Boss Katana Tone Tips with Juca Nery (a professional Katana tone sculptor) Amp Tone Effects etc.

hey how you doing justin here uh little interview with you today with juka from dukas tone shack and he is a professional katana sound maker uh and i thought it might be a really cool little uh afternoon or chat or whatever to talk about his top tips for sculpting sounds with the katana so uh hey how you doing duke hello justin how are you thanks for inviting me you're very welcome where are you coming from today where are you based i'm in portugal in a little town called vizio uh-huh okay funny portugal's there's only two countries in europe that i haven't been to and portugal is one of them the other one being greece they're the and i must sort that out it's great it's a great country looks beautiful um okay so uh let's i guess just start off with uh some top tips for the guitar so what are the things that you think when somebody's programming up a sound what are the things that you've discovered that the the secret sources for getting a good sound well basically the first thing that i advise uh people to do is to go uh and now go into specifics about the eq and um one thing that i find out about all these modeling and digital amps and whatever you don't call it um because some people say it's they are they're not digital or modeling amps but in the end you know uh one of the things i do it's uh on the eq i roll off a lot of the iron content so kind of um if you have like uh a cut around five hertz five kilohertz i mean um that gives me much more of a analog sound to it it's the first thing i do and probably most a lot of presets huh okay i have i've noticed myself rolling off some of the top end in that because that global eq is pretty powerful isn't it yes it is and and the sound can be a little bit earp piercing and sometimes so uh you have to compensate then that with the the eq from the amp or the other eq for like parametric eq or the new eq that comes with the new version that's the way i do it so if i cut five i can boost around five again on another section hmm okay and you think you if you're cutting it in the global and then boosting it again on the on the on the treble you think it seems to still improve it yes it's a kind of an old technique you might have heard uh in the studios about those old pool tech eqs who have you have the boost and cut at the same time and i do that a lot but sometimes i cut around 200 and then boost it again and seems to work really nice i haven't tried that yep there you go i've got i've got a tip for myself too i like that yeah that's pretty cool so well that was a pretty cool tip about the cutting the boosting the same thing you said you mentioned 5k you as well are you using it for mid like i found for myself that sometimes particularly getting kind of uh tube screamery kind of sounds dirty sounds that boosting the mid really help things cut through a bit is that something you're doing globally as well or doing it in the pedals normally i don't touch the pedals uh the only thing i do in the pedals is roll off a little bit of the bottom hand uh because i think the kitten already has a lot of bottom hand so i normally don't touch the pedals just the tone not to tone sorry the bottom hand cut a little bit and then adjust the dq accordingly because uh you know pedals do change the sound of the amp and um that's a normal thing but i like to have some clean transparent options like um for example you have on the booster pedals you have the clean drive and that clean drive uh clean boost i mean it's one of the the only pedals it's not the only pedal that doesn't affect your tone so basically if you have already a real real cool real good dialed in tone in the clean or the ground channel if you stick like a tube screamer on top of it you're gonna mess around with it it might be on proposed but if i want to maintain my my my tone at its best i use like a clean boost it's very transparent so you're not you find yourself not using the pedals as much as the the other amp sounds yes uh that's true the pedals are just a compliment i mean it they just just give a little different flavor and i usually use them if i need a extra push for solos or stuff like that but they do alter the tone a lot so i i'm very careful about that when making my sounds on the different channels they do alter and color the tone she's funny because i've i found uh most of the sounds that i liked were using the clean sound on the clean setting on the katana and then using the pedals on top rather than using the crunch or the the brown sounds or whatever for myself and that's and that's a very uh that's very correct because the clean channel is very good on these amps and i also tried that as well but you kind of lose some of the the lows and some mids in some of these channels like lead and crunch and the clean is the perfect channel for that you know but some pedals for me at least don't sound too good with the clean channel so i prefer to go sometimes uh or i'll do another thing which is basically going to the clean channel but putting the gain and the volume max out okay so that's that's that's where the breakup starts to happen and it sounds really good you know and then probably you don't need any pedal more it sounds really good uh do you also use the the other one that i quite like was the crunch sound but with the gain right down so like the crunch sound as clean as it could be and then adding a pedal on that as well that seemed to be almost like that using a uh regular amplifier without much crunch and then just feeding it with a pedal to kind of push it a little bit harder yes i do but i think i think these kind