Boss announced the Katana-25 on October 29. It's a compact home combo: a 25-watt reactive analog power section built on Boss's Tube Logic approach, a custom 8-inch speaker in an open-back cabinet, six amp characters (Boss says they cover pop, blues, country, classic rock and high-gain metal, and one is tuned for acoustic-electric guitars), 60+ Boss effects with up to five running at once, 20 factory presets plus 10 empty slots, a tap-tempo button, a built-in tuner, onboard Bluetooth, and a Power Control switch that drops it to half a watt. It's $199.99 and in stores now.
Guitar World called it the Katana that's "always been missing," and I agree. The Mini is a toy you love and the 50 is a real amp you have to make room for. This one fits next to the couch.
The Katana-25 Is a Katana-50 at Its Middle Setting
The number everybody leads with is 25 watts. I don't think it's the important one.
The Katana-50's Power Control has three positions: 50W, 25W, and 0.5W. I covered this in the Katana hidden-settings guide. At home, a 50 almost never needs the top position. Fifty watts is more than a living room asks for, so the 25W and 0.5W settings get all the use.
The Katana-25 just drops the position nobody was using at home. It has two settings, full (25W) and half-watt, and those are the two that matter in a house with a kid asleep upstairs.
So the power section isn't the real change. The speaker is.
The Spec That Changes Your Settings: 8 Inches, Open Back
A Katana-50 pushes a 12-inch speaker. The 25 pushes an 8-inch in an open-back box. Those two facts do more to your tone than the wattage does, and they push in the same direction:
- A smaller cone moves less air at the bottom. You'll lose the low end you're used to hearing under a palm mute.
- An open back lets the rear wave out of the cabinet, where some of it cancels the front wave in the lows. You get a wider, airier sound that fills the room, but it's lighter in the bass and looser on chugs. The open-back vs. closed-back breakdown explains why.
Here's what that means at the knobs:
Don't chase the low end with the Bass knob. Your first instinct on a small open-back amp will be to crank Bass to make up for what's missing. Don't. The speaker can't reproduce it, so all you buy is flub and a cabinet that sounds like it's struggling. Leave Bass around noon. If you want weight, find it in the low mids.
On the high-gain character, cut Bass a bit below noon and back the gain off from where you'd set it on the 50. An open-back 8-inch gets loose fast with high gain. Tighter low end and a bit less saturation will sound heavier in the room than "more of everything." It's the same logic as why a tube amp sounds different at bedroom volume: small speakers at low volume punish exactly the frequencies you're tempted to add.
On the clean and crunch characters, the open back is a gift. Open-back cabs are what jangly cleans and edge-of-breakup sounds want. If you play cleans and light drive, this is probably the most flattering cabinet in the Katana line for you.
If you've got settings from our Katana tube-amp settings or every-genre guide dialed for a 50, treat them as a starting point. Pull Bass and Gain back a notch, keep Treble where it is, and listen again.
Five Effects at Once Covers a Practice Rig
Five simultaneous effects is more than a practice amp needs, and I mean that as praise. My HX Stomp chain at 9 PM is a compressor, one drive, a delay and a reverb. Four blocks. On the Katana-25 that leaves one slot free for a modulation or a boost.
Two features matter more than the effect count:
The tap-tempo button is on the front panel. If you've ever practiced a dotted-eighth part against a recording with the delay time off by 30 milliseconds, you know this beats any effect on the list.
Tone Studio's Session feature plays YouTube content and can switch your memories at set points in the song. That's an automated preset change for a song you're learning, in a $199 amp. For anyone running a 20-minute practice session around a set list, that's the feature I'd actually use: verse tone, chorus tone, no tap-dancing while you're still working out the chord changes.
What Boss Hasn't Said Yet
I read every launch write-up I could find, and none of them list the jacks. No confirmed headphone output, aux in, or USB audio. On a home amp that matters. The USB recording trick in the hidden-settings guide depends on USB audio, and silent practice needs a headphone out.
The amp is described as having full Tone Studio and Tone Exchange support, so it probably has a phones jack. Still, "probably" is not a spec. Before you buy, check the rear-panel photo or ask the dealer two things: is there a headphone/rec out, and does USB carry audio?
Same caution on presets. Boss says Tone Exchange works with it. Whether patches built for the 50's 12-inch combo sound right through this 8-inch box is a different question. Expect to redo the EQ (see above).
Who Should Buy It
You've outgrown the Katana Mini but you don't have room for a 50. This is your amp. In my Katana Mini vs. amPlug comparison I said the Mini is confidently a small amp, with three hardware channels, no app, and no presets. The 25 is still a small amp, but it adds presets, Tone Studio, and a real power section.
You mostly play cleans and light drive at home. The open-back 8-inch suits you. Buy it.
You mostly play high gain. It'll work if you follow the EQ advice above, but a closed-back 12 will always chug better. Spend the extra on a 50.
You already have an HX Stomp and headphones. You don't need this, and I say that as someone who wants one anyway. The Stomp is the more flexible rig. The Katana-25 is for the nights you want to play guitar in a room without plugging in headphones, and some weeks those are the only nights I actually play.
