Soldano SL-60 Head

This is a Soldano "Super Lead" Series 2 SL-60 head. It is almost identical to the HR-50. It has the same features, same look, and uses two 5881 power tubes. Mine is a grey/white color a black grill on the front and on the back. When I emailed the guys at Soldano I was told that these amps where the precursors to the HR-50 amps and were made in about 1990 or so. It is a single channel amp, with high and low gain jacks on the front. It is versatile enough for what I use it for. I play (or try to) early VH, some R.E.M. and U2 stuff as well as a tad of the blues now and again. I think the amp is just perfect as it is now. Maybe a parallel effects loop or foot switchable channels would be nice, but its not needed with the amps sensativity to the volume knob and your picking style. I use this amp at home and out. It could have more features, but then again this is all I need or want.

I use a strat with single coils. I think of all the guitars I have tried with the amp, the strat gives the widest range of tones. The LesPauls I tried sounded too muddy without turning the highs up. The Wolfgang was okay, but nothing great. I tried some Charlotte or something by Hammer made in the 80's. That just didn't cut it either. This amp has some hum, especially on high gain settings. Using a good cable usually fixes that problem. What is neat about this amp is that you can set the EQ for the guitar you are using, plug in to the low or high depending on your general mood, and simply twist the preamp and volume knobs to a range for the song you're playing. Then just fiddle with the volume on your guitar. Using the guitar's volume knob on low settings makes the amp clean. Turning it up high makes it distorted. The clean channel can be distorted at high volumes when you crank the pre-amp. It sounded fairly clean to me. I wouldn't call the distortion brutal. It is not at all harsh even with the pre-amp on 10 and the guitar volume maxed. I think that it's rather warm. I wouldn't play Metallica or anything extreamly heavy on this. It probably would get there with a stomp box, or on 10. I think its strong point is the semi-distorted sound. I use this head with a Marshall cab from a 1969 Plexi, with Greenbacks. I tried it with a few other cabs. The VHT was a little too muffled and dark for it. It did get a nice crunch to it. The new Marshall had a nice lead tone to it, but not as good as the old one.

Has never broken down. I expect the tubes will go at some point. It is solid, just gotta make sure the grills are on good. Based on other reports Soldano gear is reliable.

I mailed them once. The were brief but helpful. The never did send the catalog I requested. I am pretty sure the warranty is up. I know that they will fix or mod it if I mail it back to them.

I love the look of it. It looks and sounds absolutely fabulous. If it were stolen or lost I would probably get a different Soldano. I doubt I will ever find this one again, but an HR50 is the closest thing to it. I hate how heavy it is.