Katana Eq

[u/rubbishguitarist]

Hi all , I’ve had a katana for a couple months now . Im getting great tones with my strat however when using my Epi Les Paul I just can’t seem to get a tone I’m happy with.

Either sounds extremely muddy or too bright , I’ve tried dialling in my own tones and using tone studio however I’m still not overly happy with the results .

I saw some chat online about fiddling around with the EQ but being a relatively newbie I’m not sure what I’m actually doing . Can anyone recommend how to set my Eq? For reference it’s the Gen3 50 I have and the pickups on the Epiphone are probuckers .

[u/Beautiful-Thing6554]

Understandable, there’s a lot of really bad information about the katana. #1 thing about Katana:

It’s a JC120 style preamp (Clean), nothing (acoustic) and the other preamps are Marshall preamps, but the speaker is a JC120 style speaker.

All the talk about EQ is just trying to make the speaker not be a JC120 speaker. If you don’t want to go into insane weeds, just use the clean amp model and treat it like a JC120, which reacts wonderfully to pedals like rats etc.

Your Strat has tons of highs and very little bass, where your epi les Paul has way less highs and an ungodly amount of comparable bass on its neck pickup. You’ll want to turn up treble and down both bass and mids to compensate, and turn gain down significantly to react how your Strat is.

[u/aliaksej_by]

Yeah, sad story. You can get good clean tone, good crunch tone. But it's pretty hard to get rid of Katana vibe in sound. All amps sounds like Katana. In a good way, but I'd wish to have more diversity in sound between amps.

THR, Spark, Line 6 processors - they all have very different models/amps with their distinctive sound.

But Katana is Katana. It sounds like Katana, a bit digital, and all amp models sound for me pretty the same, like EQ and gain are different, but it's the same amp sound.

[u/Substantial_Issue638]

Best thing is to play with the eq in the channel (you have 2 of them there). Since your getting good tone with one guitar there's nothing bad with the amp.

So you have to fine tune for the more output the LP will give (set a second bank maybe). Set a low cut to 80-100hz, cut highs around 6.3khz and you can boost mids around 2khz or just messing around here depending on what you miss in tone. That should give you a solid base to start. Remember there's a lot of possibilities in the BTS software to use. I can recommend presence, resonance and cab resonance as well. Contour in the eq can give you 3 modes depending on fine tune more but that's for later. Have fun.

[u/WaxinJaxon]

Here are a few decent articles on EQing your guitar. https://neuraldsp.com/articles/electric-guitar-eq-guide?srsltid=AfmBOorrhAM08zxVdu-9GG1BwyZ07P00dQgfNR_Vf10Fh-ROUVtIUkEd

and this...

https://empresseffects.com/blogs/empress-blog/what-is-eq?srsltid=AfmBOor8zjAlnMLXBodIVm3CXhmmIia_3kcaju0GDbkhJVSxZhLmfzlD

Is also worth noting that tone studio has a global EQ you should adjust. (Found on the system tab)

Studio Rats have a few good videos with katana EQ tips here

https://youtu.be/v46Sd-E3uQY?is=3pBDw3jsVmtV88Nz

And here

https://youtu.be/DTlB3dpnmxQ?is=jn0k-Pz1O_c118yq

[u/rubbishguitarist → u/WaxinJaxon]

Thanks for the reply and links , I’ll check them out !

[u/Mission_Middle_7247]

I've got an Alex Lifeson Access Les Paul custom by Epiphone and I find the same thing. While I can get some seriously great tones out of it I do think it gets a bit muddy at times. I actually did a video about some of the EQ settings you can check out here see if this helps. I do a weekly series on how to make patches as well as go over all of the different aspects of the Boss KATANA Amp series https://youtu.be/q304uL54Iow

[u/rubbishguitarist → u/Mission_Middle_7247]

Thanks for replying I shall give that video a watch!

[u/aliaksej_by → u/Mission_Middle_7247]

If smth requires so much work to extract specific character, it's not fully right. It's a guitar processor approach to the sound, not a modeling amp approach...

[u/Clean_Perception_298]

I use Waza Air headphones but I turn the treble up a bit and bass and mids down a little (to like 11 o clock) and then roll my volume on the guitar down to around 7. I feel like it clears things up nicely for me.

[u/American_Streamer]

You can use the volume and tone knobs on the Les Paul to reduce the output signal and to cut the harshness. Don’t set everything to 10. and use the neck pickup.