Cool Trick I Discovered With My Helix and Katana and Quick Question at the End

[mattbarden]

Let me say first that I've never owned a tube amp or stack with a separate head/cabinet, so this is by no means going to apply to people that own them since I know they work a little differently. But I recently picked up a 100 watt Katana combo to use as a power amp/speaker with my Helix and also double as a backup should something go wrong. Initially I was just running the Helix straight into the FX return of the Katana without cab sims and it sounded pretty good, but then I thought I should try the 4 cable method too. Why not get the best of both worlds an use the Katana's amp models too, right? Well, I kind of started to prefer the Katana's high gain amp sounds and just used the Helix as FX only. The "Brown" channel on the Katana is pretty cool.

 

The Katana's amps also seem to respond a little better to dynamic picking and the guitar's volume roll-off, probably due to it's class A/B amplification structure than the usual class D you'd typically see from solid state amps. Colin from CS Guitars on Youtube put out a video a few days ago explaining the difference of amplification structures of class A, A/B and D that I found very informative and kind of reinforces what I'm about to say here. The Katana's amp channels definitely feel a lot more dynamic to me when playing through the amp than the Helix amp models do when running 4CM. I think the main difference is that the Katana amp models were specifically built around this class A/B structure while the Helix amps are supposed to be a jack of all trades.

 

So on to my point. Today I figured out a way to get the same best of both worlds in a recording scenario without compromising the current setup and workflow that I've become accustomed to using the Helix. I live in an apartment so mic'ing up the Katana is not an option for me. It's fun to jam with, sounds good on it's own and thankfully has a power level adjustment to keep me in check. But getting mic'ed recording levels isn't something I can do here. So, I took my 4CM patch and instead of the usual 4 cable routing, I just ran the FX send out of my Helix into the Katana's input, then out of it's phones/recording output back into the Helix's FX return and plugged into the Helix's guitar input. And it works, very well actually. I still kind of prefer the Katana's amp tones this way even, with it's own built-in speaker emulation from it's record out none the less so I don't even need to use a block or two for IRs or my meticulously dialed in Helix stock cabs. And the same dynamics still seem to come through with the pick attack and volume roll off so that's really cool. I'm mainly talking about the high gain amps with this, I do still prefer using the Helix's JC 120 model vs the Katana's own clean channel for my clean sounds so don't label me a heretic for blaspheming the Helix here or anything. But for high gain stuff I'm definitely leaning on the Katana right now. To me it just sounds and feels a little better than even my best Helix patches, be them with the Ownhammer IR's I have or the stock dual cab combos I've taken a lot of time to dial in.

 

And before you say "but you could have just done this using the Katana's USB to record", I say nay! Note the previous statement about not wanting to compromise my current setup and workflow. Yeah,  I probably could have used the Katana's USB to record with the Helix hooked up via 4CM, but I wouldn't be able to use my studio monitors AND record a dry track that I can re-amp later if needed. At least as far as I can tell, maybe there is a way but this was pretty easy to do and for all intents and purposes everything works the same in the end.

 

The only thing that would be the Coup de Grace for me at this point is if I could switch the Katana's amp channels with the Helix. Is this possible? I'm sure it is with the 100 head via midi but I only have the 100 1x12 combo and it doesn't have midi. I know the Helix can switch amp channels on a lot of amps, but can it do it on the Katana without midi? I don't really care if it can do FX on a need by need basis, just with the patch from A, B, C or D. Anyone know if this is possible?

[rd2rk]

You can control the Katana 100 via midi from the Helix using a box called the MIDX-20 that works as a USB Host between the Katana and the Helix.

http://www.primovasound.com/midx_20.html

You can also use a PC running MIDIOX. It's a bit complicated and I forget how I did it, but, since full utilization of the Katana's effects requires using the Tone Studio application and being tethered to a PC anyway, it's a reasonable solution. In the end, I sold the Katana. It was nice as a grab n go amp for jams,, but didn't really sound better than the Helix, just different, and Helix thru FRFR is so much simpler than Helix AND Katana/4cm and, to my ears, sounds better at apartment levels than the Katana power attenuator. Katana+Helix+MIDX-20/PC = NOT SIMPLE  and not grab n go. I'm hoping to soon be able to get a Power Cab to compare to my Headrush FRFR112, which sounds pretty darn good. Could be the missing link.