of channels and some guys don't realize that um you have to gain control right and sometimes they sound really cool if the game is totally off and just you know sculpt the sound with the volume knob and the rest of the eq uh because the amp kind of behaves like um a tube amp in my opinion i had i had several i had many tube amps um from marshall to fender to vox and uh i've sold them all because at the time i was not using them at all and i embrace technology especially like stuff like amplitube and uh scuff moon and hamps and uh it's one of my to go one of one of the best ones for me at least and um then the kitana came out and uh that was the perfect in between solution you know uh to feel like a tube amp and it's not a tube amp because tube amps can be costly and hard to maintain and although they sound great i'm not telling they're not they're not sound great i think you can achieve the same kind of uh nowadays especially same kind of tone and sound with um with a regular katana and i put side by side and that's the the cool thing some very expensive amps in very uh specific settings i almost can match them sometimes you know i don't know it's not so sort of a linear saying but uh but uh but but it will do you know in an album 99 of the people don't know what's what's what's going on what's there or not so the katana will do perfectly in any mix at least for me i can get any type of sound from you know from jazz to pop to rock to heavy metal um i can do it um that's the way i i feel about it uh-huh yeah yeah no it's a i i think it's an incredible amplifier i think for me maybe that there's a there's another step up in the valve thing to do with i think it for me it's like the touch sensitivity aspect of it i guess the the that the valve amp particularly a a highly driven velvet not like distortion but a loud valve amp you can get this thing where you can play really softly and then play really hard and you can get that real dynamic range that maybe that's the one thing that yes yeah i find that maybe is better about a valve at that but that's not to take it away from the katana because i think particularly bang for buck i don't think that there's a better amplifier ever that's true that's true and i totally agree with you i have tested out other amps like the marshall coal and uh other stuff from uh other brands i can recall right now and the katana stands out about that that sensitivity that you're talking about that's true but one of the things that really took a lot of my time was to when i had like a marshall tube amp it would took me about like two hours at least for me for the amp to really warm up and then you have that great sound now uh in the perfect world where you can crank the amp without uh disturbing the neighbors or stuff or if you have a home far away from the city that will do but i have i live in a flight or apartment and and i cannot do that so i think the container retains a lot of that flexibility a lot of that detail at at low volumes and and even at 05 0.5 watts it works very well and sounds very cool yeah okay absolutely no i don't dude i i totally agree that's it you know i i think it's it's the amp that i recommend the most for people that are getting the guitar you know that's the best one even even mid range amplifiers you know somebody a semi-pro guitar player might do a gig or two it's going to work great you know you know just yeah and that's the flexibility because i i'm thinking about the defender i had offender um i can recall the name now uh fender two lamp and uh okay it was great but it was great at just one thing you know i i was really not fancy about the distortion of the amp i didn't really like it what are you talking about the blues junior yeah yeah yeah uh yeah and uh and he took pedals really well but i had to have a bunch of pedals and then um the clean channel was awesome i can i can say nothing bad about that but uh it just one sound and then i had to go into my marshall to get the marshall sound and uh and i and i realized that with the content flexibility is a is a one one one important key you know nowadays you just pack your small container or even small stump boxes or small pedal boards uh into your bag and go direct into the pa and they have the sound that you want and which which katana do you use either 50 or 100 or 100 every 100 1 115 112 when yeah and um and it's really flexible to that point and and and i've enough and i firmly believe and many people will disagree with me that you know tone is very subjective but for most of the time for most times i think tony's in your hands actually you know more than the amp itself because you can have like a i've seen a lot of players play with top and amps and the sound was not there something like that no yeah and the other way and the other guitar players play with rubbish gear and it still sounds funny yeah that's that's a true statement i actually think it's it's that particular aspect of it it's slightly off the katana thing but i think it's more to do with how you react to the sound that comes out of the amplifier like if you're experienced guitar player you can play to find the sound within what's given to you like how hard you play how soft you play the way you interact with the sound so it's not so much that you play the same is that if you're experienced you would play differently depending on the the amp that you've been given i think that's totally true anyway that's how i think that's a true statement i totally agree with you you know the experiences guitar players um yeah they they do have the tendency some guys are very uh too knob tube found to tube amp um i don't wanna call it snob but you know they just