Review: Boss Katana Artist Mk II (vs Line 6 Catalyst & Katana 50)

Jarick

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Continuing with my trend of doing stupid things, I picked up a Boss Katana 50 Mk2 this week at a really nice discount, and thought I'd do a running review and comparison against the Line 6 Catalyst 60, which I've had for about six months.

Backstory: my tinnitus has been flaring up again which means no headphones, and I have not been happy playing through studio monitors either. I've found the Catalyst 60 to be kind of disappointing, and while I have a Yamaha THR10X, that's also been very underwhelming. I looked at all the current low volume practice amps on the market and figured I'd try the Katana 50.

Here's my early thoughts:

Size & Build Quality

The Katana 50 is noticeably smaller than the Catalyst 60. I'm measuring the Kat 50 at about 18" wide and 15" high, and the Cat 60 at about 20" wide and 18" high. The Boss is much closer to being a home/practice size amp where the Line 6 is about the size of your average 1x12" tube combo. They're both about the same weight though.

To me they are both about the same quality. They're sub-$300 amps packed with a lot of features, so you aren't getting something to hand down to your kids. Both do seem to have tight build tolerances at least physically.

Features

Really similar feature set between these two amps. They both have a handful of amp models ranging from clean to high gain, both have your basic EQ, both have built in effects, and both have adjustable power wattage. The Catalyst does add a presence knob though, as well as an effects loop and XLR direct output. The effects loop is a nice win for the Catalyst as you can run a looper pedal in there, but I can't see doing something like 4CM or a complex pedalboard with a $250 amp.

User Experience

Here I prefer the Boss Katana. While both amps have very similar features, the Katana is a lot easier to figure out how to use it. To select amps, the Katana has a rotary knob with a line pointing to the amp, where the Catalyst has an LED ring that lights up. However, the ring also illuminates the amps on either side, so it's more difficult to tell which is selected.

On the effects side, the Katana has two concentric knobs (boost/mod and FX/delay) plus a third for reverb, where the Catalyst just has three knobs (boost, effect, reverb). That means you can run two modulation effects plus delay on top of boost and reverb on the Boss, where the Line 6 limits you to one modulation effect (including delay) alongside boost and reverb. Now that may be different using app/editors but I'm not going to bother with those because this is an amp.

The other kicker, selecting effects on the Catalyst is less intuitive. You have to hold down the button for the effect or reverb until it flashes, but you can't see it flashing because your finger is covering the button. Then you have to select the model using the dumb LED ring which is hard to tell what is lit up. On the Boss you just push the button for the effect and the LED changes color. Done. Neither amp tells you what the models are though so you just have to guess.

One other thing, both amps have tap tempo, but it doesn't work well on the Catalyst at all. It randomly seems to set really long delay times even if I push it quickly. That's actually the thing that pushed me over the edge to get something else. The Boss works as expected.

Sound (Standalone Amp)

These two amps sound very different and I think it's due largely to the speaker and cabinet. The Catalyst generally has a big warm sound with relaxed midrange and high end. And the Katana generally has a more focused and punchy sound, but can be boxy with less low end and harsh highs.

Out of the box I think the Catalyst really sounds a lot better especially for playing/practicing by yourself. The clean channel is really nice and lush, especially with some delay and reverb. The low to medium gain sounds are fine, nothing special. They can be a bit dull or fuzzy at times, not like a cranked up Marshall or anything. The high gain sound kind of sucks, it's kind of muddy sounding but with an annoying fizz on top. Totally uninspiring.

On the other hand, the Katana as I said is kind of small sounding, but it's punchy. The midrange is much more present and direct than the Catalyst. For playing by yourself that's less appealing but I would guess in a band situation the Boss would cut through much better. However the small cabinet I think contributes to a much smaller sounding amp, so if you're at all wanting to play with others you should probably just get the 100 watt version which has a bigger cab and speaker (or the head and a better cab, or the Artist with the bigger/better cab and speaker).

Anyways, cleans on the Katana sound crisp but a bit bland as they aren't as thick as the Catalyst. I think I prefer that for practice purposes as you can hear what you're doing better, less covered up. As you add gain it gets more annoying and harsh sounding in the high end. But it does remain punchy, so there's that. I found myself turning the treble knob way down which helped a bit but as there's not much low end, you're just left with a bunch of mids.

