Boss looks to conquer the tabletop arena with its new more Hi-Fidelity 10W Katana-Mini X Amplifier with Wooden Resonant Cabinet and Analog Multi-Stage Preamp

So the Katana-Mini X sits between Boss’s Katana Mini (7W) and Katana-Air (30W) both in girth and output levels. The Mini is 230mm wide, the Mini X is 287mm wide, and the Katana-Air is 350mm wide, while the Mini X is the tallest - at 200mm, compared to the Katana-Air’s and Mini’s Height of 181mm.

There are several points of interest to this new amp. I feel that Boss got the balance here between feature set and simplicity wholly spot-on. And besides having a superb sounding 5 Inch 10 Watt Speaker, the fact that said Speaker is embedded in a Resonant Wooden Cabinet makes all the difference - where most of its competitors’ speakers are embedded in plastic or aluminium.

Controls - GAIN } Gain, Type : Clean / Crunch / Brown, Type Variation, Volume; EQUALIZER } Bass / Middle / Treble; EFFECTS } MOD/FX : Off / Chorus / Phaser / Tremolo / Touch Wah / Defretter / Synth / Octave, REV/DLY : Off / Reverb (Plate) / Spring / Delay / Delay + Reverb; TUNER } Tuner, Bluetooth Pairing Button; REC } Rec/Phones; POWER } Power On, Charge : USB-C.

You get 7 Modulations, alas no Flanger, but most of the obvious ones and a sort of 4/3 Guitar to Bass FX Split. I would have had a Flanger in place of the Defretter if it was my choice!

We also get two choices of Reverb - where the default is a Plate style one, and then you have a Spring Reverb in addition. Weirdly boss does not mention what voicing of delay is onboard, while I would imagine it to be a pretty clean classic digital delay, as those seem to be very much in vogue at the moment! It’s been confirmed that we have a warm Analog delay here. The Tape style Delay of the Katana Mini produced too much bass within the new Resonant Wooden Cabinet, so the engineers tuned a digital delay voicing to complement the amp’s output!

The Defretter obviously signifies that the Katana-Mini X is suitable for both Guitar and Bass - as a Defretter is almost entirely a Bass effect. Part of me wonders if Boss couldn’t have made two slightly different varieties here - as for most Guitar Players the ’Defretter’ will be something of a wasted slot - and at the expense of a Flanger. Surely if you have the Brown Sound voicing onboard you should have a flanger too in order to deliver the classic EVH sound. It feels like a strange idionsyncratic last minute decision to me! We could have had a variations button on the FX section too - so we could have slightly different effects for Guitar & Bass!

This is very much part of the Katana eco system - with the same Tubelogic core engine onboard - and obviously the same digital effects. For me it has the perfect complement of features and controls to get the most out of it. Some will love the built-in tuner - where most people I know have either tuner pedals or headstock type ones - so not really a bonus for me necessarily - I tune everything up with my V2 pistol-grip Roadie in any case.

You can run the mix of FX in 28 different combinations - which is really just the number of Modulations (7) multiplied by the number of Delay/Reverb options (4)!

Price point is pretty spot on too - around $175 / €169 / £155. This obviously comes out just in time for the festive season - and sort of makes up for Boss’s MIA Katana-GO.

The Boss engineers are really proud of what they’ve done with this compact combo amplifier, and I’ve got one inbound as I’m intrigued as to how good this can sound. I thought the Mini was OK - I have that, but have barely used it - as it’s so basic. This Katana-Mini X has a little more about it, and as mentioned I feel (apart from the Defretter over Flanger) that Boss got all the big decisions about right here.

The internal rechargeable battery lasts up to 10 hours - I guess if you don’t dime everything all the time. It takes 3 hours to get fully charged up - via provided USB-C cable.

It’s basically just a touch shorter on its main width dimension than your regulation 30cm / 12" school ruler - which reference I had to include in the visual too.

All in all I find most everything about this tiny amp highly compelling, and look forward to my one landing so I can properly put it to the test and feed back on my first impressions.

One of the things I really like about this amp is the front-facing controls. It’s a big reason as to why I really like my Katana Artist - and where most of those mini amps have top facing controls - for a tabletop device it kind of makes sense that the controls are front-facing!

I would have quite liked it to have had the new ’Pushed’ voicing too and the ’make everything sound better’ Bloom button from the Gen 3 Series - while it probably has enough about it already for that price point. I just always want more!