wanna know that there's a tube in there and uh and sometimes i can i can shoot a video or make some sound and if you go do a blind test i think it's impossible to tell if it's a two vamp or not depending on the way you play on the way you pick all that stuff is very important from an experienced guitar player yeah that's that's true that's true yeah i think yeah that's i mean i am i am a tube amp snob i gotta say and i uh i i've been really into amps for quite a long time and trying out different ones and different sounds and tone and things uh but i think that well the the the one that the thing that really swung me around was the kemper when i first heard the kemper profile and i couldn't tell the difference between my own amp and the kemper profile of my i just was like wow that you know technology has come this far but that kind of opened the doorway for me to being more open to other stuff as well other technology uh technology uh i i just realized that it's really come very far since like the the the kidney bean shaped pod which which was pretty good it was a good attempt but it wasn't really there yet it wasn't there quite there yeah and line six as has changed a lot since that but uh it's it's true the camper profiling amp you you i've seen a lot of videos even from rob chapman in his channel where they they have a lot of amps and even the profiler i think and they could not tell the difference between them yeah like jcm patches and stuff like that inside the profiler it's we are in the in nowadays the technology is so advanced that uh for for the most part even experienced guitar players will have some trouble telling the difference yeah no i i think that there's experienced guitar players that won't tell the difference that they have trouble that they can't you know it's it's uh yeah it's that strong so um uh other katana tips then so what what other things what are other little tips and tricks can you give the viewers today about well um there's there's uh when i start my presets i always start uh this is a given fact i will start with everything at noon like on the on the amp maybe except for the gain and volume okay but everything is at noon and no effects at all nothing and i start making my sound with a regular eq but i don't i don't touch it too much um like the bass middle and treble just stays where they are a little bit more a little bit less and then i go i'll go right away into the the parametric eq because i love that eq or the now the new g810 that comes and starts sculpting my sound and depending on the guitar that i have of course um even this prs have the split coil and if i'm using split coil i'm going for a different tone but essentially i'll start with with eqs and no effects at all just eqs and and try to listen to the sound and and see how how good it sounds and if it's smooth enough if it cuts through the mix how does it sound when it's louder because that's very important as well people sometimes just play at low volumes and then when you put it loud it's a different thing um but basically that's where i start and i fine-tune first things on the parametric eq and then i go into the normal regular eq and i start feeling the knobs you know until i'm happy only after that i go into the effects and even then i'm really careful about the facts about the reverbs and the delays especially reversing when it comes to the detail of the reverb the eye cut options that you have the tail of the delay the eye cut low cut past filters and look at low cut filters that you have access to because sometimes you might have some delay that is going to clash i think it's a word with um some high frequency content from the amp if it's not well treated so it took a lot of time i take a lot of time considering those aspects and listening to the sound to see if it's kind of perfect to my taste and every channel sounds different so i have to tweak the knobs a lot of a lot of times so i spent a lot of time on on on bts on boston studio but that but that's the the thing that i some guys use the the master eq i think local global eq i never use that global because it affects them totally total every channel i don't i want i want to maintain my my sound open to other ideas so um i don't i don't use that i just use the regular parametric and sometimes i use two eqs or three if you count with the equalizer from the amp so that's just the base for this sound yeah effects of course if i'm recording for myself and not doing patches i'll have another kind of effects in logical pro tools depends now reverbs and delays that make ping-pong stuff like that yeah i think for me probably the weakest point for the katana was the the reverbs and i'm hoping that they you know yeah they had issues on the spring reverb with the sensitivity knob they did have issues with that now i think it's a little bit better but it's it's not the best reverse of course i'm not saying they're bad and just say like that's one area where i think a lot of sound sculpting can be really defined by that and most guitar players will be using once you've got the basic sound right people if they're in a recording studio going to be using you know the best reverbs that have ever been made in a recording studio on the guitar sound and the listener kind of expects a little bit for their guitar sound to sound like what's coming out on the record but not realizing that the sound that was actually recorded was probably very different to what it is that they're actually hearing so in some ways the katana needs to be a little bit a guitar amplifier with guitar sounds but as well like a mini recording studio that offers studio grade reverbs not guitar upgrade reverbs yeah i