Mini Soldano announced

stonevibe

Adamski

I see quite a few people raving about it but tbh I think it sounds very similar to the BE, Bogner and Diezel mini heads. Hardly surprising but I was expecting them all to be far more distinct from each other than they are because despite them all being boutique takes on modded Marshall tones, the actual real amps sound quite different. 

Can’t deny it looks cool though! 

stonevibe

I got some details here in my article on GN, looks nice and for under £300 its a neat toy

stonevibe

New vid up

hollywoodrox

Darn you beat me to posting this must saw Leon Todd advertising it 

Sassafras

He's careful not to say which valves aren't being used.

Fortheloveofguitar

£249 on these 

hollywoodrox

Sassafras said:

He's careful not to say which valves aren't being used.

I think a sweet water video has an interview with Mike soldano which is really good ,he says it’s all the same signal path layout it’s just that the valves are replaced with IC’s 

hollywoodrox

I’m interested to know if the DI out from the send which is used by Rabea and Leon Todd in videos ,means it can be used to connect to an audio interface ,without using a speaker cab.

I know that sounds a bit mad but the marshalls do it (origin and dsl) and the little hotone does it too 

guitargeek62

Adamski said:

I see quite a few people raving about it but tbh I think it sounds very similar to the BE, Bogner and Diezel mini heads. Hardly surprising but I was expecting them all to be far more distinct from each other than they are because despite them all being boutique takes on modded Marshall tones, the actual real amps sound quite different. 

Can’t deny it looks cool though! 

Sounds very different from my VH Mini, to my ears!

It’s a shame that the Crunch/OD aren’t footswitchable, but someone will probably find a way to mod it and add one.

funhouse

Sounds pretty good to me, and I used to own an SLO 100

ICBM

guitargeek62 said:

It’s a shame that the Crunch/OD aren’t footswitchable, but someone will probably find a way to mod it and add one.

That's an absolute deal-breaker for me, unless it is. It seems a remarkable oversight.

On the bright side, the fact that Soldano is putting his name to this at all indicates that solid-state is *finally* being taken seriously by major amp designers.

funhouse said:

Sounds pretty good to me, and I used to own an SLO 100

It's astonishingly close given the difference in cost. Not quite the same - the full-size SLO does have a depth that the little one can't quite get, but it's really not far off.

Although to be accurate, I'm not really interested in this - I'm waiting for Mesa to get on the bandwagon as well. If they make a miniature solid-state Trem-o-verb that sounds like the real thing, they've already got my money. (The Rectoverb 25 was close, but not quite it.)

roberty

Rabea can make anything sound good. Absolute beast

Nikc

Sounds good via my mac book speakers - I watched the Andertons review yesterday thought it sounded excellent then as well. Personally I'd need a clean channel.

Kebabkid

I like the sound of that.

So, we've got the Soldano SLO, a Bogner XTC, Diezel VH and a Friedman BE. Do we know if there are any plans in the pipeline to have a mini head whose forte are clean or clean-crunch sounds? Ok, 30W solid state might be limited in terms of headroom for that it'll be more about the sound, yeah, and just wondered or what might be next? 

Ta

fretmeister

https://youtu.be/HvgVuLPNcN4

I like that. Sounds great. 

guitargeek62

Kebabkid said:

I like the sound of that.

So, we've got the Soldano SLO, a Bogner XTC, Diezel VH and a Friedman BE. Do we know if there are any plans in the pipeline to have a mini head whose forte are clean or clean-crunch sounds? Ok, 30W solid state might be limited in terms of headroom for that it'll be more about the sound, yeah, and just wondered or what might be next? 

Ta

My hope is that we get a Morgan AC - they’re already linked to B.A.D. who produce these minis, and already have a preamp pedal to base it on too (a la Friedman, Diezel, Bogner)

ICBM

I’m actually slightly puzzled that they’re making them 30W - it’s so easy with Class D and an outboard power supply to make it almost any power you want, with almost no weight or cost penalty, that I’m surprised they didn’t make it 100W - bearing in mind that even with good design it’s unlikely to be as loud as a 30W valve amp. (The dynamic response is just different, and they never are.)

Although it has occurred to me that maybe they didn’t want to call it 100W in case it wasn’t taken seriously, but actually it sneakily *is*… and thus sounds as loud as a 30W valve one .

guitargeek62

@ICBM, I see them marketed primarily as home/bedroom third amps rather than as a gigging/main amp. They’d need to add channel switching at least if so, which is technically doable on the Bogner, VH4*, and Soldano preamps. Maybe that’ll be a v2 offering of them  


*if they re-made the Mini based on the VH4-2 pedal rather than the VH4-1 at least. Diezel could also offer a 2ch Herbert Mini

digitalscream

ICBM said:

I’m actually slightly puzzled that they’re making them 30W - it’s so easy with Class D and an outboard power supply to make it almost any power you want, with almost no weight or cost penalty, that I’m surprised they didn’t make it 100W - bearing in mind that even with good design it’s unlikely to be as loud as a 30W valve amp. (The dynamic response is just different, and they never are.)

Although it has occurred to me that maybe they didn’t want to call it 100W in case it wasn’t taken seriously, but actually it sneakily *is*… and thus sounds as loud as a 30W valve one .

I think it's more likely that they simply don't want these to be any more than home-use toys. That aligns with the whole "no footswitch" thing - they explicitly don't want these things used at gigs.

ICBM

digitalscream said:

I think it's more likely that they simply don't want these to be any more than home-use toys. That aligns with the whole "no footswitch" thing - they explicitly don't want these things used at gigs.

Good luck with that, given how small and light they are .