Hi mate, yeah, the trouble I found with both the Marshalls and the Blackstar's
was their clean channels. I wasn't a big fan of either of their clean
channels. Believe it or not, I actually found my Line 6 Spider 3 and 4 had
nicer cleans. I do agree that Fender will probably give the nicest cleans.
Depending on your budget, I would give a look also at the Hughes & Ketner amps.
The Tubemeister is available in both a combo and head version and really is a
nice sweet amp. The only issue for myself though was that they weren't dirty
enough. Over the last while, I've gotten into some very dark and melodic stuff
and in some ways, I wish I'd have gotten a 7 string PRS rather than the 6
string Pauls Guitar that I've also just bought. I'm thinking a 7 String
Schecter Banshee 7 Extreme might be my next acquisition! Haha!
Saying all that, I'm in no way disappointed with the new Katana, it delivers
everything I want.
Best wishes
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: vibe-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <vibe-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
DandGReay (Redacted sender "dandgreay" for DMARC)
Sent: 21 May 2020 21:08
To: vibe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [vibe] Re: First Impressions of the Katana Artist
Thanks for the Katana news, Steve. Sounding promising. Glad it compares well
with the Blackstar. I've been thinking of looking at Blackstar, because they
seem to match Marshall for dirty channel but have a sweeter, more Fender-like
clean. I use a Fender for jazz and a Marshall for rock and I'd love to find an
amp that does both and costs and weighs less than a Mesa Boogie! Sounds as if
sound and weight are in the Katana's favour. Thanks also for the link to the
Boss ME80 review. I love those larky Anderton's videos.
Cheers,
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: vibe-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:vibe-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ;
Steve Hyde-Dryden (Redacted sender "Stevehdryden" for DMARC)
Sent: 20 May 2020 19:02
To: vibe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [vibe] First Impressions of the Katana Artist
Hey All,
As promised, here's a quick initial update. So the amp arrived this morning.
I've spent a few hours playing around with it and, although I've only touched
the surface so far, I thought I'd give you some real quick impressions. Just
to remind people, the Katana Artist is a 100 Watt combo guitar amp that
incorporates a full range 12 inch speaker which, is actually the one taken from
their much much more expensive range called the Waza, or something like that!
From the word go, as soon as I got it out of the box I liked it. It's a really
solidly built amp, no corner cutting for the build quality. Saying that
though, it's the same size as my Blackstar valve amp but, certainly not as
heavy which, is a great relief. A moments panic hit me when I turned it on and
it was dead. Absolutely nothing. Until of course, I discovered that in actual
fact, it had already been on and I'd turned it off smiles! Stupidity aside,
when I eventually turned it on, plugged in my PRS and twiddled a few knobs with
the guidance of my 8 year old daughter, the sound I immediately heard was
absolutely beautiful. I'd turned it to the clean channel with just a touch of
gain to warm the tone. EQ all roughly set to the mid-point with some reverb
and delay that was already on. It had a wonderful warm, full bodied and rich
presence with not a hint of a cheap sounding amp. I could only alike it to
something like a nice warm Fender blues amp. Setting up the various amp
channels is easy. It's just a 5 way rotary knob that gives you, Acoustic
Simulator, Clean, Crunch, Lead and finally, Brown. Brown is for the really
high gain metal level of overdrive. Separate volume and gain controls allow
you to set exactly the levels of saturation or break up you want on each
channel. As for the effects, I've not quite mastered those yet but, they seem
initially ok to manipulate. Already on one of the 4 pre-sets, I found a tone
and effect virtually identical to the sound of the Tremolo distorted sound at
the beginning of Green Days Boulevard of Broken Love. I got really excited and
got the track on the hifi and started jamming along. It was actually quite
difficult to tell the difference between the record and the amp. It sounded so
good!
My next little challenge to myself is to hook it up to my Soundcraft and try
a bit of recording from it in Reaper. If anyone wants to hear what it's like,
when I've done something, I'll make the mp3 available.
Right, well, I've got some things on tonight so it'll be tomorrow again now
probably when I can get back into the studio.
Best wishes all and stay safe!
Steve
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