totally agree and that's that's something that they should address in future releases of the bts and this one has that expression saying where you can assign different parameters but i think it's a little bit confusing uh it's not very straightforward when you look at that panel it can be a little bit scary at first because you have so many options but i think it's a good thing but uh it should come in let's see sometime some someday in the future we'll have bts in the form of a plugin where you can i'm already doing that in a in another way i'm using uh bias amp too and i'm using the match kind of like the camper um profiling thing and i've already profiled some of the channels from the katana and i have great results with that everything at noon you know so stick to the sound don't mess around with too much just normal channels with a no eq added so nothing's fancy and then i insert that in pro tools or logic as a plug-in and i have the the cleaned crunch lead brown and acoustic channel already ready to add more effects and tailor that to my taste yeah yeah what are you using for that peak bias yeah i'm using bias bias hemp 2 which has that that match feature right you know you listens to the you play something and kind of like the camper i haven't tried i haven't tried it out yet i've been it's on it's been on my list of things that i need to try but there's already so many things on my to-do list that some of them just live there they might as well build a little house there and yeah on the to-do list because it might be a while before they it happens the same to me you know with the turn requests that i have to make so many artists and stuff like that some of them uh totally forget and they stay behind but um i've done around uh let's say 300 around 300 artists presets wow okay like 300 songs or 300 artists with different sounds for each other within each other a mix of a mix of balls yeah sometimes um an artist with different settings for different songs sometimes just uh preset overall sound like john mayer preset i've done a quite a bunch of those and um so so it's around 300 videos not 300 videos less than that because i have several videos with several presets but around one 160 videos just about sounds on the katana and then whatever you can do you know prince slash you name it and i've done a lot of that stuff so some things i do forget as well um they go they say and on another list there's a lot but bias have that feature and it's really great because then you can compare i'm recording with the same microphone uh a little bit off axis right now on my katana and then i listen to the to the actual sound from the katana and the sun from bioexam and they're basically the same it's incredible it's just a piece of software that's recording listening to the katana yeah and then it does that little magic where you know i don't know what's happening inside yeah but after that it loads up the plug-in with everything that um with the sound for the container but you're dealing with a plug-in that simulates tubes so you have power amp section preamp section bias so you know it's endless yeah that's pretty crazy so uh yeah just to recap there you said so when you're doing a preset you start with the knobs at noon and then uh you get you said you've you don't touch the master eq so you're talking about using the parametric eq in the effects section uh yes and the knobs as well but would you do you have one that you do first or the second which way do you think about it or it's just experimenting at the beginning it was just experimenting nowadays i have some clues and uh one thing i should mention is when i have like a specific amp like a marshall jtm or something like that and i have a clip of that amp i load it up into logic or pro tools it depends nowadays most of the time into logic and i use some uh i use two things my ears of course they're very important and also the some uh digital eq so i can look at the frequencies that the amp is doing um and then i try to match but you know i have always the same results because it's impossible if it says on the eq from the amp it's cut around 200 and if you do the same on the katana it won't sound once on the same so um it's just a guide you know i have just like a guy and then i do like you said start sculpting the sound on on on the eq and start and with with the help from my ears try to match exactly the same sound the artist is explaining and until now i've i've had uh great results i believe do you know uh when i'm hearing sounds often uh on a record a lot of the bottom end is cut off the sound because if you're in a recording studio and you're doing a mix you don't want the guitar to get in the way of the bass and the drum so you normally like and a 100 hertz or 200 and you've got a low pa a high pass filter on it get rid of all of the low frequencies one of the debates for me when i'm making patches like that is to whether to keep it in or not because if you take it away and they're playing by themselves it sounds really thin and weak because all of the the the bass and the drums that were holding up that frequency band they're not there so uh what do you do for your patches do you cut it or keep it i got it because uh i believe that um there's no problem i cut around uh 60 to 50 percent uh 60 to 50 hertz uh because i think the kitten has uh like i've mentioned before there's a lot of low end so uh it's you're just cutting rumble and um you know muddiness it won't affect the tone you'll still have plenty of bass and you always can compensate that on eq as well yes i do do i i do that as a mixing engineer i cut all that stuff because you don't need it most of the times on