Soldano SP-77 Preamp

very straight forward preamp. Its almost idiot proof in terms of the quality to tone... i think you'd have to try to get an unsuable sound out of this pre. all analog, no patches... and if you need a manual i think you may be looking at the wrong device.

this pre rocks the socks off. the clean channel is amazing, and the lead channel doesn't dissapoint. the lead channel can be noisy if you're using single coils, or are standing in front of a tv or under flourescent lights.

I depend on this pre for the bulk of my tone. I have a backup, but it spends more time in its rack than anywhere else.

haven't had any problems so far...

been playing over half of my life, used every modeling system made... this tube pre kills all of them.. especially if you're after that SLO sound. lost?! right.. stolen, i'd track that poor SOB down and unleash the fury on him.

gotta love its simplicity, *hate* the fact that its so simple to use, i spend less time tinkering and more time playing ^_^

great! EQ is sensitive and gain is fully adjustable.
Won't work much for metal or screamo crunch without additinal crunch machinery... but if you wan't actual tube and guitar tone that can sream like attacking birds of prey or sing you lulluby with one step onto a simple old school footswitch, this baby is supersweet. & don't forget your les paul!

you can get awesome tone guaranteed as long as your power amp, guitar and fingers don't suck. I have recieved countless compliments about the clean and dirty tones though several configurations over the years. even on one where the power amp did suck. Run it into a marshall effects return (dry no B.S. processing etc)....WARNING you'd better be able to play though, she WIll become a monster and eat you alive if you don't have a solid grip on your game. You will hear EVERYTHING and she will tell you no lies about yourself. That's why I love her. Slams...don't you wish you had one??? aha i'll sell mine for $30,000 cash.

fine. no complaints. in the 15 years that i've owned mine, the most i've had to do was replace an input jack, output jak, a tube socket and regular tube maint.

dont know never had you call them

i play rock with fusions of metal, jazz, blues, classical, swing, polka and reggea. you can hear it at www.myspace.com/prestonswift.

been playing almost 17 years

if it were stolen or lost i'd definetely have to replace it. that tone is now an extension of my groin.

love her, she is what she is, love it or leave it. love isn't so bad.

my band's sound was built on the unique tone i get from the saldano my amp and my guitar. together they have created the best sounding rig i have ever owned or played through. of course i am an egocentric lead guitar player and just just felt like braggin becuase me tone kicks your tone's ass!!!

2 channels: preamp, treb, mid, bass, output for each channel. Input, output, footswitch. Very easy.

I was using a dual rec then a peavey xxx and they just didnt have enough versatility. So I sold them and decided to gamble on some random things I picked up off ebay. Turns out I'm completely in love! Here's what I go through: boss tuner, volume pedal, boss giga delay, dod phaser, h20 delay/chorus, then off the floor to the rack: rocktron hush, sonic maximizer, soldano sp77, marshall 9005 power amp, all through a 1960 A marshall cab. I play metal and hardcore right now. But I love many styles. I can get any sound I want out of this set up. All the effects and rack units are not necessary though. The sound of the sp77 through the marshall power amp is very versatile and warm. The eq for each channel can give you whatever sound you're looking for.

This is my amp when I play, record and practice. So far, no problems.

I havent talked to anyone at soldano so I wouldnt know.

Like I said, it is very versatile and matches whatever style I feel like playing. Currently I'm playing hardcore/metal and the preamp (gain) control isnt halfway up and it screams! I've been playing for 9 years and I've owned marshalls, mesas, fenders, and peaveys and I prefer this amp over all of them. If it was lost or stolen I would definately look on ebay or anywhere to get another. I havent played a higher priced soldano so I dont know if it isnt in the same sound area as those, but for the price I paid there can't be any better sound!

Ultra basic. 2 channels and a bright switch on ch 1. 2 rack spaces of purple soldano tone. (really no need for 2 spaces when you look inside though)

My set-up usually a fender deluxe strat with a duncan hot rail in the bridge position, or a ric 620 stock - guytone compresser - boss metal zone - boss ds-1 - boss ph-2 - mesa v-twin - boss ge-7 eq - sp-77 - rocktron intellifex- mesa 50/50 - mesa 2x12 stereo recto cab :) I have had this rig for about 5 years now and completly dig it. The sp-77 as a preamp can shine on its own quite nicely. But I find myself with a unlimited pallete of tone by adding in very restrained
juice from my dis/od options into the clean channel cranked. Dont get me wrong, the dirty channel rocks! It is definatly marshall with real attitude, and screams for lead work. articulate and harmonic. I use mesa tubes that seemed to heat the whole preamp up a bit. I am extremely satisfied with this preamp. The v-twin really muscles out with this rig. The bite from the sp77 presents a wall of
heavy thunder. The clean channel will lighten up to pristine twangy
fender tone, but who the hell wants that from a Soldano!

never a problem at all. I bought it used, but in great shape. It has never failed me, except for the pos marshall footswitch that came with it gave up the ghost...figures,

I work about 3 blocks away from the Soldano "plant", yet never have had the need for support. They make some awesome, and expensive gear, and nice guys too.

