-FC EX foot controllers. There is also a jack for an optional Expression pedal, which you will need if you activate one of the built in Wah effects.

There is a line out, a headphone jack as well as the ability to use the USB-C connection as an out which includes an IR component. I find it very convenient when practicing or composing being able to plug the Katana directly into a MacBook and then into Logic Pro for recording. It’s easy and works a charm.

Another function that appeals to me is the Stereo Expand function that allows you to connect a second Katana and have it work as part of a stereo pair. I don’t know how many players will use this, but as I do stereo and wet / dry / stereo rigs, I like the idea.

Example Sounds

All the examples were recorded using my MIJ Charvel San Dimas into the Katana 100 directly. I used the USB-C out to connect the amplifier directly to an older MacBook Pro running Logic Pro. I created four simple presets on the B side for the examples. Clean, Push, Lead and Brown. Then using the Panel settings I made choices for use with an acoustic guitar having a piezo pickup, in this case my Martin SC-13E. I am including images of Tone Studio below the example clip that combines all five.

I did have an issue with recording via USB C direct to the MacBook Pro. The first issue that I ran into was that my long USB-C data cable would not let BOSS Tone Studio even see the Katana Gen 3 so I had to switch to a shorter five foot cable. I replaced that with a USB 2.0 extension with a repeater function from the laptop and used a short USB to USB C cable into the Katana. That worked a charm and as I think many players will want a live connection to Tone Studio, it is a good solution if your computer is older and does not have USB-C ports. Also, a lot of USB-C cables call themselves data cables but are only factually usable for charging which is a major annoyance. The moral? Watch for crap cables.

Page 16 of the reference manual says that the Master Volume knob controls the output of the bluetooth connection, audio in via bluetooth and the volume out via USB. While I had updated the amp to the latest firmware when I got it (I had to do so, Tone Studio would not connect if I did not), turning the Master Volume knob did nothing for the level of the USB output. The USB does send even in Standby mode, as it should for recording fortunately. I reached out to support via the Roland service page and got a very rapid response that to control the level of the USB signal to the DAW, only the Volume and Gain controls have impact as well as some guidance that the Volume needs to be run up to about eight to get a decent level in Logic Pro. Increasing the volume knob level had a minor effect on the USB out level to the DAW, but it was, in my opinion insufficient. In practical terms you need to bring the Gain up as well and that may not suit your preset. I found this to be an issue with recording the Clean present and particularly with the acoustic preset.

Which brings me to the acoustic recording. Based on the guidance from Support I had the Volume at 3 o’clock on the amp and that still only barely hit -18 on the meters in Logic Pro. Live it sounded decent, not dissimilar to a BOSS Acoustic amplifier and close to a Fishman Loudbox, but not near my reference standard the AER Compact 60. Piezos all tend to be rather brittle, and I do not blame BOSS for the crappy sound from piezo pickups. In order to get a decent level on the input, I had to raise the Gain from 9 o’clock to 3 o’clock which introduced some really unpleasant distortion. So while I think that the Katana 100 Gen 3 is suitable for use with an acoustic guitar with a piezo pickup in a live situation, I cannot recommend trying to record using the Acoustic option via USB. I had to add a Logic Pro Gain plugin of 14db to make the track even usable but that raises the noise floor. I also added an Avalon VT-737 channel strip to improve the EQ.

Each preset was recorded to its own track in Logic Pro on the MacBook Pro. I copied the AIFF files to a NAS so I could edit and mix them on a different computer in Logic Pro that has a much larger display. Each preset got its own track again. After trimming the front and ends of each track, I placed a Universal Audio LA-6176 on each track and adjusted it to what I think sounded optimal. Once this was done, I was very pleased with what I could get just going direct to the Katana and then to the computer for recording, except as noted with the acoustic track. I think it sounds great and getting these done was simple. Simple is a good thing. In the final mix down, I used a Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, using my own Mastering preset. While some will believe that this work changes the nature of the sound of the amp, I believe that getting the best out of gear is a pretty obvious thing to do. You should do whatever works best for you.

Wrapping Up

I really liked the amp. I will continue to recommend the Katana as a great all around amplifier for anyone who wants to play at home quietly and use the same amp for jams and gigs. At 32 pounds, it’s not super heavy, but is pushing the idea of grab and go a bit. The versatility is excellent as it has been consistently. I take marks away for the bluetooth idiocy. I also find it disappointing that buyers who want a foot controller don’t even get a basic one in the box. That feels cheap on the part of BOSS to me, and let’s be blunt, the parts costs of a basic foot controller is going to cost a company like BOSS nearly nothing. Tone Studio is very good once you get over its learning curve and the UI looks pretty modern. The mobile app does not look good and only works if you pay the penalty price to get the bluetooth adapter. Finally, if you will go direct to the computer DAW via USB, expect the input levels to be too low unless you crank both the Volume and the Gain on the amp. In a perfect world, the amp would have an independent USB level control.

If you gig with a Katana, and there is no good reason not to do so, you will definitely want to have the GA-FC EX foot controller. It’s just too much of a pain to have to go fiddle with the amp to change settings between songs, and definitely a non-starter within a song, particularly given how flexible this amp is. At $200 CAD MAP, that’s a bit steep in my opinion, but it does more than just channel switching so you may find it completely worthwhile. If I were buying a Katana 100 Gen 3 or model up, I would definitely be saving to get the GA-FC EX with the amp. I would forego the bluetooth option myself, but that has everything to do with my own eyesight on small screens and the rather poor looking UI.

Given the price difference between the 50 watt versions and the 100 watt version, you might ask if the price differential for the Katana 100 Gen 3 is worth the money. Given that the 50 watt versions are missing functionality compared to the 100 watt version, and that you can make the 100 watt version super quiet if you need to, I’m going to recommend it first overall. In my opinion, you get more for your money and a longer practical use case based life out of the Katana 100 Gen 3. If you want one, please head over to The Arts Music Store. They are great people, and because of their support, I get to bring you more content like this.

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