Effects are fine for both amps, nothing special. I'm not adding more than a little delay and reverb with a practice amp. Neither amp is going to fool you into thinking you have some really nice pedals or do the Jazz Chorus 3D thing or anything.

So both amps have decent to good cleans, the Catalyst is warmer and fuller sounding but can be too dark, and the Katana is punchier and brighter sounding but can be too bright.

What happens when we swap speakers? I'm an extremely normal person, and like any normal person I of course pulled apart both amps (including one that I used for about an hour) to try an aftermarket upgrade.

Speaker Upgrade

I got a Celestion V-Type last year to try in the Cat 60. Now the factory speakers in both amps are 4 ohm where the Celestion is 8 ohm, but as I'm using at very low volumes it really shouldn't matter much.

Swapping speakers in both amps is pretty easy. On the Catalyst, you need to remove the bottom back wood panel which is five screws, then unplug the terminals and unscrew the speaker from the cab. Technically the speaker can be removed without touching the back panel but I couldn't get good leverage with the screwdriver and spent the extra couple minutes to do it right. On the Boss, you need to actually remove the entire amp, which is four screws on the back panel and two on top. Then the speaker terminals are not quite standard size so I clipped the small one onto the side of a tab rather than the entire thing. For gigging you'd want to change the terminal or cut down the tab so it's more secure.

In the Catalyst 60, the difference is very subtle. There is a little bit more lows and a little smoother highs with a little clearer midrange, but I think it's in the 5-10 percent difference. Not enough to change the character of the amp. But in the Katana 50, the difference is very big. All that harshness on top gets cleared up substantially, so you have a much more balanced sound. I no longer had to take the treble way down on the amp and it was much more enjoyable to play.

However, you still aren't getting a lot of low end out of the Katana. The Catalyst is still a lot richer sounding, again I think due to the larger cabinet. There's a boxiness still in the Katana that I think are reflections of the cabinet size.

Sound (Powered Speaker for a Modeler)

Both of the amps have an input specifically for amp modeler usage that basically turns them into powered speakers. For both amps, you can use the master volume control and the wattage control to fine tune the volume, which is a big improvement compared to the days of plugging into an effects loop return which is full volume. Also, with both amps, the preamp, EQ, and effects are disabled so you get "clean" power into the speaker.

So I plugged my HX Stomp into each of the amps, using amp and effect blocks from the Stomp and no cab simulation. And both amps sounded very different. The Catalyst as expected was fuller and warmer sounding but with kind of a muddy/subdued midrange, and the Katana was more direct and punchier sounding with less low end.

I will say that with both amps, I prefer the sound of the Stomp amps/effects over the onboard amps/effects. The Catalyst is supposed to be Helix based but maybe I prefer the models I pick for the Stomp. And compared to the Boss, the Stomp amps just seem more pleasing.

Summary / Next Steps

Right now I've got three cheap practice amps sitting in my basement (the Katana, Catalyst, and Yamaha). It probably would make more sense to get rid of them and get something better, but I don't see a lot of nice midrange options that work well at very low volumes. There's a part of me that would be curious to try the Katana Artist which has the bigger cabinet and upgraded speaker, along with some other features. But that amp is significantly bigger, and I kind of like the small size of the 50 watter. Plus I already have a nice speaker upgrade for it.

Anyways, the point of the amp in the first place is to have something to plug into for practicing and learning songs primarily, not to sound amazing. And the whole reason I picked it up was I wanted to learn some King's X songs and not fuss with a modeler, and the Cat 60 and Yamaha both sounded like complete ass trying to play along with the track. The Cat 60 was kind of a wash of low end and the Yamaha was a can of bees.

So I'll tinker with the Katana 50 for now and see if it grows on me or goes back to the store.
 
