Shot this fairly quick comparison of some of these cool amps that I have over. I'll write my thoughts down here with some added info:
SOLDANO SLO-100 w/ factory mods: Dual Overdrive + Depth Mod:
I've only had this amp over for about a week now and my first impressions were that it's just so loud. I have loud amps like a '71 Super Lead (~140watts) and I think this one could compete with it. The thing with loud amps is that you can't really hear what they sound like outside a mix context so before hearing it in this comparison I had no idea what it would sound like. To me it's one of the best amps in the comparison. That being said it would be really hard for me to describe "the Soldano sound". I don't want to compare it to a 5150 but it sort of is similar as it has both American and British flavors in the tone. It just sounds like a perfectly dialed in amp that you don't have to tweak all that much. The controls do what I want them to do and I got the sound that I wanted really quickly. With super expensive amps I have to say that this one deserves all the praise.
- Perfectly neutral EQ balance
- EQ controls are extremely powerful
- More gain than you'll ever need
- No clean channel on this one - is it not that good?
- Loud!
This is my early Christmas present. They're really hard to get here in Europe and when I saw Thomann had one in stock I immediately jumped for it. Like most guys - my experience with this amp has been mostly the favorite amp models in all modelers out there. I essentially wanted this amp ever since they added Friedman amp models to the Fractal. The Plexi clean channel is just right up my alley.. like I mentioned I have a '71 Super Lead but getting that kind of a sound at low volume has been impossible prior to this. It's very good. I'm still getting to know this amp and I must say that having more controls always makes amplifiers more difficult to use. F.ex. I just now realized that having the depth and presence control high up the way I had them in this tests scoops the amp sound quite a bit. I can actually get a sound closer to the Soldano if I turn them down. Overall the roar does have a modded Marshall feel to it unlike the other amps in this comparison... even the Marshall. I loved the BE channel so much that I ended up using it for this demo. This amp has one feature that makes it the most usable amp in the bunch and that is SYSTEM VOL which somehow magically makes the amp have the same exact sound no matter how loud you run it. With the other amps you need to crank them up for them to get the sound and this one just scales up perfectly.
- Slightly scooped EQ balance
- EQ controls are subtle
- Sounds beautiful at all gain stages from clean to crunch to metal
- Volume scaling works really well!
Long story short I traded in my blue Dual Recto and some cash for this recently and it's because this is a piece of shistory. I think the EQ controls react more in a similar way to the Roadkings that I've tried where I think I have a more usable range for the controls and I don't need extreme settings to get the EQ balanced. Many times on the Dual I would have presence or bass on zero and then I would love that tone. With this amp I have all the knobs between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. With the 150 watts I actually have a lot more clean headroom meaning that I can drive the amp pretty loud and it stays tighter than the Dual would. I compared them side by side so I'm calling it - this is "the tight Rectifier". With the modern channel it's impossible to get a neutral sound - it'll always be scooped. What I actually love is the vintage mode on channel 3 and that mode can actually sound very un-Rectifier-esque. That's a word!
- Best known for the overly scooped sound - does have other sounds in it though!
- EQ controls are more powerful than your average Recto
- 150w clean headroom means this amp has a real clean channel unlike an average Recto
- Too much gain can easily mush the tone into that steretypical numetal shhhhhhhhhh
- 150w so you need to have it fairly loud to get the power amp working
This has been my personal amp for a long time and I've always had a Mark series amp around. They're just extremely reliable and punchy and chameleons with the two EQs. Overall this amp has the most middle frequencies out of all amps in the world. Just see my settings - middle on 0 and 750hz knob on 0. That's minimum middles for this amp and it still has more middles than any other amp in the comparison. Of course you can scoop it even more by boosting the 6600hz and 80hz faders up. This particular amp has the clean channel based on the Lone Star and second channel based on the Mark I. It's just a dream of an amplifier. I had a real 1984 Mark IIC+ over and I was able to make this amp sound identical to it. So that only made me love this amp even more. Here's the video:
- Chameleon amplifier with as much middles as you can ever want
- EQ controls are the most versatile and powerful out of any amplifier
- One of the best clean, crunch and high gain channels out there
- More gain than you'll ever need
- Volume scales up nicely - you can enjoy it at bedroom levels even
I need to clarify that the DSL amps that Marshall make these days are a very different thing. These early DSLs are popularly used by everyone from Bonamassa to Paramore and of course @Leon Todd .
- Find one used for around 1/10th of the price of the other amps in this comparison
- EQ controls are very Marshall - so ignore what they say they'll do and go with your ear
- Clean channel is "okay" but drive channels can be too good for the price
- Has a lot of gain but for it to be tight you don't want to push it too much
- Even though it's 50w it does require you to have it quite loud to sound good
