Mike Soldano finally delivers his legendary SLO-100 Amp in pedal format - as the Super Lead Overdrive / Preamp

It’s funny that just a few days ago I was discussing with a pedal buddy as to how few Soldano distortion pedals there were out there in the world - in fact the only direct ones that spring to mind are Wampler’s discontinued SloStortion, and AMT’s S2.

Victory Amps recent V1 The Jack Preamp has a flavour of the Soldano - but it’s a somewhat smoother and not as high gain a take vs the actual source amp - more ’adjacent’ than any proper derivation. I’ve still to decide if that pedal qualifies for my forthcoming Compact Metal Distortion Pedal rundown - while its Kraken sibling is definitely in.

There’s quite a serendipity here - as we’ve had some excellent new high gain pedals recently - just in time for my Best of Compact Metal Distortion Pedals rundown - including Ola Englund’s Chug and Sinvertek’s N5 MGAT-1.

Controls - Volume, Presence, Gain, Treble, Middle, Bass, Deep (right-side).

We have fairly typical controls for this genre of pedal - with 4-Band EQ (including Presence), Volume and Gain on the top facia - but then also a ’Deep’ button on the right-hand side of the pedal which sort of ramps up the resonance and girth / thickness of the distortion.

Not all the demos I’ve heard have been on-point - but I’ve easily heard enough to be convinced that this is a really authentic recreation of the core Soldano sound - it may require a little patience on the dial-in - but it can sound really great and it definitely also qualifies as a Metal style distortion - so for sure this one will feature in that selection of mine.

There are some really cool touches here - where those are custom knobs - the exact same look / format as on the Amps but smaller - and they of course go to 11 too!

Pricing is actually really reasonable - $229.99 in the USA, and conversely £229.99 in the UK too - I got mine from Andertons. It seems to be fairly widely stocked now - of course at all the usual Soldano Amp dealers. There’s also a limited Purple Anodised edition exclusively on Reverb.com for $30 more - or $259.99. I quite like the authencity of the standard white though - it properly matches those amps!

I’ve had the Wampler SloDistortion on my long-term wishlist for quite a few years - while I’m satisfied that the actual Soldano SLO pedal is the right one for me - sorry Brian!

Who among you is a Soldano fan - $239 / £239 is a significant discount on the circa $4000 going price for the actual SLO-100 Amp.

POST SCRIPT

I wasn’t sure when the pedal was going to turn up in relation to the publication of the article. In fact it did manage to pitch up in time - so I have some extra insights for you.

It’s actually really easy to dial in relative to all those controls - you still need to do a fair amount of knob-sweeping to hit the most optimal sweet-spots - while there are plenty of those onboard. Compared to Victory V1’s The Jack - this is a more conventional distortion - it doesn’t have that smooth liquid distortion texture that The Jack has - while you can tune them in fairly similar if you need to. While I feel that The Jack is very much its own thing and rather more Soldano-adjacent than any kind of derivation.

I have each pedal set up very differently - with the Soldano SLO as very much a searing Lead High Gain distortion - while for The Jack the Gain is dialled back quite a bit more and you get the gorgeous smooth harmonic liquid distortion which makes that pedal so special. I’ve decide that its optimal application is not really high gain - while the Soldano is very suitable for that genre.

My current preferred settings for the Soldano Super Lead Overdrive are Volume @ Max, Presence @ 3 o’c, Gain @ 4 o’c, Treble @ 3 o’c, Middle @ 2 o’c, and Bass @ 3 o’c, I also have the Deep switch applied! You get a lovely searing lead tone that way.

And the Soldano Super Lead Overdrive is definitely going to be part of the Full Metal Racket Rundown!