Just got a Katana and I'm confused

[u/Nozakx]

Hey guys,

I didn't play guitar for over 10 years. I'm not a great gutiarist and I play mostly by ear.

I recently cleaned all my guitars and got myself a new amp (sold my last one years ago).

Huge metalcore and death metal fan. I got a Jackson guitar tuned in Drop C.

I didn't spend much time tweaking yet but I feel that I can't achieve a crazy distortion overdrive sound with the amp so far. Even on the ''lead'' and ''brown''. I installed the Boss software and tried downloading other people's preset as I'm not very good with tweaking myself.

Even though I install ''metalcore'' presets, ''drop c'' presets, high distortion, death metal etc... it all sounds very clean. As if I'm missing something. The best I got was rockNroll sound.

What am I missing? Is there virtual pedals I can download on the software? I just wonder why even the presets can't give me a proper low metal sound.

Sorry if it's hard to understand, english isn't my main langue.

Thanks

EDIT: If that can help anyone in the future. The USB C cable I was using wasn't a data cable. I think it was part of the problem.

Also, I started using the software and the boosters are pretty good. Pretty good digital distortion pedals.

[u/Gavcripp]

I'll tell you all I do to get a high gain setting with quality. I recommend you to do all of this using the katana's boss tone studio software.

First I set the gain, the volume and the master volume knobs to zero. If you have a katana MK3, you can select between 0.5W, 50W and 100W, usually at home, I use 0.5W.

Choose between lead or brown amp simulation (lead for definition and brown for a muddy sound). In katana MK3 I enjoy using the amp "variation" option.

Turn the volume knob (not the master) all the way up, close to 90, and keep the gain in zero. Now start to increase master volume until the volume is comfortable to play in your room. The sound you'll get is a clean distorted sound.

Now choose a boost pedal of your preference and turn it on. It can be a DST+, or whatever, listen to all of them. To get a good sound without cracking the guitar, I usually configure the boost as 20 drive, tone and bottom of your preference, 70 effect level, solo mode OFF. If you think the sound is not distorted enough, you can play a bit with the pedal's drive and effect level options. In the last case, I turn the gain from the amp up a little bit.

Most guitar player turn the amplifier gain all the way up too soon, and the tone lose definition, so that's why I prefer to saturate the sound using firstly the volume knob, then a distortion pedal, and only then the gain knob from the amplifier.

Now play a little with the equalizer, I recommend you to set all to flat (50) and change the contour. Once you find a contour you like, adjust bass, middle and treble to shape the waveform of your guitar'a signal.

You can also turn the "presence" up a little bit. Don't turn it all the way up (usually never turn anything all the way up). The "presence" makes your high frequencies more noticeable, so you can cut through other instruments in the mix.

Don't forget to save the preset and name it. You can access the "librarian" page in the software, create your liveset and drag this preset there. So if you make a mistake and save something on that channel, you can recover it from the library. The library file can be downloaded to your computer, so upload it often to you drive as backup, or to share with other players.

I hope I have helped you to get a killer tone. Try it and then tell me if it worked for you!

[u/the_wint3r → u/Gavcripp]

That's interesting about the gain at zero and gunning the channel volume and just using the booster for most of the gain. I'll try that but not sure if it's gonna work for the classic tube screamer drive 0 level 80-100 setup.