Boss Katana - why is the 100w head more expensive than the 100w 1x12 combo?

Voxman

Just mooching around looking at prices and saw that the 100w 1x12 is £269, but the 100w head is £339.  If the Combo does everything the head can plus it has a 12" speaker, I don't understand why the head costs more?!? 

monquixote

The head has MIDI and a built in 5" speaker.

I'd buy the head if it wasn't a silly price.

Voxman

monquixote said:

The head has MIDI and a built in 5" speaker.

I'd buy the head if it wasn't a silly price.

Yup, I know the head has a 5" monitor speaker - but the combo has a proper 1x12" speaker which must be more expensive.  I can't believe MIDI is the difference.  And why have MIDI in just the head?

It's a shame the floor controller is a bit pricey at £85. If you gig and need it, it ups the package price for the 1x12 combo to £354. 

ICBM

Voxman said:

monquixote said:

The head has MIDI and a built in 5" speaker.

I'd buy the head if it wasn't a silly price.

Yup, I know the head has a 5" monitor speaker - but the combo has a proper 1x12" speaker which must be more expensive.

Not necessarily. A 5" speaker which can really deliver decent guitar sounds might actually be more expensive to make than a fairly cheap 12". The size of the frame and the cone make almost no difference, it's just a materials cost. The 5" will likely need to have greater cone excursion for one thing, which tends to put the cost up because the suspension has to be more sophisticated.

MIDI isn't that expensive to implement, but if you add the two together at source and then add on all the percentages through the supply chain I could see why it would end up that much more expensive. They may also be expecting lower sales compared to the combo which might factor into it.

cbilly22

Voxman said:

monquixote said:

The head has MIDI and a built in 5" speaker.

I'd buy the head if it wasn't a silly price.

Yup, I know the head has a 5" monitor speaker - but the combo has a proper 1x12" speaker which must be more expensive.  I can't believe MIDI is the difference.  And why have MIDI in just the head?

It's a shame the floor controller is a bit pricey at £85. If you gig and need it, it ups the package price for the 1x12 combo to £354. 

Still a bargain to be honest. £350 for the sounds, ease of use and portability the 100w combo offers is well worth it. I'm getting more out of mine each time I turn it on.

Voxman

It's a shame that the controls are on top - if they were side mounted I could just about fit it in my den in-between my Marshall 8080 and Laney VC30-210. But top mounted means I'd have to sell existing amps to create room which I don't really want to have to do. 

midlifecrisis

i remember a few years ago when i bought a marshall jvm combo, the new price for the head was dearer than the new price for the combo equipped with a lead 80 and a v30 speaker, that didnt make sense to me.
i agree with above that even at 85 for the footswitch and 260 for the amp its good value compared to what else is around at that price. i was lucky in that i got both the amp and the footswitch second hand so saved quite a bit.  

Danny1969

Your kind of thinking that the cost of the product is the sum of the parts with a bit added on but in reality it's not ... it's all about the scale of manufacturing .... the more you make the cheaper it is once the production run is tooled up
The electronics needed to complete the midi side would come to less than a pound ..... no idea about the speaker but suspect ICBM is right

I'm in talks with an electronics manufacture at the moment who are going to produce my gadget  using their modern tape reel auto picking SM machines and I was amazed how cheap they can make something once your talking in the thousand + quantity 

JayGee

Because they can.

I'm strongly of the view that the pricing and feature sets of the Katana range have more to do with producing a stratified range than what they actually cost to build with the 50 watter being "decontented" to drive people who want more presets and more flexible control (through the GA-FC pedal controller) towards the more expensive 100 Watt model and people who want MIDI control towards the (even more expensive) head.

The 2x12 looks like a possible exception to this with the extra shipping cost of the larger, heavier package and the extra driver probably justifying a significant upcharge over the 1x12 but I'm a bit disgruntled (I own the 2x12 by the way) that they couldn't see their way to throwing MIDI in on it as a sweetener...  

Sassafras

They're trying to narrow the gap between the Katana and the £1100 Cornell.
 Some people were complaining that there's too much of a price difference and it was making the solid-state Katana somehow less credible as an alternative to a hand-wired boutique valve amp costing more than 5 times the price.
 

usedtobe

Sassafras said:

They're trying to narrow the gap between the Katana and the £1100 Cornell.
 Some people were complaining that there's too much of a price difference and it was making the solid-state Katana somehow less credible as an alternative to a hand-wired boutique valve amp costing more than 5 times the price.
 

Oh, you..!