Boss’ Katana:Go has been overhauled, and is now more compact, sleek and portable than the original. It plugs into your guitar or bass jack output, and can not only deliver a virtual amped guitar/bass sound to your headphones, but also has a USB port that allows it to act as a computer audio interface. There’s Bluetooth connectivity too, to allow playback of backing tracks and communication with the Boss Tone Studio app for iOS and Android.
The unit has an internal rechargeable battery but can be powered directly over USB. The provided USB‑C to USB‑A cable is long enough that you can sit by a computer and record but, as with most USB cables, not long enough that you have the freedom to move around with your instrument. Normally, then, you’ll want to make sure the Katana:Go is charged, and an LED that indicates various power‑related things helpfully alerts you when the remaining battery life is 30 minutes or less. Another reason to run off the internal battery is to avoid noise, which proved a problem when connecting over USB to my MacBook Pro when the computer’s mains adaptor was also connected. Disconnecting either the USB cable (which of course prevents recording) or the computer’s power supply side‑stepped that issue.
The jack’s hinged joint... makes it easy to move the device into the optimum position for operating the controls or viewing the screen.
The headphone output is a TRS stereo mini‑jack and I had plenty of level through my various headphones. At the other end, a quarter‑inch jack plug fits directly into your guitar’s jack socket. The jack’s hinged joint makes it easy to connect the Katana:Go to pretty much any guitar and allows the device to swivel with the headphone cable when you move, preventing undue strain. It also makes it easy to move the device into the optimum position for operating the controls or viewing the screen. Speaking of which, the screen is bright and easily viewed, and while the handful of user controls is ‘hidden’ on the side panels, you soon develop an instinct for where they are.
Though they’re not easily visible when plugged into a guitar, you soon develop a feel for which controls are where.
On one side, there’s a volume thumb‑wheel, an on/off slide switch, a Bluetooth button and a Stage Feel button. The purpose of the others should be obvious, but we’ll come back to that last control later. On the opposite panel a momentary lever switch scrolls in both directions through the preset numbers (1‑10), and doubles as a button to engage the monophonic but auto‑ranging tuner. Three adjacent buttons select the preset ‘channel’ (Boss’ term for a bank) A, B or C, so you have access to 30 onboard presets in total.
What presets are available depends on the mode you’re in. The default is Guitar mode but powering up while holding down the Bluetooth button lets you change to Bass mode for the next power‑up. The default preset in Guitar mode, 1A Brown Lead, delivers a compressed blues‑rock crunch with some reverb and delay; a decent enough sound but as with many of the factory default ones, there’s a touch of ‘preset zero’ about it. The others have vaguely descriptive names, and feature effects like chorus, reverb, delay, harmonies, ring‑modulation and phasing. You get virtually no control on the hardware over these presets on the unit — you can’t even turn off any of the effects, never mind tweak the parameters — and I’d have liked more by way of cleaner tonal options for guitar by default. But if you like what the presets do, then the overall quality of the sounds is generally good, and I didn’t perceive any latency over headphones, making the playing feel decent when I had the guitar’s volume control in the preset’s sweet spot.
I was more impressed by the factory presets for bass, as I felt there were more instantly recordable sounds. These include clean patches, compressed pop sounds, crunch, fuzz, chorus, phaser, pitch‑dropped dub effects, presets for slap, fretless and acoustic, and even organ bass and bass synths. The final preset (10C) is a quirky Slow effect that fades the level up for each note played and chops the signal rhythmically as it does so.
It’s worth noting that one of the effects is a threshold‑based noise gate. This can be useful but, without onboard control over that threshold, I found some default presets truncated quieter note tails. I also found it frustrating that there’s no hardware control over the tempo/rate for effects such as tremolo and delay; I’d have loved to find tap tempo somewhere as a secondary button function.
Boss Tone Studio App
A selection of screens from the Boss Tone Studio app and, accessed through it, the online Tone Exchange.
But we don’t need to dwell on all that negativity, because you have plenty of control when connected to the Boss Tone Studio app over Bluetooth. Here, you can change the amp model as well as the drive and volume settings (so you can adjust the breakup point to suit your instrument). You can switch effects on/off, access their key parameters and position them in the signal chain. Changes are almost instant and can be saved over any of the 30 memory slots. You can also connect to Boss’ free Tone Exchange, to upload your preset collections or download those made by others. So there’s plenty of scope to save patches that suit your instruments and playing style, and access these using the hardware’s preset selector.
Bluetooth can also be used to for MIDI control, and Boss themselves offer a wireless switch and pedal. Frustratingly, though, I couldn’t find the MIDI parameter documentation needed to discover the full possibilities with other devices. For practice, the Bluetooth audio support also allows you to stream a backing track to the Katana:Go, and in this scenario you can try the Stage Feel function. This uses binaural technology to place the backing track and your instrument in different positions, with you in the centre. For example, it can attempt to put your instrument in front of you, as if monitoring through a stage wedge, while shifting the backing track behind you and to the right, as if you were standing front‑left of the rest of the band. It’s clever, and some might find it useful to simulate that live‑on‑stage situation, or simply for better separation between their instrument and the backing track. But honestly? I almost always preferred to switch it off, since the instrument always seemed to sound better to me that way — and if you start out thinking the presets all sound a bit ‘mushy’, then I’d suggest turning this off and giving them another listen.
I tested the Katana:Go’s audio interface functions with my Reaper DAW software, and both recording and playback worked well. Note, though, that it always captures the processed sound. I couldn’t find an option to capture a clean ‘DI feed’ either, but I’m probably more fussy about my guitar tones than the bass ones, and certainly I’d be happy using the bass sounds I captured in this way in a mix.
In summary, this tiny package packs a lot of punch. The factory presets perhaps didn’t rock my world, and I might have liked more hardware controls, but the sound quality is good and when you start to explore the control app you’ll find the Katana:Go capable of a range of good sounds. The price is right too!
Information
£109.99 including VAT.
$129.99.
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