In 1987, Mike Soldano created the SLO-100, a fire-breathing amp that, to this day, remains influential to those who build modern high-gain amps. Though the amp arrived at the peak of the hair-metal age, the SLO-100 appealed to players in many styles. Dokken’s George Lynch and Eddie Van Halen used it, but so did Mark Knopfler. That versatility is a big part of what made it iconic.
Decades later, the SLO-100 remains legendary. But at just south of $4,000 for a new one, they are not cheap. So, it’s cool that Soldano distilled so much of the essence of the SLO-100 into the SLO Pedal, a stompbox that sells for a mere $229. It’s a pretty nice stand-in for a player that doesn’t have the real deal on hand.
Streamlining Again
Several years back, Soldano released the Supercharger G.T.O., which essentially offered the preamp section of the SLO-100 in a pedal equipped with two 12AX7 tubes. I have an early edition of the Supercharger G.T.O., and it is, indeed, fantastic. It’s also pretty big. While it’s a very different stomp, the SLO Pedal is much more compact and practical in many respects. It’s built around a more straightforward, tubeless design. It also uses much of the gain section topology from the SLO-100.
While the SLO Pedal lacks the independent overdrive controls for preamp and master that you see on the SLO-100, Soldano users will recognize the 3-band EQ, presence control, and side-mounted deep switch, which stands in for the SLO-100’s depth knob and adds low-end oomph. It’s an easy-to-read and streamlined set of controls. And though it might look complex to a 3-knob-overdrive type of user, it’s easy to work with.
Hot-Rodded Hellraiser
When the SLO Pedal arrived on my doorstep, all the knobs were dialed to 7 (approximately 1:00 on a clock). Taking that as a lucky omen, I plugged it in, and right off the bat, without any adjustments, it sounded fantastic.
As much as I might have been inclined to play the SLO Pedal forever at lucky 7s, it offers many, many more tone-shaping possibilities. Just engaging the deep switch takes the edge off the highs and adds more body. Set this way, it almost walks the line between amp-style drive and woolly fuzz. When I adjusted the EQ to get a darker, creamier lead sound, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to bring extra clarity in and out of the blend in precise amounts. Darker sounds also don’t seem to squash dynamic range in the way other drive pedals might. There’s less discernible compression and, even at a fairly dark setting, pick attack tends to cut through.
I was similarly impressed that the pedal didn’t squeal out of control at maximum-gain settings. It was also dead quiet when I muted the strings. In general, I probably wouldn’t use that level of saturation, but the way the SLO Pedal holds it together in that zone is impressive. There’s also a ton of clean headroom available. And even with the volume knob around 1 it was plenty loud.
SLO-Hand Stylings
Soldano amps were, of course, also used by very non-metal players, like Eric Clapton and Mike Landau, and the SLO Pedal shines in this context, too. With the gain rolled all the way off and the pedal volume cranked hard, the SLO Pedal delivers mid-gain sounds with a rich, overdriven amp feel. And though it might sound weird, I enjoyed the SLO Pedal’s lower gain sounds so much that, at times, I longed for even less than what I got at the minimum gain setting. I’m sure Soldano didn’t imagine this pedal as a boost. But with so much mid- to high-gain range, it’s hard to not imagine how a few cleaner sounds could make this a complete drive solution.
The Verdict
There are many other factors that give an amp its sound and feel, and Soldano nailed a lot of intangibles when they built the SLO-100 amp. But the way the SLO Pedal captures the personality of the SLO-100 is impressive. And even if you’re not specifically looking for the SLO-100 sound, the SLO Pedal can add a lot of that mid- to high-gain, with the headroom to get it across.
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Guitarists are used to coveting cranky, old gear, but if you’re not a rack user, the H3000 might not be for you! If you ever see one of these in a studio, be sure to take some time to check it out, and maybe give the plugin a try.When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
PRS Guitars today released the updated MT 15 and the new Archon Classic amplifiers, along with a larger Archon speaker cabinet. The 15-watt, two-channel Mark Tremonti signature amp MT 15 now features a lead channel overdrive control. An addition to the Archon series, not a replacement, the 50-watt Classic offers a fresh voice by producing retro rock “classic” tones reminiscent of sound permeating the radio four and five decades ago. Now twice the size of the first Archon cabinet, the Archon 4x12 boasts four Celestion V-Type speakers.
MT 15 Amplifier Head
Balancing aggression and articulation, this 15-watt amp supplies both heavy rhythms and clear lead tones. The MT 15 revision builds off the design of the MT 100, bringing the voice of the 100’s overdrive channel into its smaller-format sibling. Updating the model, the lead channel also features a push/pull overdrive control that removes two gain stages to produce vintage, crunchier “mid gain” tones. The clean channel still features a push/pull boost control that adds a touch of overdrive crunch. A half-power switch takes the MT to 7 watts.
“Seven years ago, we released my signature MT 15 amplifier, a compact powerhouse that quickly became a go-to for players seeking both pristine cleans and crushing high-gain tones. In 2023, we took things even further with the MT 100, delivering a full-scale amplifier that carried my signature sound to the next level. That inspired us to find a way to fit the 100's third channel into the 15's lunchbox size,” said Mark Tremonti.
“Today, I’m beyond excited to introduce the next evolution of the MT15, now featuring a push/pull overdrive control on the Lead channel and a half-power switch, giving players even more tonal flexibility to shape their sound with a compact amp. Can’t wait for you all to plug in and experience it!”
Archon Classic Amplifier Head
With a refined gain structure from the original Archon, the Archon Classic’s lead channel offers a wider range of tones colored with gain, especially in the midrange. The clean channel goes from pristine all the way to the edge of breakup. This additional Archon version was developed to be a go-to tool for playing classic rock or pushing the envelope into modern territory. The Archon Classic still features the original’s bright switch, presence and depth controls. PRS continues to stock the Archon in retailers worldwide.
“The Archon Classic is not a re-issue of the original Archon, but a newly voiced circuit with the lead channel excelling in '70s and '80s rock tones and a hotter clean channel able to go into breakup. This is the answer for those wanting an Archon with a hotrod vintage lead channel gain structure without changing preamp tube types, and a juiced- up clean channel without having to use a boost pedal, all wrapped up in a retro-inspired cabinet design,” said PRS Amp Designer Doug Sewell.
Archon 4x12 Cabinet
As in the Archon 1x12 and 2x12, the mega-sized PRS Archon 4x12 speaker cabinet features Celestion V-Type speakers and a closed-back design, delivering power, punch, and tight low end. Also like its smaller brethren, the 4x12 is wrapped in durable black vinyl and adorned with a British-style black knitted-weave grill cloth. The Archon 4x12 is only the second four-speaker cabinet in the PRS lineup, next to the HDRX 4x12.
PRS Guitars continues its schedule of launching new products each month in 2025. Stay tuned to see new gear and 40 th Anniversary limited-edition guitars throughout the year. For all of the latest news, click www.prsguitars.com/40 and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, X, and YouTube.
