Mike Soldano confirms BAD buy, but he will still design amps

[Rick Lee]

Quite sincerely and unfortunately due to poor marketing practices Soldano obviously needs to revamp and a facelift otherwise Soldano will go down like Einstein, just another fuddy-duddy.

Soldano did zero marketing, had zero celebrity endorsers, got copied and cloned, charged and arm and a leg and still stayed in business for 32 years. He did something right. I doubt he's coming away from the deal with BAD a dime poorer either. Some people just don't care about cranking out product on an industrial scale, know people will wait and pay and so that's how they roll. Try getting Chris Merren to return your calls or emails, when you want to place an order and he can't get hold of the materials or parts he demands to make his trannies the best of the best. He won't use lesser quality or sub the work out. He just goes radio silent. I wish I could do that in my line of work.

 

[blackba]

So according to the FB video Mike posted today from the BAD shop, the SLO 100 will continue on. Also, a new SLO 30 is in the works. And the GTO will be made again, too.

SLO30, interesting. Wonder how that will differ from the HR25. I assume it will have the clean/crunch switch and maybe the depth mod.

 

[D-Rock]

So will this bring the stupid used Soldano pricing down now?
Or will the money grubbers selling them since the retirement rumor just coin them a "pre BAD" Soldano's and keep the prices hiked?

 

[311splawndude]

Also, I might be missing something here but you can't really compare Mike's success with Randall's success. 2 different models.

Guys building amps for a living, one at a time, once a month aren't doing it to make it rich.

 

[jlbaxe]

Quite sincerely and unfortunately due to poor marketing practices Soldano obviously needs to revamp and a facelift otherwise Soldano will go down like Einstein, just another fuddy-duddy.

Soldano did zero marketing, had zero celebrity endorsers, got copied and cloned, charged and arm and a leg and still stayed in business for 32 years. He did something right. I doubt he's coming away from the deal with BAD a dime poorer either. Some people just don't care about cranking out product on an industrial scale, know people will wait and pay and so that's how they roll. Try getting Chris Merren to return your calls or emails, when you want to place an order and he can't get hold of the materials or parts he demands to make his trannies the best of the best. He won't use lesser quality or sub the work out. He just goes radio silent. I wish I could do that in my line of work.

I had a question about a mod on the Slo amp and emailed the Soldano company, it didn’t have mikes name on the email, left my email and number. Mike called me out of the blue to talk about the mods. He asked what amps I had (bogner 20th xtc and Mesa MkIII) and talked about his fist Slo amps being in the MKIIb chassis and that Howard lease and Nancy Wilson had the first 2 amps. He also built a Slo amp for SRV and was going to deliver it after his show but died the day before. The guy is down to earth and talked for 45 min. Bruce Egnater and Dave Friedman are the only other 2 that I have directly talked with.

Maybe Mesa thought it was fair play. Mike used the MKIIb to design his SLO. I think a few artist have taken a boutique amp and had another company make a Sig amp. Steve Vai had an Ecstasy and TOL100 MICA and had Carvin make the legacy. EVH with the 5150. All the Marshall and AC30 knock offs. Hell Randall Smith worked repairing for Fender and mod’d one to the first boogie. Jim Marshall was trying to copy a Bman and ended up with his amp. It’s a tangled web lol

 

[lespaul6]

Quite sincerely and unfortunately due to poor marketing practices Soldano obviously needs to revamp and a facelift otherwise Soldano will go down like Einstein, just another fuddy-duddy.

Soldano did zero marketing, had zero celebrity endorsers, got copied and cloned, charged and arm and a leg and still stayed in business for 32 years. He did something right. I doubt he's coming away from the deal with BAD a dime poorer either. Some people just don't care about cranking out product on an industrial scale, know people will wait and pay and so that's how they roll. Try getting Chris Merren to return your calls or emails, when you want to place an order and he can't get hold of the materials or parts he demands to make his trannies the best of the best. He won't use lesser quality or sub the work out. He just goes radio silent. I wish I could do that in my line of work.

I had a question about a mod on the Slo amp and emailed the Soldano company, it didn’t have mikes name on the email, left my email and number. Mike called me out of the blue to talk about the mods. He asked what amps I had (bogner 20th xtc and Mesa MkIII) and talked about his fist Slo amps being in the MKIIb chassis and that Howard lease and Nancy Wilson had the first 2 amps. He also built a Slo amp for SRV and was going to deliver it after his show but died the day before. The guy is down to earth and talked for 45 min. Bruce Egnater and Dave Friedman are the only other 2 that I have directly talked with.

Maybe Mesa thought it was fair play. Mike used the MKIIb to design his SLO. I think a few artist have taken a boutique amp and had another company make a Sig amp. Steve Vai had an Ecstasy and TOL100 MICA and had Carvin make the legacy. EVH with the 5150. All the Marshall and AC30 knock offs. Hell Randall Smith worked repairing for Fender and mod’d one to the first boogie. Jim Marshall was trying to copy a Bman and ended up with his amp. It’s a tangled web lol

Tangled for sure... more so than some are wiling to admit sometimes!

 

[Soundstorm]

When you watch the Friedman vid with Mike he mentions Mesa, with the Recto outselling pretty much everything in the 90s he's got a good reason to be irritated.

Simple, Mesa Engineering's Recto is affordable and fairly priced out. Michael's quotient and MSRP is way too high for the average guitarist wanting to bust into the booteek amp arena. Considering back in the early '90s (~<30 years ago) when I purchased my first SLO-100 I laid out only $2,500 for it, good deal at that time. Specifically and considering that it was RTM in 1987 - a significant chunk of change back then. Michael hasn't changed anything in the SLO-100 over the years. Currently a SLO-100 is priced at (or around) $5,000 and nothing is different in the SLO-100 to this day.

In the end I can't think of the last time, or recently that I witnessed a Soldano SLO-100 in any band's backline, except Gov't Mule. Quite sincerely and unfortunately due to poor marketing practices Soldano obviously needs to revamp and a facelift otherwise Soldano will go down like Einstein, just another fuddy-duddy.

And Freidman, yuck! Every Freidman amp I've plugged into sounded like a tin can filled with drywall nails - no musical personality whatsoever. The preamp obviously was an after thought. And I'm specifically speaking to the Friedman BE-50 Deluxe 3-channel 50-watt Tube Head. There's no way I'd fork out ~$3,500 (or whatever they're currently going for) for a OTS wholesale wooden box, 2 Transformers & a bunch of R/C circuits.

Just saying.

this guy

 

[stratjacket]

SLO 30 does sound interesting, but I'd go for a BAD built SLO100 with a proper effects loops in a heartbeat.