oh, cool. do you think something like the boss sd-1 would do anything goof for the katana, or should i not bother with pedals on it?
In my opinion, you are fine without an OD pedal with a Katana because the booster section puts a number of perfectly adequate OD clones in front of your virtual amp. The only pedal I would put in front of a Katana would be in a very specific situation. I'll explain: (I got a TL;DR: at the bottom if I'm not doing a great job of explaining this)
In the Katana, you have basically 4 sections:
1. Amp Emulation (Your virtual amp)
2.
Boosters (OD, Distortion, Fuzz, EQ Boost) /
Modulation (By default it's Modulation effects like Chorus/Phaser/Flanger, but any effect can be assigned to this knob)
3.
Delay (Tape, Analog, Digital, etc) /
Effects (Any included effect pedal can be assigned here, as well)
4.
Reverb
By default, the order of the 4 sections is Booster > Amp > Delay > Reverb. In my opinion, you should never need to rearrange this layout.
So, most every pedal board has pedals placed in this order:
1. Tuner
2. Pitch/EQ (Octave, Pitch shifter, Wah)
3. Drive (Compressor, Boost, OD, Distortion, Fuzz)
4. Modulation (Chorus, Phaser, Flanger, Tremolo)
5. Delay
6. Reverb.
Check out section 3. That's your drive section, which will work in conjunction with your own amp's gain to craft a beefy distortion tone. But, what about all those other effects after Drive? Wouldn't that interfere with the tone of the amp's drive if it comes between your boost/drive section and your amp? Why yes, it would. This is why most amps have what is known as an effects loop. It's an additional set of input/output jacks that allow you to place effects after your amp's preamp section. Not needed if you plan on using pedals for all your drive needs, but definitely needed otherwise.
Fortunately, because of the Katana's Boost > Amp > Delay > Reverb setup, you got a virtual effects loop right there! No worries, no thinking needed. You can dial in a killer sound with the turn of just 3 knobs.
For this reason, the only pedals I would put in front of your Katana as someone getting into guitar gear would be something you would want before a booster pedal. For the vast vast majority of players, that's basically a tuner, and maybe a wah. You simply don't need anything more than what the Katana comes with to get an incredibly versatile and usable sound.
The Katana can emulate perfectly a real OD pedal boosting your Amp with a Delay and Reverb in the effects loop. And it comes ready to this right out of the box without ever having to mess with the computer program. As time goes on, this amp will quickly educate you about effect placement and dialing them in. It has a built-in Noise Gate, too, which is a must for high-gain guitarists!
TL;DR: If you were going the Orange Crush or Marshall DSL route, then I would definitely suggest getting an overdrive pedal to run in front of your amp. The beauty of the Katana is that you don't need it.
