Okay, so, what is the Boss Katana 100 MkII 1X12?, it's a solid-state digital modelling guitar amplifier that Boss currently manufacture and sell, it is rated to put-out a maximum of 100W of audio power, but, using the Power Control switch located on the control panel, you can dial-back the maximum power-output to 50W, or .5W, the Power Control switch also has a Standby setting, when Standby is selected, the amp is fully powered-up but is silent, Boss's Katana range of solid-state modelling amps use a technology that Boss call Tube Logic, which they say digitally emulates the way a Tube amp behaves, the Katana 100 MkII Tube Logic emulates the behavior of an amp that uses EL34 power Tubes, personally I think they did a really good job of it, and this is coming from someone who owns a Marshall MA100C amp that uses four real EL34 Tubes.
If you look at the pics of the control panel I posted, you'll notice a knob labelled Amp Type, there are 5 different amp type settings to choose from, which are as follows.....
Input Socket: Self-explanatory.
Acoustic: Useful if you're playing an Acoustic/Electric guitar and need to plug it into an amp to get a good clean Acoustic sound so you can be heard.
Clean: Pretty self-explanatory, if you're after some clean electric guitar tones this is what you would typically use, I quite like the clean tones I'm getting so far.
Crunch: Again, pretty self-explanatory, if you want some slightly overdriven, edge-of-breakup tones, you'd use this setting.
Lead: Again, self-explanatory, if you want lead-tones, this setting is what you would use.
And finally....
Brown: This amp-type setting is all about that high-gain distortion tone most famously used by Eddie Van Halen.
There's also a small button just above the Amp Type knob, labelled Variation, pressing this little button gives you a variation of all the different Amp Type settings, to my ears it changes each Amp Type's voicing, so you've virtually got a total of ten different Amp Types to choose from.
Next you've got a knob marked Gain, no guesses as to what this does, it controls how much gain each of the Amp Types give, turn it up to get more gain and vice-versa.
Next is Volume, this works like a preamp volume control.
And then you have your three band (Bass, Mid, Treble) EQ/Tone controls typically found on most guitar amps.
Next, you have your Effects control section, two of the control knobs are actually dual-gang types.
Booster/Mod: The Booster control knob controls the level of boost, likewise, the Mod control knob controls the level of modulation effects.
FX/Delay: The FX knob controls the level of effects, such as for example Tremolo, the Delay knob controls the level of delay effects.
And then there's the Reverb control knob, this controls the level of Reverb effects.
Above each of the Effects controls are five small buttons, these are used to switch between different types of Booster, Modulation, FX, and Delay effects.
To the right of the Reverb control knob is the Presence control, this works the same way as the presence control found on most guitar amps.
Then there's the Power Control switch with four settings: Standby, .5W useful for practicing, 50W, and 100W, the three output power settings set the maximum output power you can get out of the amp.
And Master: This works like the master volume control found on most guitar amps.
Last edited by DrNomis_44; 26-07-2021 at 06:18 PM.
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