Loving It Loud

Seattle’s Mike Soldano invented the super-high-gain guitar amplifier, and gave “loud” a whole new meaning

By Chris Winters | August 2010 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Credit: Photograph by Hayley Young

Mike Soldano (right)
in the Magnolia workshop of his company, Soldano Custom Amplification. With him
are his longtime right hand Bill Sundt (left), and Don Blair (center, with back turned).

Once upon a time, a young rock and roll guitarist moved from
Seattle to Los Angeles to try to make a go of it in the music industry. He may
not have made it to the top of the charts, but his name is now a household word
among many of the nation’s top rock musicians.

Mike Soldano, who runs his business, Soldano Custom
Amplification, from a workshop in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood, has watched
in amazement as his equipment has been adopted by some of the top stars, making
his name synonymous with quality in the world of high-gain (i.e., really loud)
guitar amplifiers.

When he first got to Los Angeles, however, he was just a kid
from Lake City who worked in auto repair shops, liked music and liked building
things.

He started out building his own guitars and amplifiers in
the late 1970s, his initial motivation being to make what he couldn’t afford to
buy. And what’s more, he wasn’t satisfied with the sounds he got from
commercial amps.

“I knew in my head what a guitar tone should be, but I
wasn’t finding anything on the market for it,” Soldano says.

Mesa Boogie amps were the pinnacle of high-gain amplifiers
at the time—gain being a technical term describing how much boost the original
signal gets from input to output. Soldano liked their gain, but he says there
wasn’t much string-to-string definition. Hit a weird chord like a D9 and the
sound turned to mud.

In the mid-1980s, however, he gained valuable experience
working as an amplifier technician at Stars Guitars in San Francisco, where he
specialized in customizing Marshall amplifiers. Returning to Seattle, he
finished putting together his first amp, which he installed in a spray-painted
plywood cabinet and dubbed “Mr. Science.”

Starting in the fall of 1985, he began taking Mr. Science
along when he played gigs around Seattle, and it got noticed. Soon, he had
three people who wanted to buy one.

Musicians being who they are, only one, his friend Tommy
Martin, followed through and made a purchase, leaving Soldano with two extra
amplifiers. So he threw Mr. Science and enough spare parts for another dozen
amps into his 1938 Chevy (along with a new motor), and drove to Los Angeles,
then center of the burgeoning glam metal scene with bands such as Van Halen and
Mötley Crüe.

Soldano