Having had these hooked up over the weekend in my front room and being able to make as much noise as I want, I can tell you all that it was a very satisfying experience indeed, at the same time cloning my Mesa Boogie into my two Katana heads.
It isn’t until you begin playing through the Boogie with your life-long settings that you trust above anything, that you realise how good these amps are. I did manage to get the Katana very close to my tone, though probably not perfect, but any differences I guarantee would fool even the die hard valve enthusiasts out there. Because I’m relying on the Katanas’ for my entire sound, I bought a back-up one to have ready should there be a catastrophe and at less that £450 for the two I don’t feel I was being extravagant. The bottom line is, I have the quality sound of the Boogie but only a third of the weight to lug around and that does matter.
What did surprise me were the tonal adjustments I had to make to ‘clone’ the character of the Boogie. The settings look horrendous, but they work so that’s all that matters. I added boosts & compression and was careful to make the correct choice of amp that the Katana offers. A good weekend’s work between the sunshine and a job well done.
As for the echo boxes, the H & C and Blue Nebula are each fabulous in their own way. Sound-wise I’m struggling to hear which is which in the mix and when I’m playing, switching from one to the other, it’s never obvious which one is active.
If anything I think the H & C has more going for it in the editing and there may be more choices, but how many of us even go there ? I certainly don’t and doubt I will ever need to, as both units have wonderful presets that do the business for me.
They each offer that vintage ‘chatter’ with the decaying signal behind the echo just like a real valve driven tape echo, I did plug in my Klempt Echolette to listen and it’s all there. Charlie has even copied some of the Echolette’s patterns on the H & C and they are identical. All the emulations on both the H & C and the Blue Nebula are massive improvements on what we had on the Alesis and Zoom machines, as good as they were. I don’t agree with either of the patterns that are listed for ‘Flingel Bunt’ as I compared with the record and I’m not getting the ‘kick’ after the notes. I personally get more satisfaction from the Vox Long Tom pattern #1, which is a single kick with very little feedback like we hear on the recording. Just my opinion but that’s what I’m hearing and I’ve had several other lead guitarists drop by who agree.
Right ! The missus is due back after her family visit to London so I need to get tidied up fast, this place looks like Abbey Road studios after a session.