I’ve recently gotten myself a Boss Katana MK II amp. I know most harp players like the tube amps (for obvious reasons), but the MK II is quite affordable in comparison and has so, so much flexibility in tone settings.
One thing that’s very cool about it is you can download patches from the interWebs that other folks have configured to get certain sounds/tone. But, these are all for guitars, not harps, as one would expect.
I was wondering if anyone had one and if they’d succeeded in finding a great setup for some really good, low-end, Chicago blues tone with a decent amount of dirt. If so, I’d love any tips!
Valves are nice but not essential. There is something in the response of the amp that’s just organic as opposed to transistors. However, they need to be pushed a bit to sound good which isn’t always ideal and modern modellig amps like the Katana can sound very good.
You might get lucky and find a source of harp specific or harp usable patches but if you don’t you should be able to get something working good.
I’ve got an epiphone valve jr amp which i put in storage for now as it’s too loud for our small flat, and I’m using a Nux 3w battery amp (mitie lite bt mk2) which has all the modelling and patches and I’ve had some success with the fender amp model plus overdrive (the pretend tubescreamer effect) but my number 1 tip would always be to get the EQ set, it makes a huge difference to how the tone is coming across.
@ericfpiche Good to hear from ya. It’s been a minute! Congrats on the amp. I’ve heard of other harp players who enjoy it as well. What mic are you using? The Bulletini would pair well with that amp for dark blues sound with lotsa bottom end.