So… I’ve regretted selling my matchless for a couple of years already.

I was browsing guitar sites (as you do) and I noticed that one of my “local” places having a bunch of bad cats. Apparently Bad Cat has hired someone to help them re-design amps and improve production, so these new versions are part of a “re-launch” of bad cat.

This is a 20W amp, 1×12 with 2 channels. If you seen my other posts.. I had recently purchased a Katana Artist gen 3 for my new band project, I wanted something easy to carry… because all my other amps are heads and cabs… which I use for my AC/DC tribute band.

Anyhoo… long story short… I’ve used the Katana live and also at home for a few months, and it annoyed me the fact that “it has too many knobs” so… I wanted something simpler.

I spotted the Black Cat and i watched a few videos, I loved the fact that it has two channels with two volumes each…(volume and master), the EQ is shared and there is no other “master” volume, there’s a cut… and reverb and tremolo.

I never had a tremolo amp, it’s an experience! Because the sound sort of comes and goes… it feels weird. But it works well on some songs, I need to get used to it.

I used the Bad Cat live yesterday… and it killed! It sounded great, it uses an open back cabinet and it really filled the place, the volume wasn’t even that high up… the drummer was able to hear it and the sound in the place was also sufficient, this amp has a great touch! I think this is what is hard to perceive in video reviews… whether it is guitar of amp reviews… you are listening to the “final” output of the product… but not the experience of using it.

You can get a really clean sound, channel 1 has less gain that channel 2. And even though you can get a pretty good hard rock sound on channel 1… the cleans are amazing.

Channel 2 has even more gain! You can easily cover heavy metal with this amp, Judas Priest… even Megadeth.

The EQ is what gets me with these amps… similar to matchless…. the stages of the EQ almost interact with each other, the variety of sound and adjustments of the EQ are far more complex compared to a Marshall, so… you’ll need to dedicate time to this.

So…. is it better than the Katana… is it worth 3x the price? Mmm hard to tell, I mean, the katana is awesome, and I believe this is mostly due to the very high speaker quality and cabinet construction. Setting the speaker attenuation to 100%, Master almost all the way up… and controlling volume with your “channel volume” gives you a much richer sound. However… it’s still not a valve amp… the reaction to your picking is different, the digital aspect of the sound makes it that the actual sound is high quality…. but… it’s too precise… almost surgical. I think both amps have its use. I love having a valve amp with me. But.. if you are looking for an amp that can do it all.. AND have a great line out straight to a PA? Pff.. the Katana is unbeatable.