About the Katana Amp Series
Katana—the traditional sword carried by the historic samurai of Japan—is a symbol of honor, precision, and artistry in Japanese culture. Adopting the majestic sword’s name with pride, the Katana series presents guitar amplifiers with smooth, cutting tones honed by generations of dedication and expertise. Born of the development process behind the acclaimed Waza amplifier, these innovative amps embody BOSS’s determined pursuit of the ultimate rock sound. Featuring proprietary circuit designs and meticulous tuning, the Katana series combines traditional craftsmanship and breakthrough functions to produce true next-generation rock amplifiers.
A Refined Amp with Inspiring Tone
Designed for guitarists who are serious about their sound, the Katana-50 offers exceptional tone and touch response for stage playing, recording, and simply practicing at home. A standout characteristic of every Katana amp is the dynamic interaction between its output section and the speaker, which provides the ultra-responsive musical experience that players crave. Going further, an expressive Cabinet Resonance function derived from the flagship Waza amps (accessible via BOSS Tone Studio) allows you to customize this interaction for your touch with three resonance types. Delivering class-defying power, authoritative punch, and cutting presence that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with high-end amp designs, the Katana-50 is ready to meet the needs of any playing situation.
Five Original Amp Characters, Honed for Rock Playing
Sharpened to perfection by the BOSS engineering team, the Katana-50’s five amp characters offer everything from organic vintage tones to modern high-gain sounds. Clean is natural and transparent, while Crunch offers satisfying grit and response. Lead has a wide gain range to suit many styles, from fat, stinging blues solos to fluid legato shredding. With DNA inherited from the Waza amp, Brown delivers refined high-gain tone sought after by the world’s greatest rock players. The Acoustic character further enhances the Katana’s versatility, providing optimized tone that makes acoustic-electric guitars sound stunningly natural.
Leave Your Pedalboard at Home
With its built-in BOSS effects, the Katana-50 lets you perform anywhere with just a guitar and amp. Connecting to BOSS Tone Studio via USB provides access to 65 fully customizable effects, and you can load your favorites into the amp’s various effects sections. Going beyond standard distortion, delay, and reverb, the selection includes effects types like pitch shifting, ring mod, slicer, and many more. Channel and global parametric EQs are available as well for powerful overall tone shaping.
Version 3 Effects and Control Features
Newly added with Version 3 are the Roland DC-30 Analog Chorus-Echo, BOSS GE-10 Graphic Equalizer, and 95E pedal wah effects types. These classics work great with any Katana amp character, but really dish up some special tonal magic when used in combination with the Brown character’s harmonically rich voice. The update also provides the ability to assign favorite parameters to the front-panel effects knobs, giving you greater flexibility for shaping your own unique effects tones on the fly. Additionally, you’re now able to control specific effects parameters from an expression pedal connected via the rear panel, unlocking a new level of real-time command while performing.
Tone Settings: One-Touch Recall of Custom Amp and Effects Setups
One of the Katana-50’s most powerful features is the ability to store favorite amp channel and effects setups in Tone Setting memories for instant recall. After you’ve dialed in a sound with the panel controls, simply save it to the desired memory with a quick button hold. Four Tone Settings (two banks of two) are available, and you can easily select them from the panel. It’s also possible to use an optional external footswitch for hands-free control on the gig.
Grab-and-Go Operation
While the Katana-50 includes many advanced features, it’s amazingly simple to operate. Familiar controls for gain and the three-band tone stack let you dial in sounds quickly, while essential effects parameters are adjusted with a simple knob twist. And with the convenient Power Control, you’re able to roll back the overall volume while retaining the expressive tone and feel of a cranked-up amp.
Ready-to-Mix Direct Tones with Air Feel
The Katana-50 features line, USB, and phones/recording outputs with mic’d cabinet emulation, allowing you to send mix-ready amp tones to a PA system, computer DAW, or headphones. Connecting to BOSS Tone Studio provides access to three different Air Feel settings, letting you shape the tonal character of the direct sound to suit any performance scenario. The Version 3 update further enhances the direct USB capabilities, offering true stereo sound with many of the Katana’s modulation, EQ, delay, and reverb effects, including the newly added DC-30 Analog Chorus-Echo.
BOSS Tone Central
At the BOSS Tone Central website, you’ll find numerous free amp and effects setups for the Katana series. Created by pro guitarists, these setups provide ready-to-play sounds for various music styles, and also make great starting points for building your own sounds. They load into the memories in a Katana amp via the BOSS Tone Studio editor software, which is also available at the site. In addition to Katana effects selection and customization, BOSS Tone Studio gives you a convenient way to organize all your Katana setups for different gigs, recordings, and practice sessions.