I’m curious how a bass does with the GO!
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Thanks, that is quite a bunch of FX. Looking forward to reading your opinion on the GO when you get it!
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Bass is great with the Go!
You even have to switch modes entirely so if you’re only a bass player you can just keep it in bass mode and never worry about the guitar specific amps.
I love it so far for bass and guitar
I will say I’ve noticed when using the USB audio that it’s a bit noisy. I couldn’t immediately find a way to turn off the USB charging while using USB audio but sometimes that’s the issue. Latency was good though!
And for what it’s worth: the spark go latency was terrible, and the mustang micro I had also had some usb noise issues, so out of the available options the Katana is a clear winner for me.
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I wonder how close the Katana Go is to the other Katana versions? I’ve heard some great patches online.
Like these:
Awesome! Thanks for sharing!
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Glowing review here:
OK, so mine arrived today.
I tried it during my lunch break and was a bit worried. I couldn’t get the wireless footswitch to pair with it, and I still haven’t figured that out. I’ll have to deal with that this weekend. There is a post on Reddit that explains what to do. Also, I’m not a big fan of the presets, so I was not off to a good start.
However, after work I dove into the editor on the phone, and, wow, this thing is awesome! I have barely scratched the surface, but I tweaked two of the default patches to my liking, and made one patch from scratch (sort of one of those sun-drenched lofi kind of sounds). There is just soooo much in there that I can’t imagine getting bored of this thing. Before I knew it, nearly two hours had gone by.
The stage feel thing is really good, but again, I found it best when I went in and tweaked the settings in custom mode.
There are no spaces for user patches, so you have to write over the presets if you want to make custom stuff, but it’s not a big deal as you can get the factory patches back from the app. That means you can have 30 custom sounds on the thing that you can play without even opening up your phone. I’m already making a list in my head of the tones I want to make.
I agree with the complaint I’ve read online that it would have been nice if they included some basic drum beats to play over. I hope they add that in an update eventually, but you can import stuff from your music library, so I’m thinking I’ll make a bunch of basic drum beats in my DAW and save them to my phone to use to play over. I’m sure there are loads of backing tracks on YouTube as well, I’ve just never searched for them. I’ve yet to try that feature, but it’s on the agenda for the weekend.
Seriously though, I think this is going to make a lot of people happy. I haven’t owned any basic modeling amps since the Yamaha THR10 and 10C (which I loved) and my first impression is that the sound quality here is as good as that but with a seemingly endless array of things to tweak, and TONS of effects.
My main guitar setup of course sounds better, with high-end UAD amp modeling and high-end pedals (not to mention a very nice tube amp), but the immediacy that this offers means I will probably end up reaching for it a LOT. I have an elderly dog that kind of needs a lot of attention these days, so being able to sit on the couch next to him, and jam away is fantastic. I imagine people with kids will love it for the immediacy as well (as per that article I posted above).
Anyway, I’ll post more impressions as I create more patches, try it with bass, and try recording with it. I want to run it into my SP-404MKII this weekend.
(Dog on the couch 
)
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I think that sums it up perfectly! The amp models have that typical Boss sound, like the GT1000…it’s not my favourite sound and other options I have sound better, but the convenience of this thing is just such a plus, it’s easy to reach for it 8-9/10 times.
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A couple things I noticed yesterday when practicing…
Tone Center: There’s no user shared presets until June 2024 (as per the message when clicking on this).
Session This is where you load up practice content.
you can’t navigate/search to web content. You can only paste in links.
The app is only in portrait view. I use the Magic Keyboard with the iPad, so it’s not that fun to use there.
videos also get cutoff because it’ll fill the app allocated video window from top-to-bottom, but that results in a third being cutoff.
The audio is not transmitted to the Katana Go, which defeats the purpose of using headphones.
I still like the Katana:GO. The sound is great, but the app is not there yet. I’m guess more features and refinement to come but who know how long that will take.
Just wanted to share that as the Positive Grid Spark does work much better with more features in the app including the ability to find videos through the app, plus audio sent to the output of the Spark speaker (or headphones output), but the just the sound is not as good (especially Spark’s horrible reverb).
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Yeah, this kind of feels like a soft launch. Pairing a footswitch should not be as complicated as they have made it!
The answer looks to be here, I’ll give that a go this weekend.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BossKatana/comments/1bjjti7/katana_go_with_fs1wl_issue/
I noticed that the tape echo has two extra pages of parameters, but they are greyed out for me for some reason. Would be awesome to get all those other controls!
The contour controls don’t match what is in the manual. I’m not even sure what it is, but it’s worth messing with. I’ve found it has a really interesting effect on the sound. I’ve been going with the one that they say is a good match for a “American clean sound” as I mainly use Fender amps. Changing the cabinet response also has a big impact. For my tastes, I’m liking the vintage one.
