Mini Soldano announced

PFAllen2

ICBM said:

Aha! It's really simple. You can do an 'SLO clean mode' mod on it very straightforwardly... on the SLO, 'clean' mode simply cuts a lot of gain from the first valve stage by adding a resistor divider between the output of it and the second stage. The Mini is different in that it's done with ICs, with the gain of the first stage being switched between overdrive and crunch modes.

R4 (47K) is the feedback loop gain resistor for the crunch mode - if you parallel it with a 3.9K, you get roughly the same gain reduction as the SLO in clean mode. It's still not completely clean - it overdrives between 2 and 4 on the gain control depending on the guitar pickups, and now has about as much gain on 11 as the overdrive mode does on 3... although the tone is different, crunch at 11 is thicker and smoother than overdrive at 3, which is brighter and more dynamic.

This also seems to have opened up the headroom quite a lot, although I haven't yet measured whether you can get closer to full power going via the preamp.

It would be interesting to see if the Mini Ecstacy head could also be clean moded, or maybe there will be a mini Tone King some day?

impmann

Sassafras said:

Am I the only one who doesn't like the Soldano sound?

No. I never have either. 

Fortheloveofguitar

impmann said:

Sassafras said:

Am I the only one who doesn't like the Soldano sound?

No. I never have either. 

I find it great for thick lead tones but naff for rhythm 

guitargeek62

PFAllen2 said:

ICBM said:

Aha! It's really simple. You can do an 'SLO clean mode' mod on it very straightforwardly... on the SLO, 'clean' mode simply cuts a lot of gain from the first valve stage by adding a resistor divider between the output of it and the second stage. The Mini is different in that it's done with ICs, with the gain of the first stage being switched between overdrive and crunch modes.

R4 (47K) is the feedback loop gain resistor for the crunch mode - if you parallel it with a 3.9K, you get roughly the same gain reduction as the SLO in clean mode. It's still not completely clean - it overdrives between 2 and 4 on the gain control depending on the guitar pickups, and now has about as much gain on 11 as the overdrive mode does on 3... although the tone is different, crunch at 11 is thicker and smoother than overdrive at 3, which is brighter and more dynamic.

This also seems to have opened up the headroom quite a lot, although I haven't yet measured whether you can get closer to full power going via the preamp.

It would be interesting to see if the Mini Ecstacy head could also be clean moded, or maybe there will be a mini Tone King some day?

I'm hoping for a mini Morgan AC12 tbh