This is a great pre. I would highly recomend. The prices I have seen on e-gay appear to be twice what I paid, but even at that, I would not hesitate to buy another of it were lost or stolen. I have been playing some 20 years now, and this is one of the most coveted peices of gear I own. Keep in mind this is just one componet.
Your effects, power amp, amd signal processor all enter into your voice. If you suck, that doesnt help either.

Got it on EBAY.

Really painless. 2 channels both with a classic 3 knob eq, a drive control and an output volume pot. One bright switch on the first ( clean ) channel.

Nothing really fancy. No MIDI, no loop, no cab emulation,no memory just great sound!

Never had the manual since I bought it used. But no manual is needed to use that preamp. Really.

The switching is done via a relay controlled by any standard phone jack footswitch. I personnally use my FX unit wich has midi capabilities to switch between those 2 awesone channels.

I use mainly a Godin LG and run the output of the preamp into a TC electronics G-major FX unit and then into the amp. ( JCM800 circuitry driving 2 EL34. )

Of course due to the enormous gain available, when you put all knobs at BROIL, you get a earable breathe. But you are more likely to be wacked against the wall as soon as you hit a chord. In a matter of signal versus noise, when I roll off my guitar volume pot, even on the drive chan, the unit is almost dead silent.

The unit, however, doesn't allow to get a great variety of sounds, it is pretty much itself and that's it. But as it is hot as hell! From undistortable clean to edgie clean to british drive to total overcharge of gain, the preamp gives a well balanced warm tone. Kind of midway between a marshall crunch and a Boss metal-zone. But that is an insult for the Soldano being compared with such units.... :)

I can't remember of anyone with this tone.... but it fits well on almost any ambiance. In the newer Metallica (load and reload) type of tone.

The eq section isn't very effective, but just enough to do some voicing without loosing anything essential from the signal. But honestly, I do some further EQ-ing with the full 3-band parametric EQ built in my G-Major.

I got this thing used as I already stated. And I might be the 10th guy to play with it. The input jack sometime crack and pop, I should change that input jack that don't even hold the cable very tightly. But other than that sign of wear, This preamp seems to be unbreakable. Not a glitch, not drawback. The unit is a little worn, has apperently got a few serious physical traumatisms but it is playing as a new one.

It's big ( 2 unit rakmount, when you open the case, it's almost empty in there! ), it's ugly ( grey plastic knobs on a weirdo purple-ish grey aluminium facing ) but it is the kind of artefact archeologists will find after the next intergalactical nuclear war.

No exerience with customer support. The unit is supposed to garanteed for a lifetime but I doubt I will ever need to repare anything beside of my loose jack.

Midi control would have been nice.
But it really rocks anyway.

( By the way the actual version of this preamp is now sold with built in MIDI implementation and motorized pots! Check it out on the Soldano web site. I will sure get one if I win a million bucks someday.... )

very basic responsive amp, easy to dial in the sounds you want.
mine is a usa version and has been customized with a extra pot you can dial in to get a kind a crunch sound.

I have it racked together with a TC G-Major which I also use for changing the channels via a boss midi foot-ctrlr ,the relay 1+2 function of the G-major works well for this purpose.
Also because the SP-77 EQ is very basic I use the G-Major's EQ section to tweak to a Fender clean, crunch or Marshall lead sound
Poweramp is a MB 2:90 but I am planning to switch to a old MB 295.
my favorite artists are various : SRV,Larry Carlton,Lukather,Robben Ford,Scott Henderson,Wayne Krantz,Ritenour,to Grant Green and W.Montgomery.

I bought it second hand one month ago, so far no problems.

I play funk,jazz,blues-rock,fusion,covers for about 20 years. I
also own a tri-axis and a roland GP16 which I have used for about ten years now. I always wanted to own a Soldano xr88 but those are hard to find second hand. I wanted to try something different while avoiding the modelling digital stuff which all sounds the same.

Easy to use. No esoteric features.
Simply two channels clean and lead. On the front good reachable knobs.
Separate Gain, output level and tone controls for each channel.
On the rear two outputs and input for a foot switch (for 2 channels).
Never saw the handbook.
Minor flaw, if you don't have a footswitch, you can only play
the lead channel. This is the reason why I only tested the Lead
channel. Therefore a 9 in this category.
You don't need something like an effect loop you can simply
connect your effects onto line out.

