While shopping you'd be doing yourself a solid by including the Jet City PicoValve (I happen to like the version without the "bright" switch) in your candidate list. These aren't picky about power tubes...any octal base power tube will do.
I’ve never played one, but my opinion is that you cannot go wrong for $400. The Boss Katanas have been around a long time, and it does everything many of us have spent $thousands$ to do.
I'll check it out. The ability to use any octal tube is gonna be of interest since my Egnater Tweaker has that same ability.
I've owned the first generation 100w Katana head. The only reason I sold it was because it's capabilities went far beyond what I was interested in diving into and of course the 3rd generation version has even more features to explore. If optimal versatility and a lot of useful bells, lights, and whistles is your thing I'd buy one. They are great sounding amps.
I too had a first gen 100W combo. I couldn't find my tone in it, even after adding an output jack for an external cab. Played it through my preferred cabs and nope, didn't like what I heard. I found that it has great clean tones and maybe at the other end of the spectrum, where chugchuging happens, which I don't do. But the middle ground, light-overdrive-edge-of-breakup, where I live, wasn't convincing.
I would tend to agree. I wasn't a fan of the various dirt channels so I stuck with the clean channel and used my own pedals. What I enjoyed most was it's ability to set various wattage levels and also for the acoustic guitar channel it has. As my needs have changed since I bought my first one I would not shy away from buying another 100w head due to it's versatility.
