Time to upgrade my workshop amp. Suggestions.

[muttley]

Picked it up this morning. That leaves me the weekend to try this sucker out..

bosskatana.jpg

[WhiskeyJack]

Sweeet!!!!!! Have fun mutt!!!!

[JD01]

Nice. Tell us all about it.

[muttley]

So I played about with the Katana and did a couple of gigs with it over the weekend and let my buddy use it in another band so I could judge it out front. This thing is perfect for me.... so much so that it is going in my music room setup and gig cupboard not the workshop.

So that leaves me with the original problem of what to use in the workshop? I could get another one or... I could go even smaller? So I now have this which will sit in the corner beckoning me whenever I am working. Ideal for pickup testing, client use on collection and fault finding on repairs and setups. Plenty load enough for what I need in the workshop and tiny.. (standard cordless drill for scale).

Pretty cool little amp but nowhere near as load or clear as the Katana.. A perfect workshop amp though.

spark.jpg

[Lt. Bob]

ok, gotta ask, the Katana is cheaper than that so why not just get another ..... ?
Just for the fun factor?

[muttley]

ok, gotta ask, the Katana is cheaper than that so why not just get another ..... ?
Just for the fun factor?

I got the Katana for £200. This was £220 with the gig bag so I aint gonna sweat over £20. I can get good deals on most stuff as I have done work for small music shops for decades. I also like that the Spark has a real tiny footprint and I can just load it into a cupboard or up on a shelf. It has Bluetooth so I can stream all my digital library right from my phone or Alexa in the workshop. I haven't even got into the tone library and other features it has but I probably will eventually because yeh, it looks like there could be some fun factor in there, but that wasn't the reason it was more about the footprint and the Katana is way better than I thought it would be for gigging.

[WhiskeyJack]

I've looked at the positive grid one a few times. I think it would be a cool one to have to play around with. Good snag buddy! Love the new toys.

[Lt. Bob]

Katana is way better than I thought it would be for gigging.

Modern modeling for live use has really come a long way in the last 4 or 5 years.
I've been direct into the PA for my solo gig for maybe 10 years now ..... in a band I still use an amp and since I have a few cool ones, I use them.
And we oldsters do tend to look suspiciously at anything replacing our beloved tube amps.

But the new modeling stuff is so much better than the early say, Line 6 stuff we were unimpressed by.
Those impressions mostly come from 10-15 year old tech and the new stuff is just orders of magnitude better.

I do believe eventually modeling and class D amps will be the overwhelming majority of what we see in live gigging.

[JD01]

I do believe eventually modeling and class D amps will be the overwhelming majority of what we see in live gigging.

They probably already are! Even bands like Metallica now have their sound modelled.
Quite why you'd want to model some of Metallica's tone is beyond me, but there you go.

[Greg_L]

They probably already are! Even bands like Metallica now have their sound modelled.
Quite why you'd want to model some of Metallica's tone is beyond me, but there you go.

I think they use AxeFX live. But they're Metallica. They need to have a repeatable exact sound that people expect to hear every single night in huge arenas.

[JD01]

They probably already are! Even bands like Metallica now have their sound modelled.
Quite why you'd want to model some of Metallica's tone is beyond me, but there you go.

I think they use AxeFX live. But they're Metallica. They need to have a repeatable exact sound that people expect to hear every single night in huge arenas.

Its weird isn't it? How basically one of the biggest bands in the world have had such a patchy sound on their albums.
Some of the early albums were a bit rough and ready, but basically decent.
Justice was fucking awful.
The Black Album was a production masterpiece.
The Load albums, had rancid muddy sounding guitars.
Fuck knows what they were thinking with St. Anger everything sounds shite.
Death Magnetic sounds great, but the mastering is noticeably bad even to a layman.
The most recent one is pretty good.

[Greg_L]

Its weird isn't it? How basically one of the biggest bands in the world have had such a patchy sound on their albums.
Some of the early albums were a bit rough and ready, but basically decent.
Justice was fucking awful.
The Black Album was a production masterpiece.
The Load albums, had rancid muddy sounding guitars.
Fuck knows what they were thinking with St. Anger everything sounds shite.
Death Magnetic sounds great, but the mastering is noticeably bad even to a layman.
The most recent one is pretty good.

