Boss Waza Air – Beyond first impression review

Gear
#1

Hello all! :wave:

Hope you’re all doing well regarding the circumstances! I’m moving around a bit this summer and only able to bring along one guitar and no amp (bummer!), so I’ve been looking into alternative solutions. One product that seems promising and very interesting is the Boss Waza Air headphones. I haven’t been able to try them firsthand, only had a look at a couple of reviews (especially this one was good!).

Does anyone here have comments or opinions and is able to provide a review beyond the first impression? :slightly_smiling_face: Maybe someone on this forum bought them a while ago as is over the honeymoon phase? The price tag is quite high, so I would like to invest in something that performs well in the long run. I’ve had a seen this video on the topic but second opinions would be great!

Take care!
Andreas

#2

I own the Boss Katana Air. Do all the “Katana” amps have the same sounds? They’re all basically digital models right? Because I’ll be honest, I don’t love mine. The high gain sounds are all models of clean-ish amps with various Boss pedals in front of them. The noise floor is super high so all the gain presents have heavy gating enabled which cuts off any sustain of single notes. Just tweaking the parameters to try and find a better mix of pedal gain versus amp gain is a nightmare of menus and numbers which you can only do on the app, which I have on IOS. I have not been able to find a decent high gain sound on this that doesn’t have flubby bass, tons of noise and gating, and so on.

I’m not saying the world is all about high gain. But high gain is one of the sounds we need to teach, and it’s a sound that’s hard to do right on an amp. I also have a Yamaha THX10R and the five or six gain models you access right from the front panel require no further surgery or pedal simulations to sound like a modern high gain amp.

#3

Thanks for the input! :+1:
I’m quite sure the modelling on the Waza Air is (partly) the same as on the Katana, only that the format is a pair of headphones vs. an amp. A decent high gain sound is definitely a must for me, although I more commonly use mid gain settings. I’m most accustomed to analog sounds, as I use a tube amp and analog pedals in my in my day to day playing, so I’m a bit worried the modelled BOSS sounds might be a bit too digital for my own taste. I guess the best would be to try them out in a music store! :headphones:

#4

I don’t know if it’s that they sound “too digital”. They might sound just like the real thing, I don’t know. But I just don’t think a Boss Power Driver pedal in front of a clean amp was anyones idea of a great high gain sound. There are other pedal models you can dial up — a million of them. But they all seem to have similar issues of tons of noise and not the kind of gain scultping that a purpose-designed high gain amp does by itself.

I will say the wireless aspect works great. So much so that I bought another WL20 transmitter / receiver to use with the Yamaha amp. They maintain a good connection, are easily rechargable, and even have a vibration sensor so it goes to sleep when the guitar is sitting in the rack. The Waza uses the same transmitter and the headphones are the receiver, so I would expect they work as well.

#5

I’m an amp modelling convert.

If you want a portable box of amp+effect tones you can use with headphones, the Helix Stomp and Headrush Gigboard are great. I’d probably give the edge to Helix for sound quality, and the Headrush for ease of use.

If you want to use your laptop, you just need a small interface (the Focusrite Scarlet series is nice) and any ampsim plugins from Neural DSP, Plugin Alliance (Brainworx), or Mikko Amped: Roots. Neural DSP: Archetype Nolly is a great all-in-one ampsim + core effects package.

#6

I’ve been using the Waza air for a while and like it quite a bit, though the app has some issues.

#7

I own both the Waza Air and the Katana Air and the only reason I haven’t trashed them the first minute is convenience. I can even carry the Katana Air in my backpack. High gain sounds are awful in my opinion, and you need way too much noise gate to get rid of the fizz.

#8

I love the waza line. I have three of their products. Only caveat is the waza airs kill the internet in my house. I bought them to practice silently after dark but my wife wasn’t too keen on my guitar playing downstairs killing her tv watching upstairs.

Dealbreaker.