SUPER LEAD OVERDRIVE 30

TESTED BY TOM BEAUJOUR

WHEN MICHAEL SOLDANO put the Super Lead Overdrive 100 into production in 1987, he could hardly have known it would become a benchmark of the amplifier industry that would remain in production more than 30 years later. What he did intuit correctly, however, was that guitarists seeking to dial in the high-gain lead sounds that were popular at the time were being woefully underserved by the larger amplifier manufacturers of the era, whose stock offerings required expensive (and often noisy) aftermarket modifications to attain desired levels of sustain and drive. Soldano’s SLO, on the other hand, offered gobs of gain right out of the box, and could do so at a sensible volume, since the amp’s overdrive sound was generated entirely in the preamp section and therefore did not require ear-splitting power amp or output transformer saturation. Word of the SLO spread quickly, and early adopters included luminaries like Toto guitarist and session ace Steve Lukather, Lou Reed, Eric Clapton and, perhaps more crucial to the SLO’s enduring legacy, a cohort of heavy metal shredders like Dokken’s George Lynch, Ratt’s Warren DeMartini and Steve Vai.