I hate the black album and everything after it. Like most people, I prefer the first four and that's it.

[Lt. Bob]

I do believe eventually modeling and class D amps will be the overwhelming majority of what we see in live gigging.

They probably already are! Even bands like Metallica now have their sound modelled.
Quite why you'd want to model some of Metallica's tone is beyond me, but there you go.

Oh yeah ..... and people like Rush and Zappa use Fractals or I see a lot of Kempers.

But I was mainly talking about local/regional gigging.

Most smaller giggers aren't ready or don't have 2K to spend on the high priced stuff and I think they're skeptical of the 3-4 hundred dollar stuff being good enough.
But I've been using sub 200 dollar modelers for gigging for years and I get compliments on my tone all the time.

I think it's a matter of knowing sound and also being able to navigate dialing one in even though they're not the newest shiniest things.
I can get an at decent sound outta any of the last 5 years of modelers because I know the specifics of the sound I want.

But I think a lot of players can't do that and end up just using presets which are never that great on the low priced stuff. And sometimes they're even awful so those guys just go "modelers suck".

But the Fractals and the Kemper come with a ton of carefully curated artist designed sounds so they can just use presets and be golden so the perception is that the low priced stuff can't sound good when the reality is that you can't use the presets on the low priced stuff because they're not good

[Greg_L]

Rush used real amps (guitars, not bass) and Zappa has been dead for 30 years!

Edit:
Well hot damn Alex Lifeson did try the AxeFx
https://www.fractalaudio.com/artist-alex-lifeson/

[muttley]

Rush used real amps (guitars, not bass) and Zappa has been dead for 30 years!

Edit:
Well hot damn Alex Lifeson did try the AxeFx
https://www.fractalaudio.com/artist-alex-lifeson/

His lad isn't.

FZ had one of the best and consistent sounding shows I ever saw. He always had the very best of musicians in his pickup bands though so there is that.

[Lt. Bob]

Rush used real amps (guitars, not bass) and Zappa has been dead for 30 years!

Dweezil Zappa is alive and playing a lot and AxeFX is Fractal.

I'd love to have the newest version ...... meh, I have a puter now ..... but it would be nice to have access to the zillion presets available for it.

[JD01]

Its weird isn't it? How basically one of the biggest bands in the world have had such a patchy sound on their albums.
Some of the early albums were a bit rough and ready, but basically decent.
Justice was fucking awful.
The Black Album was a production masterpiece.
The Load albums, had rancid muddy sounding guitars.
Fuck knows what they were thinking with St. Anger everything sounds shite.
Death Magnetic sounds great, but the mastering is noticeably bad even to a layman.
The most recent one is pretty good.

I hate the black album and everything after it. Like most people, I prefer the first four and that's it.

I don't disagree with you about the albums, even though I quite like the songs on Death Magnetic. I just think its odd that such a massive band manage to have a shit sound so often.

Like them or not, from the 2nd album onwards Pearl Jam always had a really good sound with Brendan O'brien producing.

[WhiskeyJack]

St. Anger everything sounds shite.

To me that was the best of their efforts ever.

[rayc]

Rush used real amps (guitars, not bass) and Zappa has been dead for 30 years!

Edit:
Well hot damn Alex Lifeson did try the AxeFx
https://www.fractalaudio.com/artist-alex-lifeson/

Giddy Geddy has his own signature rack Sansamp.

[musicturtle]

Its weird isn't it? How basically one of the biggest bands in the world have had such a patchy sound on their albums.
Some of the early albums were a bit rough and ready, but basically decent.
Justice was fucking awful.
The Black Album was a production masterpiece.
The Load albums, had rancid muddy sounding guitars.
Fuck knows what they were thinking with St. Anger everything sounds shite.
Death Magnetic sounds great, but the mastering is noticeably bad even to a layman.
The most recent one is pretty good.

I hate the black album and everything after it. Like most people, I prefer the first four and that's it.

When Cliff died, their sound died with it. Justice sounds like there is no bass recorded at all sometimes. Some say they did it that way on purpose as a sort of tribute, which to me is totally stupid and backwards. Black has it's moments, or moment(Sandman).