When I was very young my brother either left the house of his own free will, or was kicked out. It depends on who you ask as to which version you'll end up getting. Regardless, this all happened long before he and I could form any type of sibling bond, or rivalry. As my teenage years started to set in I chose to hang out with him as often as I possibly could. At a certain point I decided to ask him to teach me guitar, which I knew was one of his favorite hobbies. I figured it would bring us closer together, give us more reason to hang out, more chances to bond and maybe I would learn a valuable skill to use at an older age. This skill, of course, still hasn't paid off all these years later. I am glad though that we both took those chances to hang out with each other, and all the times we went out scouring pawn stores and guitar stores looking for gear, although it rarely yielded much other than memories.
There is one time that still sticks out in my mind above all the rest. We made a visit to the local Guitard Center (No, I didn't misspell that), as we had many times before. The first thing we both noticed when we walked in was a snakeskin Soldano SLO-100 sitting right in the middle of the room. Neither of us knew if it was just coming in, or sold and just going out, but it stuck out like a beacon. My brother asked a sales man to demo the amp and let me tell you, even though almost 30 years have passed since then the impression that amp left on me has yet to tarnish. It was loud, raw, but articulate and sounded absolutely amazing. Sadly, it was also very, very expensive! So, what do we do when I can't afford something? No! We don't steal, you bunch of heathens! We create something similar to the best of our ability!
I chose to look for a pedal that emulates the Soldano SLO-100 so that I could build my own. I found a few pedals that claim to sound like an SLO-100, but most of them don't have layouts (as of the writing of this entry), so they're not an option. The closest thing I could find was tagboard effects' Modern SLO 100 which I did build. Currently it's been tested and functions, but it still needs a bit of tweaking. I chose the resistor method over the trim pot version, because I'm quite possibly an idiot. Also because I've not been a fan of trim pots since building my ROG Umble clone, The Humble. After using the resistor method I've learned no matter what my stances used to be on trim pots, they are very, very, very, very, very, very useful, compared to trying to nail down the correct resistor values. Too late now, but I'm sure I'll get that sound someday.
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