Earlier this year, BOSS unveiled the Katana Gen 3 range – an evolution of the amp and effects specialist’s market-leading Katana amp family.
The wholesale upgrade introduced an all-new amp type called Pushed, numerous functional updates, and some crucial specs that have been long desired by BOSS players, all of which help take the award-winning collection to unprecedented heights.
The BOSS Katana Gen 3 lineup was the topic of Guitarist’s latest Tone Lounge episode, which put a number of units from the collection under the microscope for an in-depth demonstration of the performance changes and a showcase of the various top-tier tones on offer.
One of the biggest upgrades of the Katana Gen 3 range is the Pushed amp type, which is designed to deliver authentic edge-of-break-up cleans that are notoriously difficult to emulate.
“Traditionally, solid-state amps have been thought of not being able to do that sound, being a bit too high-gain or clean,” says Guitarist’s Richard Barrett of the new amp option. “These respond and feel much more like one of those old Fender combos.”
Pushed is joined by five other onboard amp types – each with selectable variations for up to 12 distinct voices – which have been enhanced with even greater sound, response and feel via BOSS’ Tube Logic design philosophy.
There are also world-class effects – divided into Booster, Mod, FX, Delay and Reverb – a stereo headphone output, and Bluetooth connectivity through the optional Audio MIDI Dual Adaptor (BT-DUAL).
“Out of the box, it’s like somebody else’s very well-set-up pedalboard,” the Guitarist team notes of the new-and-improved range. “There are so many features, you turn this into your rig and personalize the whole thing. The permutations are pretty much infinite.”
“The nice thing we noticed is how they react like a valve amp. I don’t want to keep saying, ‘Oh, they’re like valve amps.’ They’re trying to emulate valve amps, and these are doing it pretty brilliantly in my view.
“They really react to what you put into them, which is what everybody would say a great classic amp would do. If somebody said there was a valve amp in the room, you wouldn’t contradict that. There is something for pretty much every type of guitarist here.”
Watch the full Tone Lounge video for a deep-dive into the updated Katana Gen 3 amp range, and visit BOSS for more information.
