There have been a lot of rumors about Mike Soldano retiring, but this is the first time I've seen anything from Mike himself confirming this. He doesn't seem to be interested in selling the business, so apparently no more Soldano amps will be made. If you're not familiar with Soldano, it's a boutique brand of amp favored by guitarists like Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, Warren deMartini, George Lynch, Warren Haynes....

The Soldano segment starts at 1:50 in this video
http://www.seattlechannel.org/artZone?videoid=x98495

No more Soldano. That's a pity. Those were amazing amps.

They still are amazing . I've got an Astroverb and I love it. Since the rumors started, prices on the used market have jumped. The only SLO100 that I've seen for sale in recent weeks has a price of $7500.

Hehehe that's awesome. They become a treasure. It can be a good marketing move...

Seems like the Carvin trick to me. First they were out of business then popped-up with a different owner.

In fairness to Carvin, I don't believe that's true. They closed the factory and stopped selling their line of products, then they launched a new line of products. Nobody went out of business, there is no different owner, and the old line of products is no longer available. In other words, I don't think it's fair to say it was a trick. It was just a change in direction for the company.

Anyway, if you watch the video, you'll see Soldano is almost a one man operation, so it's a different story. Maybe he'll find somebody to carry on his legacy, but the point is: the person who _is_ Soldano Amplifiers is retiring.

Those amps are about to be worth crazy money if he retires with no heir apparent. It will be dumble prices pretty soon. There are folks like Myasnikov in Russia who make replicas of the X88r preamp. I"m guessing they are gonna be doing more biz soon.

Wow that's cool - etiher this is a very smart business move - or he is all about the integrity of his name/brand.

Either way, I had to dial in a cool Soldano type of tone after reading this

(beginning of this video: https://www.facebook.com/kristofer.dahl/vid...57484137557069/ )

I"m using the Myasnikov (Russian) clone of the lead channel on the Soldano X88r preamp (which cost a few thousand dollars if you can find one) in this vid and i"ve gotten compliments on the tone for years on this one. The "Soldano Tone" is nearly mythical. I"m glad that, even if Soldano calls it quits, there will still be folks building things that sound like this, and saving folks from paying crazy dumble prices. This solo was for one of my bits done for gmc. Good tone really does get a response from people.

I worked out a way to have TOUCH SCREEN CONTROL of my processor and soldano clone way back in 2015. I'm glad to see that vendors have started using touch screens on processors. It took me an ipad and a macbook to pull this off back in the day


This post has been edited by Todd Simpson: Oct 12 2018, 06:07 PM

He has always been about integrity. When you call Soldano Amplifiers on the phone, you'll be talking to Mike Soldano and you'll find him to be a friendly and helpful person .