Cherub Rock on a Boss Katana

Picked by gain range

Which Boss Katana amp type for Cherub Rock?

Crunch. Andertons has Billy Corgan's Big Muff going into the low-gain input of a Marshall JCM800 with its master volume up and the preamp set by ear, so the fuzz made the distortion and the amp's own gain stayed modest. BOSS names no Marshall behind the Katana's types, so build the chain the same way: Crunch with its Gain low as the amp, and the Booster making the distortion.

Pick the amp type first: it changes the gain structure more than any knob does, so the same Gain position gives far more distortion on Lead or Brown than on Crunch. Gain sets the amount of distortion, Volume the level of that sound and Master the overall volume. Neither Katana 50 has a Presence knob, so on a 50 the top end is the Treble's job.

Boss Katana effects for Cherub Rock

Booster

DistortionStands in for the Big Muff, which made the distortion on the record.Orange in bank A on a MkII as shipped. Knob past the middle.

Reverb

Plate ReverbThe room in the starting point.Green on a MkII as shipped. Knob about 3.

The Katana runs five effects at once, one each on Booster, Mod, FX, Delay and Reverb. Each button cycles green, red and orange, and each colour holds its own effect. The colours below are the ones BOSS's MkII manual lists from the factory. On a Gen 3 the factory effects differ from channel to channel, so check what a colour holds before you rely on it; BOSS Tone Studio, over USB, can change any of them.

What the Katana cannot do for Cherub Rock

The size of the record comes from the rhythm part recorded four to six times, and one guitar is one take, so do not chase it with more Gain. As shipped, the Booster holds no fuzz, so the Distortion stands in for the Big Muff; BOSS Tone Studio can put a different effect on a colour, which is the place to look for a fuzz. The solo's warble came from two tape copies run together, one slightly off speed, which no amp setting recreates.

How to store it on the Katana

Hold CH1 or CH2 for one second. It stores every knob and button except Master, so use Volume to balance stored sounds and Master for the room.

What The Smashing Pumpkins used on Cherub Rock

A '57 reissue Fender Stratocaster, the guitar Billy Corgan told Guitar World in 1995 he had played on most of Siamese Dream, into the 1984 Marshall JCM800 head he called the 'soul head' and said had been used on everything the band had done; Andertons' Sound Like feature on the band says Corgan and James Iha used JCM800s heavily on Gish and Siamese Dream, that Corgan's was modified with KT88 valves, and that for the fuzz he plugged an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, the late-1970s op-amp version, into the amp's low-gain input with the master volume cranked and used the preamp volume to find the sweet spot; the same feature says the rhythm parts were not simply double tracked but recorded four to six times for the thick, layered sound, and that Corgan used an MXR Phase 90 with its speed all the way down on his leads; producer Butch Vig told Guitar.com that a small distortion unit taken out of the studio engineer Mark Richardson's lap steel was used on a lot of the album's lead solo parts, though neither source places a unit on this song; Wikipedia says the solo's prominent effect came from recording it to two tapes run together with the speed of one slightly altered, that the song is in standard tuning with an E octave at the seventh fret that Corgan called the Pumpkin Chord, and that its overdubs draw on shoegazing and 1970s arena rock; Corgan played lead guitar and bass on the session and Iha rhythm guitar; one of the last songs written for Siamese Dream, recorded with Vig at Triclops Studios in Marietta, Georgia, mainly between December 1992 and March 1993, it opens the album, came out as its first single and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance.

Rig sources: Guitar World: the Smashing Pumpkins on '80s Marshalls and their essential pedals (1995), Andertons: Sound Like the Smashing Pumpkins, Guitar.com: Butch Vig on the effects box used on Siamese Dream, Wikipedia: Cherub Rock, Wikipedia: Siamese Dream

Boss Katana facts checked against BOSS's own documents on 2026-10-11: BOSS: KATANA Mk II Owner's Manual (PDF), BOSS: KATANA Gen 3 Reference Manual (PDF)