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Been looking to upgrade my headphone amp for my bass and am between this and a mighty plug.
I heard good reviews about the mighty plug 2 for bass but not quite so much for the 3. Anyone tried them both?
This is not correct. Both are transmitted via bluetooth, midi AND audio. You just have to pair both functions separately. On iOS, open the Katana:GO app, turn on bluetooth on your katana go, hit connect. Now go to bluetooth settings on the app and “scan” for devices. If you now go to your iOS bluetooth settings, you should see the Katana:GO AUDIO port pop up - connect to it. You should be connected to Katana:GO MIDI and AUDIO. Now it transmits the audio from your phone to the headphones connected to the Katana:GO. Stage Feel will then affect not only your amp placement but also where the backing track / iOS audio is coming from as well.
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Ah, great info! I haven’t tried this function yet, so I hadn’t encountered this issue, but it would explain why the screen showed an O for midi and X for audio. I was wondering about that. Sheesh.
Not intuitive, like the connection to the foot controller. Once paired, do all of these things connect automatically after the first time or does pairing have to be done each time? I guess I can try to confirm this when I get home if you aren’t sure.
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Once you’ve set it up all you gotta do is open the app and hit “Connect” in the app - it then connects both, midi and audio, automatically.
Definitely not intuitive 
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Definitely happy to be wrong!
Will give a try soon but makes sense another pairing (from iOS to device) is needed.
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Thanks! I haven’t tried this, I guess I could try lowing the levels and turning off loopback if it wasn’t already (i’m listening through the computer not the Go)
Makes me wonder if the USB charging has anything to do with it at all. Still seems like from experience with other devices that it would be good to have the option to turn off, since the Go has an internal battery it can run on. hmm.
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Oh man, it took me waaaay longer than it should have to get audio sorted out. I was beginning to think my unit was broken, but it’s all set up now. Thanks!
I also got the foot switch sorted using that Reddit link above. The key with the wireless foot switch is understanding it’s a two step process that involves pairing the foot switch to the GO unit, and then pairing the foot switch to the phone, and there are two different buttons on the foot switch to do this. Ignore the app while you are doing this process. I was somehow thinking the app was part of the main setup process.
While it’s cool to have the foot switch to control stuff on the GO unit and it can be configured in a number of different ways, the coolest thing about it for me is being able to connect my old expression pedal that has been collecting dust lately. By adding that, you get an entirely different class of effects, so it adds a lot to the GO, IMHO. You can use it as a volume pedal, or choose from a bunch of different wah models that actually sound pretty good, or use it for pitch-bend effects. I’ve never used any of the Digitech pitch shifter pedals/whammys, so I have no idea how it compares, but it was really fun to play around with, and I can think of some ways I might use it. For me the FS-1 WL was actually a good buy, as I’ll definitely be using it with the GO and as a controller for recording in Logic.
I also got the YouTube video and music library function sorted out. Again, not intuitive. It was dead simple to get videos and music to play, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get to the marker page. Turns out it’s the little arrow next to the name of the video or song. Once you know that it’s dead easy to use. Looping bits of songs for practice was one of the main reasons I bought the GO, and I can say it works just how I was hoping.
Also, I’ve never been one that played along to YouTube tutorials, but it’s SO convenient to have your guitar and the YouTube video in your headphones together with that stage feel enabled. It’s also great that you can set markers in videos, so basically you can have a list of tutorials all set up with markers, which means you can jump right to the part you want to practice every time. It makes it so convenient for learning stuff, as it eliminates all the set up time of searching for the video and the part, etc. Basically this is going to open up a whole new world of practice for me I think.
Today, was a bit chaotic figuring out all the technical bits, but once you do that, it’s a great learning tool and a really fun toy. I ended up playing guitar for hours last night. It will be fun when they enable that tone sharing thing. It would be good to get a patch exchange going on here, although I imagine a lot of how the patches sound will depend on your guitar (how hot your pickups are, etc).
The next goals are trying it with bass and trying recording with it in Logic. Not sure I have the energy for that today. 
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Sounds great with bass! I’m not as finicky for bass, as I am with guitar, and my first impression is that I’d be fine recording with it. Really dig it!
As mentioned, I love the implementation where you switch over to an entirely different bass mode. It’s easy to switch and it really does feel like you got a whole other product thrown in for free. Nice job on that Boss!
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Thanks for making me aware of this feature (and instructing us on how to find it )!! This alone may be worth the price of admission for me. I fed a youtube tutorial through the app, a flamenco piece I’ve been studying…it was so easy to set markers for the different sections and now I’m able to jump from one section to the other with ease, while slowing down playback up to 50% to really get in there (timestretch isn’t great but still good enough).
I’ve been using the app without the device on my flamenco guitar for the past two days and am making progress 
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