Soldano GTO

pretty straight foward controls wise, read on and you,ll see why i rated it so low

I read the other review and agree you can get that govt mule type of sound, but you;ll also get a shitload of noise with it too.nothing seemed to help. i e-mailed soldano and got a wierd reply two days later that didn,t really address my questions and basically said nothing was wrong with my pedal.i,ve read other complaints about the noise as well. let me be perfectly honest with you. i bought this pedal for almost 500 bucks on 48 st without even hearing it.so i,m a complete idiot.i loved the slo 100 tone,read a few bogus rave reviews and jumped right in! I,m still kicking myself.point is learn from my mistake.if this thing wasn,t so noisy , it would still be an overpriced one trick pony. tubes, soldano,handmade ,blah blah blah ........none of that means anything if the pedal sounds like a 747 taking off.

built like a tank .it will make a great paperweight for any desk.

well,when the e-mailed me back to address the noise issue,it must have been come to work high on crack day.

the pedal pretty much sucks. sorry,i know soldanos the holy grail and this will piss off some people but it,s true.I ,ve heard of guy,s modding these things and all kinds of other tweaks but, you shouldn,t have to tweak anything that costs this much.it,s inexcusible. you can buy other overpriced tube pedals that sound better like the h and k tube factor. it,s just as overpriced so you can still feel like a big shot and it sounds better. in the mean time, if anyone has any advice on how to tame the noise on this thing, feel free to e-mail me.i,d feel bad unloading this thing on some other chump

Three knobs, gain, tone and level. Two 12ax7 (stock Sovtek LPS) Cool blue on off switch and in an out jacks. Removable ac cord. This thing weighs a ton and takes up more space than my surburban.

I am running this into the front end of a fender prosonic. I am using a PRS CU 22, Warmoth strat w/kinmans, 52 tele RI, 91 LP standard. I bought this used mostly because I was looking for that SLO vibe but in a kindler gentler package. This is a really cool pedal. It is seemless between the clean on the prosonic, it makes it sound like I am switching between amps, not like I am adding a distortion or overdrive box in front of the amp. I dug my Jeckyll and Hyde but this is way more real sounding. This pedal isn't for everybody though. It gives an articulate throaty bite simillar to the SLO. It really reacts to pick attack and technique. It helps me nail that Gov't Mule tone that I crave. The prosonic OD seems way smoother and can give me the higher gain tones. All in all a great addition to my rig. It is worth the hassle of putting on a back brace and a truss to carry it out to gigs. I think that gainiacs in search of Vai's alien tone should look elsewhere but this is a cool pedal. Worth the money????? I am not sure, it seems like this thing could be built and sold at a profit for less than 200.00. I am giving it an 8 because you can buy an atomic 16 or a 500XL used for about what this pedal retails for.

It seems like you could drive over this thing without a problem. Even the cage around the tubes in over engineered. I think that two posts and screws would have been enough, but this one has 3. I did get a low S/N and had to do the input resistor mod. I actually dropped it down to 89K and swapped preamp tubes until I had what I wanted. Interesting that others have complained about loosing high freq. with this mod but other than the squealing at max gain or volume I found it fairly benign.

Called at 5:00pm on a Fri to ask about the mod and was greated cheerfully and then faxed a handwritten diagram!

Good Stuff.

I am a Jesus Freak that plays in a church every weekend. Sun eve services with loud guitars. This pedal CUTS the mix and gives me a particular sound that I wanted. GO buy a Mule cd and decide if its right for you. If that is the sound you want then this pedal is a 10. But fantastic value......???...considering that I would have to drop somewhere between 1500 and 2G for a used SLO and then drag it with me along with a different amp for cleans....yeah, maybe it is a fantastic value.