Distortion pedals and the Katana 50?

skunkwerx

Hi all! 

I’m considering buying a distortion pedal to use with my Katana 50. 
My thoughts being I could turn it into almost a 5 channel thing, using 2 cleans on the amp, 2 distortions on the amp with whatever effects I like, and just having a distortion pedal for an extra/different gain option. 

However I hear that sometimes gain/drive pedals are too much for a solid state to handle. Their output too high or something? I’ll be honest I have no idea how it all works. 

I’ve also recently heard in a video where someone was playing through a distortion pedal mention that it was ‘pushing the valves’. Which also made me wonder if these pedals arent going to work great with the Katana. 

The pedal I’m actually looking at is the Metal Muff with top boost. 
Even though I doubt I’d use or have need for the boost function, I guess as its not much more than the cheaper models, i’d go for it as it will be future proof if ever I play live or upgrade amps! 

I also wonder if I did use the boost function through the katana, whether that really would be too much for the amp.. wouldnt want to destroy the amp or cause any damage! 

The other thing I’ve heard is that some drive/distortion pedals are designed to work over crunch, rather than just from a completely clean tone. 

I mean I’m open to other drive pedals, if they would work well that is. 

Im after a high gain/metal type. 

I’m mainly gassing for some new toys... when really I should play the feckin guitar and actually learn something lmao! 

Alterlifeson

No idea of the answer, but a good question! I have a few OD favorites and am still wondering the Katana would be a good platform for them. (JHS @, Bad Monkey, Timmy)

Marktigere1

My Son has the Katana 100.

He uses BOSS BD2, DS1 and SD1 into the front end and it sounds great.

Setting on the crunch channel and then using the SD1 gives some very pleasing noise.

He did his first gig with it at the beginning of November and he sounded great.  His Katana was on the 50w setting.

Hope this helps.

Ta

Slimbert

In short...

Blending/stacking two distorion sounds gives you another sound.

Blending/stacking two crunch sounds gives you another sound.

Blending/stacking a distortion sound and a crunch sound gives you another sound.

Repeat ad infinitum with cleans, overdrives, boosts, distortions, fuzzes, muffs, etc, etc..!!

Think how many amps and pedals there are in the world and it'll give you an idea of the HUGE number of options available.

Some pedals work well with solid state amps, some don't. Some work well with valve amps, some don't. With "sound" what's good and bad is completely subjective. What you love, another will hate and vice versa.

Think about what's missing from your Katana sound and hunt out a pedal that provides what you're missing. Buy it, give it a really good try out (don't plug it in and give up on after 5 minutes because you don't like what you hear straight away!), and then either keep it or get rid and try something else.

Do you have any friends with a pedal or two you could borrow and trial for a couple of days?

I stack drives with my solid state heads and it works really well. It took me a while to find what I wanted but that was back in the days before YouTube etc. Yes...really!!

JayGee

The thing to bear in mind when using boost/drive/distortion pedals into any modelling based amp is that you can’t use them to push the front-end like you might with an analog amp - push the input level too far and either you’ll drive an input buffer which has (presumably) been designed to stay clean with little or no consideration of what happens when it’s overdriven into clipping or you’ll run out of bits at the ADC, either way it won’t sound nice. Keep the output level somewhere around what passive guitar can give and it’ll work fine, push much above this and it’ll start getting nasty (and almost certainly not in a good way) very quickly.

I can (and do) use dirt pedals into the front of my Katana, but only into the clean channe with the amp acting purely as a make-it-louder box

Cookiemonster

No 1. Don't get the mm it's not great and the top boost isn't that useable

skunkwerx

Cool, cheers for all the replies guys! 
Sounds like I’ll just have to have a play around then eh! 

Slimbert

skunkwerx said:

Cool, cheers for all the replies guys! 
Sounds like I’ll just have to have a play around then eh! 

Just like most of the rest of us do...welcome on board!

Grumpyrocker

Andertons did a really good look at many metal/distortion pedals recently. 

grungebob

The metal muff is a good pedal if you set it up using small increments, back when I had my Mesa F50 I preferred using the MM for the drive than the mesa's gain channel.

No idea if the Katana takes pedals very well but its certainly something im interested in finding out since I've just bought one.

I dont like the drive sounds it currently produces but im told with the V2 software and the tonelab thing you can adjust the Eq of the channels so hopefully this will cure my issues with it. 

TJT1979

I agree - the MM can be made to sound pretty good. You need to be very gentle with adjustments - the controls have a huge sweep. The Top Boost can be very useful, but there's only a tiny fraction of the sweep of the knob which is usable.

In the Andertons video above the Metal Muff was chosen as one of their favourite 5.