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Unfortunately, they don't sound as good or as convincing as an HX Stomp's Soldano model (to my ears, anyway), and I've already shown that makes for an even smaller and lighter (albeit more expensive) rig
Or if they never get the cash they just stick with the little amps and work out ways to make single channel high gain amps just work.
I think these are a great idea.
Fast forward a year or two and I got some solid state Fender amp, which was rubbish, and then a Peavey Bandit (I know they are well loved here, but the drive channel was, and still is, fizzy crap). Eventually I could afford to come back to Marshall with a Valvestate jobby.
I'm not in the market for an SLO but like you, reckon they are a great idea & young players will make them work.
If it did it all who wouldn't choose the smaller,lighter,cheaper option ?
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I Paired it with the RV50 I have and together they do sound pretty fabulous.
I'm in the studio tomorrow, might take it along with me.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
There's *way* more gain than necessary though - I mean, I know it's a Soldano, but it's almost ridiculous. Even using the 'crunch' mode it's almost impossible to get a clean sound, and the headroom is so low that you can't actually get the power stage up to anything like full power before the preamp overdrives. This may be what you want... but it is a bit limiting, I think. The crunch mode has more gain than I would ever need, and I'd probably never use the actual 'overdrive' mode at all.
I suppose the good news might be that the preamp is built with old-school through-hole parts, so modding it probably wouldn't be too difficult...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
The Diezel has similar-ly ludicrous levels of gain, though the first quarter of the range is pretty clean-ish still, and up to about halfway you can still roll-off on a vol.pot to get clean tones from an otherwise very driven preamp.
Quite fancy one of these as an alternative to lugging my JMP to rehearsals.
I do actually think it's poorly designed in that sense - I know a lot of players never play clean, but an amp which can't actually reach full power without being fairly heavily overdriven just has too much gain. You can always add more gain, but you can't add more headroom if the preamp reaches clipping before the power stage even with the MV full up.
I think I will investigate whether it's possible to reduce the gain - it's not actually mine, it belongs to the guitarist in my band, but one of the reasons he bought it was as a lightweight backup for his Laney LA30BL, and if it can't do a similar light-crunch sound at gigable volume then it's no good for that. The Laney itself has a lot of gain for a vintage-type amp and reaches power-amp overdrive at a very low setting on the volume control, but it still can be backed of to nearly clean even cranked up.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein