soldano sp77's

[siggy14]

OK for anyone that thinks the grey ones are the cheaper ones, i am starting to believe they are not. THey are now selling for more on ebay and have hand written s/n's. Check out the pic's of the one i had that i sold and see how well they are made on the inside.
http://community.webshots.com/album/377254949EFZLbE

[Mordor]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

Any opinions on these are much appreciated,maybe I'll get a purple one soon.

[thetroy]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

The purple looks cooler, therefore I would buy a purple one.

[markD]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

i had a purple one and thought it was the crappiest sounding piece of shit i'd ever heard. and that was AFTER it came back from soldano for repairs. i couldn't get rid of it fast enough. the clean was crappy, the gain was buzzy and piercing, the channel switching was a joke. there was always some of the clean signal apparent in the gain signal. the loop sucked ass....


oh i HATED that thing. luckily people will pay for anything with the soldano name on it. i sold it locally for double what i paid. that was the best thing about that preamp!!!!

[siggy14]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

[ QUOTE ]
i had a purple one and thought it was the crappiest sounding piece of shit i'd ever heard. and that was AFTER it came back from soldano for repairs. i couldn't get rid of it fast enough. the clean was crappy, the gain was buzzy and piercing, the channel switching was a joke. there was always some of the clean signal apparent in the gain signal. the loop sucked ass....


oh i HATED that thing. luckily people will pay for anything with the soldano name on it. i sold it locally for double what i paid. that was the best thing about that preamp!!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

I owned them both, and let me just say the grey one sounded ALOT better! I got rid of both soon as i got my yamaha.

[Soloist1]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

Yeah your right Todd. Looks more hand wired than the USA one. More like an x88's internals also. Interesting. I've had 3 of the purple faced ones. They were all slightly different. The one I sold you sounded the best to my ears after I changed all the resistors. The thing I didn't like about the stock USA one was if you went past 2 o'clock on the gain it started getting muddy/flubby. The tone controls sucked also. Changing one would greatly affect the other. And those knobs suck. If they wanted that style knob they should have used the SLO ones. Changing the resistors to metal film helped the muddy/flubbiness and the tone. At least compared to what it was. I never really went past 12 o'clock so that gain adjust never really bothered me on any of the 3. The tone controls were a pain in the ass though.

[Mordor]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

Geez,I didn't thought it sounds muddy!

[rstites]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

It shouldn't sound muddy at all. You'd have to really work hard to get any Soldano to sound muddy. The SP-77 is a killer preamp and great bang-for-buck. It has the Soldano lead sound and the clean is usable if not spectacular. (Note: the clean sounds pretty boxy if you try to run high output pickups through it...just stick with some decent pickups and you'll be fine with it.)

I'm curious about the one post above. The channels are completely independent, so no there is no bleed between them. The EQ is straight forward - just a copy of Marshall EQ, so if you think the SP-77 (or any other Soldano) is difficult to dial in you're pretty much sunk with any other amp because this is as easy as it gets. When I think of EQ screwing with everything, that's Boogie, not Soldano, Marshall, etc. and even the Boogies are manageable with some experience. There is no effects loop in the SP-77, so I'm not sure how anyone could complain about that! I always find it interesting when someone bags on a piece of gear and then complains about things that don't even exist on that piece! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[markD]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

i play with low output pickups and pretty much like classic rock sounds (hence me loving my riveras), and i thought the SP-77 was total shit. the blended channels comment came from what the soldano tech dude told me on the phone. he said that was always some clean channel in the signal, but that normally you wouldn't hear it because the gain channel is so much more powerful. when i sent my unit in for repair the tech told me that i wouldn't hear the clean channel anymore.

i never had a problem with dialing in a sound, but the frequencies of soldano's EQ bugs me. i had the same problem with my SLO that i had in 92. i know that some people think these are the end all of amps, but i hated it.

now shawn just got an astroverb head and i do like that one. we were jamming out on it the night the tampa crew got together. hmmm....

about the loop, yeah my mistake. i had to go back and look at an old pic. then i remembered that i dasiy chained the effects. my goof!! but for some reason i have a mental picture of the little rounded silver input jacks saying loop on them....must have it confused with another thing. it has been several years since i used or have seen it!! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Soloist1]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

On the one you had in particular? Like I said all 3 of mine were different. The tone controls were horrible. I have an SLO now and the sp77 doesn't compare where tone and gain are concerned. For 350 dollars I will agree it is a great unit. And like I said the gain never has to go past 12 o'clock to sound great. But the stock units get flubby past the 2 o'clock point. I suppose a lot depends on pickups and power amp selection as well. I also have no idea what the other person posting that mentioned a loop means. Unless they had Soldano add that later.

[chrisolson]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

ANOTHER SP-77 thread... [img]/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img] Is the search function not working these days? [img]/images/graemlins/poke.gif[/img]

[rstites]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

Actually, now that I read back through it, I understand what you mean about the clean and gain...and it's different than what I was picturing. I've heard people complain about this (and it's there to a certain extent in all channel switching Soldanos because the clean is never disengaged completely), but I've never encountered a problem with it myself.

I don't have any problem with anyone disliking Soldanos, or any other amp (or gear) for that matter. I just have a bit of a pet peeve about calling something crap that clearly isn't, but just isn't your preference. Plus, I can never seem to get as bad of sound out of some of this gear as others apparently can! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I've never run into a good amp that I can't make sound good...maybe not my favorite, but I can usually manage at least one good sound out of it.

No problem on the loop. I was actually thinking you'd had a modded one, or were confusing it with a completely different piece of gear.

[rstites]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

[ QUOTE ]
On the one you had in particular? Like I said all 3 of mine were different. The tone controls were horrible. I have an SLO now and the sp77 doesn't compare where tone and gain are concerned. For 350 dollars I will agree it is a great unit. And like I said the gain never has to go past 12 o'clock to sound great. But the stock units get flubby past the 2 o'clock point. I suppose a lot depends on pickups and power amp selection as well. I also have no idea what the other person posting that mentioned a loop means. Unless they had Soldano add that later.

[/ QUOTE ]

The 3 I've played (only owned one) all sounded pretty much the same, outside of typical amp "issues" like different tubes, etc. I'm sure there'd have a been a difference if I could have A/B them, but I never had them together at the same time. I never had any problem with the tone controls. I dialed them in when I got the rig set up and basicly didn't touch them for the 2-3 years I had it. Compare to the Soldano heads there are only a couple of sweet spots with them that you have to find, but it's not that difficult. We aren't talking old school Boogies here!

All Soldanos are very sensitive to pickups, different guitars, etc. - far more so than most other high gain amps in my experience. Obviously, there's an upside and a downside to this. There are certain combinations that just don't work well with these amps, and the SP-77 was far less forgiving here than the Soldano heads. However, I don't really like high output pickups into the SLO either. I just don't think they're necessary or allow the best tone to come from the amp.

Sure, the SP-77 isn't in the same league as the SLO, for anything, but then not much else out there is either so that's really not fair to use against the little SP-77! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Mordor]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

How does it compare to the hot rod?

[parntz145]

Re: soldano sp77\'s

I played a used one at Guitar Center and really didnt like it at all. I messed around with it for at least 2 hours and just couldnt dial in a tone that I really cared for. I found it very thin sounding. Looked like good build quality but tone wise not up my alley.