This year, the couch has heard you play your guitar more than ever. Looking forward to times in front of receptive crowds, fewer sofa serenades, and more rocking days? Don’t let your practice routine slip away while waiting. The Katana-Mini has a few tricks up its sleeve you may have forgotten about. These can boost your inspiration during downtime, keeping you in practice for when the gigs roll in.
The Gains of Practice
Sometimes practice is about focusing on cleaning up patterns and picking routines. Other times, it’s just getting a jam in. It can even be when inspiration hits to work on some new songs. With three levels of gain to choose from, it’s a snap to dial in a quick tone to get you motivated and your fingers moving.
The gain knob takes all three settings even further. Juice up the Clean channel by raising the gain and tweaking your middle. This will dial in any guitar for clarity with a dynamic, touch-sensitive feel. Back the Gain down a hair and add a taste of treble. Now you can get the disco ball out for funky rhythms and crisply strummed chordal parts.
Crunch Time
Moving to the Crunch channel, the Katana-Mini kicks your tone into a chameleon-like zone. In low and mid gain settings, blues and early classic rock riffs speak with confidence. Bring the gain up, work the guitar’s volume knob, and notice how you can slip into a clean sound at lower levels.
This is perfect for taking a minute while practicing a song to focus on a part. It allows you to break down any techniques while clearly isolating your guitar’s voice. Bring it back up for crunchy riffing and slippery lead tones.
Is Brown your sound? Classic heavy rock and metal sounds live in this channel. Plus, don’t forget this channel is excellent for cleaning up with the touch of a volume knob. This allows a chance to work on sections that would require channel switching to a cleaner tone.
Give Us a Little Space
In addition to three highly useable, tweak-able, and dynamic gain stage settings, there’s more. The Katana-Mini’s delay section has a wide-ranging level control for repeats—whether you want to hear them a little or a lot. Set the delay time to noon and the level around 10:00. This achieves a lead style delay that blends in for live sets and solo practice. Set both knobs to 2:00 for quick volume swells with a dotted eighth-note feel.
Plus, it also serves up a nice little trick. Delay not your thing, but still wanting a little “air” in your sound? Bring the delay level up and the time all the way down. This creates a trail with no immediate slap of a delayed repeat. Create a sonic space that suits your tastes with small adjustments to the level. It will be on all three of your channels for an even, reverb-like feel.
Strong as an Aux
Not only does the Katana-Mini have a 1/8” headphone jack for private jamming, there’s also the “other plug” in the back. This second input has serious potential you can explore for more inspiration. Integrate drum machines, keyboards, sequencers, Bluetooth dongles. Anything with a headphone out that helps you create, feel inspired, and ready to play is fair game. Through speaker or headphones, the Katana-Mini helps develop a practice routine that is simple and essential.
