The Boss Katana 50 is my favorite practice amp – and it just hit the lowest price of the year thanks to this Amazon Black Friday deal

(Image credit: Future)

The humble combo amp is a practice-room mainstay. Many a band’s burgeoning careers have been built on the backs of workhorse 1×12”s, which duly and proudly set the stage for gut-busting tones aplenty. The market for these decently-wattaged, small-profile amplifiers has been a lively one for a while, with pretty much every major brand on the block throwing their weight behind a range or three of beginner-friendly practice and backstage amps – but nowadays, there’s a clear-cut winner for beginners: The Boss Katana.

Boss’ Katana series is a clever melding of modern amplification tech and ultra-modern digital modeling. The result is a true chameleon amp that can be easily configured to suit your tonal needs. These smarts have made the Boss Katana 50 Gen 3 Guitar World’s number 1 beginner amp, not to mention our favorite practice amp for metal. Intrigued? Good! Because with this early Black Friday guitar deal, you can snag one from Amazon with $64 off.

The Boss Katana 50 Gen 3 is so versatile thanks to its Tube Logic modeling tech, which does a peerless job of emulating the unique dynamic characteristics of tube amps. Couple this with the: 12 different amp voices; five independent effects sections; and an attenuation system that lets you crank those virtual tubes at neighbor-friendly volumes, and you have the future gear locker of dreams. All in one box.

The digital modeling stuff isn’t all that rocks about the Katana 50 Gen 3, either. There’s a load of connectivity cleverness going on too, including a jack that lets you bypass everything and access that crystal clear power amp alone – crucial for when you really want to get the sound of one of your weird eBay amp purchases on a recording. There’s also a jack for an optional Bluetooth MIDI adapter that lets you edit amp settings wirelessly with Boss’ Tone Studio app – not to mention a built-in USB-C output for clean stereo audio capture.

In recent decades, practice amps have found their way from backstage utility to front-of-house mega-mouths, thanks to key front-of-house improvements that ended the days of lugging an 80-pound 130-watt beast to the function just to get heard. Even the pros use smaller amps at smaller stage volumes for better control of their tone – and with the sheer versatility on offer here, at such an attractive price point, there’s no arguing that the Boss Katana 50 Gen 3 is more than a practice amp. It could well be the gigging Swiss Army knife of the next generation.

Watch our demo videoShop more early Black Friday salesAmazon: Huge holiday savingsB&H Photo: Early Bird Holiday dealsFender store: Acoustic and parts saleGuitar Center: Up to 40% Black Friday saleGuitar Tricks: $899 $99 annual subIK Multimedia: Up to $300 off Tonex hardwareMusician’s Friend: Early Black Friday 50% saleNative Instruments: Over 50% off UA bundlePlugin Boutique: 100s of software savingsPositive Grid: Up to $50 Spark savingsReverb: Black Friday early accessSweetwater: Up to 80% off Black Friday saleUniversal Audio: 12 Days of UAD software saleWaves: Huge plugin bundle deals up to 95% offAll the latest guitar news, interviews, lessons, reviews, deals and more, direct to your inbox!

James Grimshaw is a freelance writer and music obsessive with over a decade of experience in music and audio writing. He’s lent his audio-tech opinions (amongst others) to the likes of Guitar World, MusicRadar and the London Evening Standard – before which, he covered everything music and Leeds through his section-editorship of national e-magazine The State Of The Arts. When he isn’t blasting esoteric noise-rock around the house, he’s playing out with esoteric noise-rock bands in DIY venues across the country; James will evangelise to you about Tera Melos until the sun comes up.