Nice review of both amps. I have both the Katana 50 MKII and recently picked up the Artist MKII 100 combo. For me, the tone studio is the key with these amps. Patches also provide versatility. Since getting the Artist, I’ve played my Marshall and Jet City amps very little, not because it’s better, it’s because it’s fun, quick, portable, and I have a JCM800 patch that gives me a hard on ever time I play it. I’m kidding, I think…
Anyway, I don’t have any personal experience to share with the Catalyst amps, therefore I will reserve commenting on them. I believe both are are worlds better than the stuff I played through back in the day…
 
Good review. I just recently traded my Katana 50 in for a Katana Artist and really like it. I run a 10-band in the loop, and leave it connected to my MacBook so I can use the Boss Tone Editor (or whatever it's called) to tweak tones that way. The laptop makes it an entirely different amp with so much more to tweak and such an easier time doing so.

Never tried a Catalyst, but every time I think Line 6 and amp, Spider's crawl out of my sound hole and I cringe. Good to know that one is on par with better amps.

How do you like the Yamaha?
 
This kind of outlines the problem with modeling today. We’ve got A. Cheap modeling amps like the Cat and Kat, meant to serve the low end/entry level, and then we’ve got highly complex (by comparison) modeling multi-effects units that sound great, but confuse many. The outliers are basically the Fender Tonemaster series, which has mixed reviews, and is kind of too simplified/gimped for mass appeal.

Where‘s a kick-ass, plug and play modeling amp that has top quality build, nice features, but not overwhelming? Nothing yet.
 
Nice comparison!

I still don't quite understand what Line6 was going for with the user interface on the Catalyst series. I feel they botched the effects section by making you limited to "one effect plus reverb" when the system could do e.g mod + delay and "hold this button" functionality is nearly always just inconvenient in practice.
 
Sure, but out of all the ways to implement the front panel, surely "hold this button until a LED you can't see under your finger blinks" is not the way.

I have a Cat 200 which is way more than I need, but they were running a sale for $400 around Christmas. That will teach the wife to drop me off at GC while she goes shopping:rofl

Anyway to address your point, ever since I brought it home, I have yet to push any button, turn any dial, etc. on the actual unit. IME, you use this amp with the edit SW. I'm 54, and pretty tech savvy for an old guy so I dont mind or have any issues, but the Kat and Cat are primarily made IMO for the younger generations that grew up with iPhones in their hands, so its natural to them to use an interface vs reaching over and turning a knob.

As far as the effects go, considering the target market, do you really need/want a ton of effects in your chain all running at the same time? I would guess 90% of the people out there can get by doing 90% of what they do with a little reverb and some chorus or delay. Everything else is just fluff. Yes it's nice to have, but how much do you think you really need in a starter amp?

I played the Kat and Cat at GC and I preferred the tone of the Cat over the Kat so that is what I bought. IMO, you cant go wrong with either amp and I would say you would have a hard time getting more bang for your buck with anything else out there in this price range.
 
Anyway to address your point, ever since I brought it home, I have yet to push any button, turn any dial, etc. on the actual unit. IME, you use this amp with the edit SW. I'm 54, and pretty tech savvy for an old guy so I dont mind or have any issues, but the Kat and Cat are primarily made IMO for the younger generations that grew up with iPhones in their hands, so its natural to them to use an interface vs reaching over and turning a knob.
That's just a workaround for a badly implemented user interface feature. It's not like it is rocket science to notice the issue, when even the first reviews pointed it out. Line6 in general has usually been good with their user interface choices so not sure what went wrong with the Catalyst.

As far as the effects go, considering the target market, do you really need/want a ton of effects in your chain all running at the same time? I would guess 90% of the people out there can get by doing 90% of what they do with a little reverb and some chorus or delay. Everything else is just fluff. Yes it's nice to have, but how much do you think you really need in a starter amp?
There's enough cases where you might want a modulation effect together with delay. Them being tied together as one or the other is not a great design, even if we are talking about a budget amp.
 
Nice review of both amps. I have both the Katana 50 MKII and recently picked up the Artist MKII 100 combo. For me, the tone studio is the key with these amps. Patches also provide versatility. Since getting the Artist, I’ve played my Marshall and Jet City amps very little, not because it’s better, it’s because it’s fun, quick, portable, and I have a JCM800 patch that gives me a hard on ever time I play it. I’m kidding, I think…
Anyway, I don’t have any personal experience to share with the Catalyst amps, therefore I will reserve commenting on them. I believe both are are worlds better than the stuff I played through back in the day…

Is the Artist a significantly better sound than the 50? If it is, I'm not opposed to swapping out for that. I've got a couple things I need to get rid of (including the Cat 60) that maybe I drag down to Guitar Center and trade in for it. But not if it's just louder with more features.

