I will be interested in the comparison between them all.
Ok, I've had my artist combo since 9/20, but have only been able to play around with it on weekends due to travel, hence the gx100.
It looks like a million bucks! Very nice slick, mondern look to it. Like a resto modded vintage combo. Very much to my liking.
Plugged in, using only the panel controls, I was able to dial in great tones Very quickly. In unmanipulated form it works great for single coils. I love my tele even more now! The amp has a low mid bass tonality that was hard to dial out, so humbuckers got really muddy with higher gain. More on this below.
the waza speaker/enclosure is well worth the 30 dollar upcharge over the head, and has the same outputs. The speaker is over $200 by itself. Compared to the standard katanas, it's no contest.
Now to feel. When I first plugged in my p90 revstar on the clean channel with just a bit of reverb, and the gain up pretty high, I was floored. It has that squishy, elastic feel of a tube amp. The master volume maxed gives maximum feel imo, just use the "amp"volume to taste.
Regarding the eq and the tone studio: there are 3 eqs available to you there. A global, and two assignable. They can be parametric or graphic, and be pre or post amp. Very cool. You can do anything you want here, soundwise. To alleviate the fat bottom, I used the global eq to cut 3db of bass and 2db at 400hz. This worked so well, that my wife asked if I was having fun as she heard me chuckle in surprise/amazement. Lol. I will tweak this over time as I learn the amp.
it feels as tubey as all my tube amps ever did. I
You get touch sensitivity at any volume, not just at cranked levels. You also get consistency of sound. It's always there.
It's fast becoming my favorite amp.
I don't even play around with the drives, as I like the amps by themselves, and use the solo switch for a bump.
In each of the presets, you can store a completely unique version of the panel. Each preset can have its own array of fx to choose from.
vs gx100: I love the gx100. It does everything I want it to and then some. It sounds good but takes quite a while to there. The katana is quite the opposite, which I like.
I'd rather play the katana right now than the gx100 thru the power amp. That says alot. They're every bit the equals.
Disclaimer: I'm the type of player that finds a sound I like and goes with it. I don't care if about amp accuracy, only if it sounds good. Both of these units are quality pieces.
I have a killer rig for 1200 bucks that lays waste to my old ones that had at least that much in pedals, and board gear alone.
big time fan, if you couldn't tell.
