The other day before getting ready for shooting our next pedal review, I stopped over at a friends house, and we were talking gear. One of the pedals he had on the board was something I wasn’t too familiar with. It was the Keeley Electronics Katana Clean Boost. I’ve been talking with people about clean boosts and they’re a great tool to have in the pedal arsenal… especially if you’re playing through a tube amp. The basic concept is that it increases your input signal to the preamp of the amp, overdriving and saturating the tubes. This could be used to effect the overall guitar tone, or used to punch leads, or too overdrive specific pedals in the chain, etc.
I was familiar with the ZVex Super Hard On (SHO) and adjusting OD pedals to act similar (drive down and gain up) to achieve a similar effect.
Here is the official description:
The Katana guitar pedal by Robert Keeley is a fat, harmonically rich boost. It operates in pure clean and high gain modes. With the speedo knob pushed in, it’s a volume control that goes to 20. With the knob out, it’s a cutting boost with just a touch of gritty edge.
Keeley Katana Pre Amp Guitar Effect Pedal Features:
* 9-volt DC jack or battery operation
* Internal Power Supply Boost turns your 9 volts into 18
* JFET design – clean tones that are tube like when they overdrive or clip
* Push-Pull Speedo Knob side mounted so it can be adjusted with foot
* Metal film resistors and caps for ultra low noise
* Blue LED, a Keeley trademark!
* Silver soldered and teflon coated wire
* True-Bypass
* 5-year warranty
I wasn’t able to find a good demo on this pedal… which is unfortunate.. and surprising. I’ll keep my eye peeled, and might even put it on the ‘review’ list for the future.
You can pick up the Keeley Katana Pre Amp pedal for $199.00 at Musician’s Friend.
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