the guitars you're just fighting up with the bass or the drums or whatever yeah but that's that's it are you working doing mix engineering then as well because we actually didn't get there so what do you are you just doing guitar patches or are you working in a studio or you do what's your gig i'm working in my studio at my place and i have a few clients here from my town and a few clients from outside and they ask me based on whatever the things i have done and um they asked me sometimes to mix their albums i've just mixed um an album or record i just mixed an album from a friend of mine a qc album totally acoustic just the guitar and a voice and a vocal and that was it sometimes i have bands that ask me to record everything from drums bass and stuff like that and if i can round record drums which i can here i'll take my um sound card my bigger sound card with more inputs and i go to their places and i record the other drums then i come here and mix them you know when it comes to guitar sounds uh most of the times sometimes i use amp teams and they do sound great and they do a fantastic job and other times i use the katana not a very high volume because i've realized that you don't have to be very high in volume to get a great tone okay yeah i think i know i know that's that's a bit of a well it's one of those like on a valve amp i think it makes a difference yeah but on a katana it doesn't make so much of a difference so i'm on a valve amp it needs to be cooking and yes hot and if you have a loud and play softer it's a very different thing anyway yeah i'll try and hang out with you i think you probably agree actually but you know totally totally with a quieter ramp the katana yes and um that's it i have some bands that ask me for help mixing or recording their songs and that's also one of the things that i do and another thing that i do is i have some online students that also teach guitar uh-huh that's cool yeah um okay let's let's go for one more katana tip what what's that one more oh yeah actually let's do possibly two more do you run your master on full and then adjust the volume with the volume or you turn the master down no the master is around uh around three three uh i i mean like uh if it's from a clock it's like nine o'clock no i don't know nine o'clock yeah nine o'clock it's like this right yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's not too loud i guess it's not too loud i don't i don't i don't i don't record or play too loud um so basically that's how you use the master i know some guys uh put it on max max out the master and then go from the volume up but yeah i prefer the other way around ah that's interesting because i i was i convinced myself that i could hear it as sounding slightly better when the master volume was up full and the volume was down like literally just going like this i could hear that there was some other stuff going on yeah i i didn't realize i didn't i didn't i didn't saw any difference so i i prefer to do it like that yeah no no make sense that the master volume is the master volume of the total the rest is already sound yeah yeah the rest might already be cooking like the gain in the volume uh-huh yeah cool uh i have uh three minutes i have this so that you know three minutes and the battery is dying okay right okay yeah well let's um yeah have you got one last quick tip well um yeah uh most of the times when i do my patches and this regards volume as well i i use a low volume a master volume uh i prefer to listen to sounds very softly and very low first and then i increase as as i go to see how how it affects its own because the katana where it's one of the things i've noticed um it's not very linear when you increase the master volume some things that you have very very specific to the tone on the current channel of stuff like that will get lost uh especially if you're just alone in your room in a band or a mixing situation is different but if you just learn and go crank the master you might start losing some of the effects so you have to compensate with other areas and i always point out to the eq you know now in in in a in a banned rehearsal situation it really cuts through and it sounds awesome i've tried it out many times and the guy just asked me what you have using what's your tube amp you know it's not a tube amp man it's just a katana and that's it and this sound is amazing really cool cool okay so uh where do people find more of your stuff what's your youtube channel called okay uh my youtube channel is jew canary okay because it's my first name jukka and then neri n r a e r y yeah why right and uh and on my uh on facebook juke sound check and also on my website which is um juconaryguitartuition.com okay cool so well they'll see a bunch of stuff articles exactly a lot of stuff that i'm writing you've got a load of free patches as well for people as well as some yes yeah a lot of promotions a lot of great stuff for free yeah cool that's awesome dude well thanks for taking the time to have a chat with me and uh thanks for having me i will catch up with you for some beers sometime in london or around the world tonight also i'm going there this year uh-huh awesome we'll figure out catch you up for a point okay mate that's great okay cheers cheers

Channel: JustinGuitar

Views: 96,453

Keywords: justinguitar, justin guitar, guitar lessons, guitar tutorial, guitar, lesson, f56a 66 Ewe, boss katana, katana, boss, katana tone tips, tone, tone tips, guitar amp, best amp for beginners, beginner guitar amp, beginner tips, tone tips for katana, juca nery, juca, jucaneryguitar

Id: 8f6yRPvUdgI

Length: 31min 7sec (1867 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019