Nice comparison!

I still don't quite understand what Line6 was going for with the user interface on the Catalyst series. I feel they botched the effects section by making you limited to "one effect plus reverb" when the system could do e.g mod + delay and "hold this button" functionality is nearly always just inconvenient in practice.

I have a feeling they wanted to differentiate themselves from the Katana and not just copy the UI. But the Katana UI is pretty dang good.

You can see looking at them, the writing on the Katana is big and bold and everythign's clearly identified. The writing on the Catalyst is a lot more subdued. Even having the dividers on the panel for the Katana is really nice to have.

The stock image of the Cat 60 made it look like only one amp is lit up, but this is closer to how it looks in real life. "Crunch" is selected, but half the ring looks lit up.

Katana-Front-Panel.png


Line-6-Catalyst-60-Controls.jpg
 
That's just a workaround for a badly implemented user interface feature. It's not like it is rocket science to notice the issue, when even the first reviews pointed it out. Line6 in general has usually been good with their user interface choices so not sure what went wrong with the Catalyst.


There's enough cases where you might want a modulation effect together with delay. Them being tied together as one or the other is not a great design, even if we are talking about a budget amp.
I can see your point, we may agree to disagree about the UI. I dont find it that difficult and you do get use to it. On the ring, where it's the brightest is the selected amp and if that doesn't work well for you, your eyes will tell you where the middle of the lighted up area is without thinking about it too much after some time with it.

I do agree that it would be nice to have delay and modulation at times. Maybe they will do something about that with an update down the road. IMO, it would also be nice to have a footswitch with more buttons and be able to assign the buttons to anything you like. I plan to get an HXFX eventually, so that should take care of anything I need, but an inexpensive midi controller will probably do a pretty good job too.

I did not try the Artist but the Kat I did try, 100w 1x12, I just could not get as good of a sound (to me) out of the box as I could with the Cat and the 200w 2x12 Cat was only $30 more. I'm sure if I took a few hours I could have dialed it in better. It wasn't bad at all, just not as good to me. Also, maybe the Cat is targeted towards someone that prefers pedals vs built in effects and the Kat is the opposite. I'm sure cost had something to do with it as well.

IMO, it sounds great to me, not a lot of money and that is what I was looking for in an amp. All the extra bells and whistles are secondary IMO.
 
Nice review of both amps.

Taken from others' reviews online, of the Katana, (and my 15 minute store audition), it seems that:

1. Katanas sound their best when they are louder, specifically channel volume down and master volume up
2. The 50w version is the worst sounding version
 
Dammit this amp sounds really nice, just on the clean channel, with the tiniest amount of delay and reverb. I spent about 20 minutes just kind of lost playing.

Just comparing back with the Catalyst now, it's almost like the Katana feels a little more like an amp and the Catalyst is more like playing through a modeler. Maybe the tiniest bit of latency or something is going on where the Kat feels a little more direct?
 
Great write up & review!
It’s hard to justify a PRRI for home users when you have amps like these.
 
Is the Artist a significantly better sound than the 50? If it is, I'm not opposed to swapping out for that. I've got a couple things I need to get rid of (including the Cat 60) that maybe I drag down to Guitar Center and trade in for it. But not if it's just louder with more features.



I have a feeling they wanted to differentiate themselves from the Katana and not just copy the UI. But the Katana UI is pretty dang good.

You can see looking at them, the writing on the Katana is big and bold and everythign's clearly identified. The writing on the Catalyst is a lot more subdued. Even having the dividers on the panel for the Katana is really nice to have.

The stock image of the Cat 60 made it look like only one amp is lit up, but this is closer to how it looks in real life. "Crunch" is selected, but half the ring looks lit up.

