Well, the Bugera started having problems again (surprise surprise) and that lead me down the path of looking for a new amplifier. I've gotten a bit tired of lugging around a 54LB Box full of glass and metal because "Toan/Mojo" and also am tired of having to do things just short of a pagan seance to keep that damn thing running happily. So I did a Facebook post asking some of my myusician friends what people are doing these days, because I was a bit out-of-touch on guitar amplifiers. When I last left off, about 15 years ago, people were into using inexpensive Tube heads (think Egnator, B-52, or of course Bugera) with a boatload of botique and otherwise analog "True-Bypass" pedals slamming the front end or even looped through the FX loop. Today, people were moving to lower wattage combos - tube and modeling, and modeling amps are seen a LOT. Also, I wanted to cut-down and consolidate on my setup quite a bit.

I knew I liked the pedals I had, but some of them could be easily approximated by modern modeling, I also knew I liked my 4x12 cabinet, so I started looking at the head version of the Boss Katana once I'd done some looking around, especially since I heard Rustlings about a 5" speaker inside that made the head basically a tiny combo when not hitched to a cab. And 100 watts is plenty, I don't think I ever put the Bugera past 5 live, and most people mic the guitar amps anyhow.

I decided while angry and wanting to get out of the house one day, to go hunt for a MIDI Controller locally, and actually found a FCB1010 at Guitar Center for $92, but it turns out it was a broken return they had the Behringer people coming in to diagnose and fix - so of course store policy says "sorry man, we can't sell it to you" - even though I have a nagging suspicion the problem was likely some idiot doesn't understand MIDI.

So I was thinking "well, my Line6 HD500 has MIDI In/Out/Thru ports", and that gave me an idea...what If I could control the Katana from the MIDI implemented on the HD500?

Another limitation I hit was with the features on the KATANA-HEAD mkII specifically - there's a "solo switch" located inside the BOSS Tone editor software that's only accessible that way, or via a footswitch. Documentation says MIDI CC#83 will put the patch in solo mode...but this doesn't work, instead it shifts over to bank B!

The primary base patch maps the four "A" bank channels to FS5, FS6, FS7, and FS8 on the Katana, with the Tap Tempo switching to the same patch on bank B as a "Solo" function. The FS1-4 switches all control the effects. On the base patch this is MOD (Script Phaser), FX (Chorus), Delay, and Reverb. This is my setup that works for about 90% of the music that I play without even getting into the HD500's capabilities. On most of these, to use the HD500 internal effects, I have to consider sacrificing one footswitch to the effect.

The Chorus patch takes the chorus from the Katana off the footswitch, and uses the HD500's internal chorus(es) instead, instead using FS2 for turning effects on and off on the HD500.

Patch programming for the HD500 is often setup so that FS1 or FS2 is running some special effect that's really a array of different effects mixed together. These are used a lot like the old "Crystal/Voice" patch I used in Lithium for the song of the same name. For that patch, I used a 550ms Digital delay, a Plate Reverb with the tone all the way up for that sparkly, whispy, "tea tree oil scented" tone, and then a (typically stereo) chorus effect to make things a bit shimmering and sparkly more than the sound already is. So instead of switching each effect on/off - I basically create an entire footswitchable "sub-patch" to turn it on and off. The original version of this sound used in Lihtium was just a standalone patch on the BOSS ME-6 and I'd alternate between it and distortion.

A lot of these are synths, weird etherial stuff like aforementioned patch, or some new experiments with other features of the HD500 I have not messed with previously. The idea is each patch is just a different "pedalboard" which I can switch on/off.

The only outboard effect is the Electro-Harmonix PitchFork which is used for the 5ths sound I use a lot. Pitch Shifters are something I'm very, very persnikety about. The BOSS Katana's sounds too "robotic" and is really a clone of the old BOSS PS-2 Pitch SHifter which I used to mess with at Crossroad's Music in 1995-1997ish, so it has an entirely different application. The HD500, on the other hand, has a very good pitch shifter with a natural sound, except one issue, and that's pitch detection can be a little wonky if the frequencies of the note are slightly off. This leads to all that weird, out-of-tune sounding stuff, which is imperative NOT to have in my scenario. What I'm doign is basically layering power chords by using a power chord, and then the EHX over it, to make it a double or even triple power chord which makes for these ginormous SUS2 chords I like to use a lot, as well as single-note power chords I use to get more video-gamey type sounds when playing riffs.