Tested only the Lead Channel for reasons described above.
Tested it with a '58 Gibson Les Paul Historic from '99.
The lead channel gives you much Gain. Compared to my
Marshall JCM900 where I use gain settings 10/10, here
a 4/10 is sufficient. Over 5 the gain gets heavy and I think
that the amp then gets much responsive to feedback and if you
do home recording and you sit near the amp, then you get some
noise from the pickups, but I think this is normal.
This preamp doesn't come with any effect.
I connected this preamp to the output stage of a Marshall
JCM900 combo and played it at "living room" level.
Very distorted lead sound. Thought not bad.
Later when recording with a friend we "benchmarked" the
sound against former recordings using a Marshall JCM 900
100W combo.
Result is, that we found out, that single notes and dual
notes can be played well, but when playing chords the Soldano
sounds muddy and you can't hear the single notes in a chord.
Another thing is, that the Soldane tends to sound more like a
distortion device than a Tube amp. Modifying the bass/middle/treble
knobs, whose setting were around 5.5/10 6.5/10 4/10 didn't change
that. Additionally you don't hear anymore the sound and attach
of your Les Paul. And that's really the worst thing when playing
with this Preamp.
Using a Marshall JCM900 you really hear the guitar, the player,
the attach, you have nice sounding chords, all this you can
forget using the lead channel of this Soldano.
I didn't play other Soldano components in the past.
I was really disappointed when hearing the recordings.
I can't recommend this device.
Go and buy a good sounding Marshall, and you hear you playing
and your instrument sounding, with this device I assume you
always hear a Soldano SP77 no matter what you plug into.

can't say anything about it
used it for 2 days not more.
But looks very solid.

I usually play Rock and Jazz. I play since about 22 years.
I own an Ibanez Explorer '81, Les Paul Plus '95 and
Les Paul '58 Historic from '99. I mostly play through
a Marshall JCM900 effect out -> Alesis Midiverb III
into a Tascam M-30 vintage mixer. Special equalizer
settings let you filter out all the fuzz, that you usually
have when doing hmoe recording via "line out".
So that you get a real good Marshall sound.
In this environment other Amps, that do sound well do so.
You don't get player dynamic out of this soldano. Chords
sound muddy distorted ... All in all its nothing I can
recommend. For my personal taste I don't buy an expensive
Les Paul that has tone / sustain / dynamic, to hear afterwards
this distorted muddy sound, where you don't hear the beaty of
your instrument. Or in other words, the Preamp doesn't bring
the style of your playing or the sound of your instruments
to the power amp, you feed the Soldano with your playing
and get Soldano noise as output ...
Since sound has major prio all over other things, this
unit only gets a 3 overall.

I own the USA made model. Nothing could be easier to use than this thing. 2 channels, clean and overdrive. Each channel has gain, low, mid, treble, and output. The clean channel has a bright switch as well. There is no effects loop and one line out. I give it an 8 in this category though because the only way to switch cannels is by footswitch. This is a small incovienence.

All tube preamp based on the SLO 100. I pair it with a mesa 20/20. The clean channel is definitely fenderish, with the bright switch it really sparkles. The lead channel can go from classic crunch to modern metal (maybe just shy of a recto) and stays articulate at all gain stages. I mainly set the gain halfway and get a good smooth distortion for lead. Some people complain about it being too bright...I don't notice that at all though I will say it needs some power behind it to not sound buzzy as do all tube preamps.

Havn't had aprobelm yet.

Havn't had to deal with Soldano.

Great preamp for the price if you are into simplicity, which is what interested me in this unit. I had an ADA MP-1 and I think this unit sounds better than that unit especially on the clean channel. The distortion is more articulate as well.

had to do alot of tweaking to get a nice heavy crisp sound. The mids, bass and gain are all very touchy. For low gain settings, should'nt be a problem

once you finally get the preamp to your specs and screaming, it is the equililent of an early model Dual recto, they both have good qualities and so-so qualities (compared to Boutique style amps).
I ran this through a VHT2150

seems ok, did'nt have a problem

folks at Soldano are nice and answered all my questions before my purchase

Good but not great.
I play a PRS Custom 24 w/tone zone humbuckers.. It sounded nice, but not the over-the-top sound I was hoping to find..
Lets get this outta the way first on my wrap up, don't expect TOO much from this preamp, it sounds good, leave it at that. 1) It has the same circutry as the SLO made with cheaper parts (as per Bill at Soldano) 2) It does not sound exactly like an SLO, so don't think your'e getting one at the fraction of the cost.

This is very easy to use. If you are the type of musician that knows how to tweak your amp controls, you will find it very easy to come up with cool sounds for a wide range of music. You can go from super clean fat or bright to nice crunch and screaming harmonics.

I run this into the power sections of either a "Red Knob Twin" or a Yamaha/soldano T100C. I use five different styles of guitars IE; Tele, Strat, LP copy (slide), Grestsh anniversary (hollow body). It seems like any guitar that I plug into this setup sounds good. Some clean, some out of phase some dirty. (it all sounds good)

Not much that can go wrong. I would not think twice about using it with out a back up.

I have dealt with Soldano in regards to my Soldano designed Yamaha T100C amp. These people were under no obligation what so ever to give me the time of day. I emailed their tech support about some modifications that I wanted to make on the Yamaha to make it more like the Soldano SLO 100. I was totally impressed by the way they went out of their way to answer questions tell me how to make the mods. I can only believe that they have to have the best support around

I play a wide variety of styles. I write and record songs. I have been playing for about 35 years. I am not looking for (my sound). I like the flexibility of differen't sounds. The SP77 delivers the sounds I like. This is an all around great pre-amp