Katana-Front-Panel.png


Line-6-Catalyst-60-Controls.jpg
The Katana Artist is a completely different amp. It has a big, full sound for a combo amp (which I’ve never been much of a fan of lol). The Waza speaker is incredible, I want more for my other cabs but damn, they are pricey!!! Boss says it’s Waza tuned or tuned differently??? or something like that, and I can confirm it sounds way better than the Katana MKII 50 loaded with the same patch. I picked mine up when they were on sale with the foot switch. This is all I would need if I were gigging again, however, I would still run a pedal board out front just because. Go play one, I think you’ll instantly hear the difference. I dig mine.
🍻
 
Never played a Cat, but I fell in love with the Kat mk2 head/cab twice, due to:

- high cut!!! I set it around 5 khz, and the amp became a very musical clean platform

- discovering the power amp input (which is what I mainly use these days). It sounds awesome and packs QUITE a punch

PS: had band practice last night, we're actually used to play pretty loud, and even after running at 100W with the master almost halfway up, for 3-4 hours, the Kat only felt "lukewarm" to the touch. I expect no overheat issues whatsoever.
 
Update after a month.

Went back and forth on these two amps, they each have their pros and cons. The Catalyst has a bigger warmer sound and does seem to have better tones out of the box, while the Katana seems to have a little snappier response and is easier to use. Running the Axe FX 3 through them, same pros and cons tonally, the Katana is kind of boxy and harsh and the Catalyst is a bit muddy.

I went to Guitar Center on my lunch today to check out amps, and compared the Katana 50 against the Artist Mk2 combo, as well as a Vox AC15C1 tube amp. The tonal difference between the Katana 50 and the Artist is massive. There's a ton more low end on the Artist and the high end is a lot smoother, which makes it sound a lot more like a tube amp. The Kat 50 is brighter and boxier by far. It doesn't sound bad but just way different.

Then the Vox had a nice warm sound but I had to run the master on like 0.1. It had less low end than the Artist and a little more prominent mids without any high end harshness. Could be the G12M 25w Greenback or cab too. I fiddled with the Artist a bit and found if I changed the contour setting I could get really close to the Vox, but then of course there's a lot of different sounds available too.

So I ordered a used Artist Mk2 combo that's at a different store, and will pick that up tomorrow evening.

Biggest reason is that the Artist has a bigger cabinet with a semi-open design which I will never be able to recreate with a speaker swap. That's the main reason I go back and forth with the Catalyst vs Kat 50 right now, the Kat always seems a bit boxy and harsh where the Catalyst is warmer but a bit muddy. The Artist should be somewhere in between, and with the upgraded Waza speaker shouldn't require any swaps. If I like the Artist, I can return the Kat 50 and sell the Catalyst and V-Type speaker, freeing up some real estate and funds.

Also, the Artist has some nice quality of life features. There's the contour control which really did help change the overall tone quickly. There's four presets so I can get a clean, crunch, and higher gain tone without fussing around. It also has front facing controls which would be easier to use in my room setup. Plus there's the effects loop, support for MIDI/switching if I ever need it, etc.

Basically it would be a really nice plug and play amp, but should also play better with my pedals and be better with the Axe FX 3 (or HX Stomp) using the Power Amp In.
 
I played a Cat recently. @Digital Igloo do want a Catalyst 200HD head, por favor. That’d be killer. I think the Catalyst overall sounds better, however I’ve not tried the Kat Artist yet.
 
Super early thoughts:

The Artist sounds WAY better than the 50 with a Celestion V-Type or the Catalyst 60. It's got a much better extended low end, no harshness in the high end, and more clarity in the mids. It also sounds more even on vs off axis, where the other amps were much more directional.

I will say while the clean sounds awesome and the overdriven sounds are very good, there's a bit of a papery fizzy sound somewhere in the high end with high gain. It's better with the Lead channel than Brown. I plugged the Axe FX 3 in to see if there were better results, but that sounded a bit of the same thing (even more exaggerated actually). So I think that must be a speaker artifact.

This is a "used" amp although it looks brand new, so not sure how broken in the speaker is. It says it's from June 2021 but it had to basically sit in a basement unused.

Going to spend a good chunk of time over the next couple days playing around with it and running the Axe FX 3 and HX Stomp through it, but so far so good. Honestly I think if I had one of these several years ago, I might not have gone down the high end modeler rabbit hole. Sounds really good at low volumes and pretty versatile with the effects. I'm sure it gives up some of the feel and dynamics of a quality tube amp, but sonically it's quite good.
 
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