Soldano Supercharger GTO

The Soldano Supercharger GTO is a reissue of Soldano's original Supercharger GTO, a preamp in a box pedal built around a two-12AX7-driven preamp. In other words, it puts the gain stages of a tube preamp on a pedalboard, so a player can push an amp or run it into a power amp without carrying a full head. Premier Guitar's reviewer summed it up as a "Dynamic, responsive, harmonically rich overdrive with excellent headroom. Vibe for days."¹

The controls: Gain, Tone and Output

The GTO keeps things to three knobs, and each does what its name says. Gain adjusts the gain, Tone adjusts the tone, and Output adjusts the output level. Premier Guitar's reviewer set the Gain at maximum, the Tone at 2 o'clock and the Output at noon while playing through it, which gives a sense of the working range: the Gain goes all the way up, and the Output sits comfortably below maximum at a usable volume.¹

What it sounds like

As ever, the sound is the reviewer's to describe, not ours. Premier Guitar's reviewer found that the GTO excels at mid-gain tones, calling them, to their ears, its strength, and noted just how much headroom there is to play with.¹

For players weighing it against Soldano's later pedals, the company has since entered the pedal market more broadly: the Soldano SLO pedal captures the SLO-100 amp's character, and the Soldano SLO PLUS adds the SLO Normal channel to that design. The GTO sits apart from those as a tube-driven preamp reissue rather than an amp-in-a-box take on the SLO. See also Overdrive Pedals and Preamp Pedals for how this kind of circuit fits among the alternatives¹.

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