Mike Soldano is one class act

glassman

glassman

Electron Herder
One of my customers brought in a Soldano Avenger last week that had almost no output. He's only had it about 2 months; the amp is about 4 years old. I quickly figure out that it has a bad output transformer which was aggravated by an intermittent connection in the impedance selector. He asked me how much that will cost and I told him to call the Soldano folks stating that he could get the transformer for the same price I could and that there's no reason to pay my mark up if I have to source it. I sent the amp with him and told him to call me when he has his transformer and impedance switch in hand.

Fast forward to today.

He drops off the amp and the new parts and says "I talked with Mike and explained your diagnosis and he sent me the parts at no cost, I only had to cover shipping". I told him that I kinda expected that to happen but didn't want to make promises for someone else.

Now that's customer service! He didn't have to do that...that's pretty much the coolest thing I've seen a businessman do in a long time.:friday:
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

It's nice to see people stand behind their work above and beyond expectation.
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

glassman said:
One of my customers brought in a Soldano Avenger last week that had almost no output. He's only had it about 2 months; the amp is about 4 years old. I quickly figure out that it has a bad output transformer which was aggravated by an intermittent connection in the impedance selector. He asked me how much that will cost and I told him to call the Soldano folks stating that he could get the transformer for the same price I could and that there's no reason to pay my mark up if I have to source it. I sent the amp with him and told him to call me when he has his transformer and impedance switch in hand.

Fast forward to today.

He drops off the amp and the new parts and says "I talked with Mike and explained your diagnosis and he sent me the parts at no cost, I only had to cover shipping". I told him that I kinda expected that to happen but didn't want to make promises for someone else.

Now that's customer service! He didn't have to do that...that's pretty much the coolest thing I've seen a businessman do in a long time.:friday:
Click to expand...

Thats weird cause my buddy had an Avenger with a bad OT. had to buy a replacement for it at about 160 bucks. He still made 500 bucks on it, having bought it to fix and resell. But is there a pattern here with the Bad OT's on Avengers? I realize two amps is hardly a basis for something liek this, but where theres smoke...
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

Doubt it. Soldano's have a pretty solid reputation for build quality.

Still Jonesing for a Decatone
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

MetalManiac said:
Thats weird cause my buddy had an Avenger with a bad OT. had to buy a replacement for it at about 160 bucks. He still made 500 bucks on it, having bought it to fix and resell. But is there a pattern here with the Bad OT's on Avengers? I realize two amps is hardly a basis for something liek this, but where theres smoke...
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The knob on the impedance selector is kinda out in harms way. I really don't think it's a component quality issue based on what it looks like inside.
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

glassman said:
The Avenger board says "Decatone" on it...hmmm
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That's weird. The Decatone is a 3 channel amp. They might be using the same OD channel, but I haven't had any experience with the Avenger series at all. :dunno:
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

TheProphet said:
That's weird. The Decatone is a 3 channel amp. They might be using the same OD channel, but I haven't had any experience with the Avenger series at all. :dunno:
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The script was the only thing I noticed...I didn't notice if there was some unused room on the board. My sights were set on the output section. I was in my "zone"!
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

And I have 0% knowledge of anything that carries an electric current (except guitar wiring). LOL.

No, even if it's half as good as a Decatone it'll sound mind blowingly good. If I had a $3,000 budget for an amp head, I would have one as soon as I could get my hands on one.
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

He's the real deal. I've always heard great stories about him and his customer service.
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

TheProphet said:
And I have 0% knowledge of anything that carries an electric current (except guitar wiring). LOL.

No, even if it's half as good as a Decatone it'll sound mind blowingly good. If I had a $3,000 budget for an amp head, I would have one as soon as I could get my hands on one.
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I'll report back Wednesday evening (next day in the shop). If I'm lucky, he won't pick it up until Saturday which will give me a little time to test my "fix"! I told him he had to pick it up no later than Saturday since I gotta go to North Carolina next week. I don't like having other people's stuff sitting in the shop when I'm not in town.
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

JOLLY said:
He's the real deal. I've always heard great stories about him and his customer service.
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I've heard those too...now that I've seen it first hand, I can attest it's not an urban myth.
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

glassman said:
One of my customers brought in a Soldano Avenger last week that had almost no output. He's only had it about 2 months; the amp is about 4 years old. I quickly figure out that it has a bad output transformer which was aggravated by an intermittent connection in the impedance selector. He asked me how much that will cost and I told him to call the Soldano folks stating that he could get the transformer for the same price I could and that there's no reason to pay my mark up if I have to source it. I sent the amp with him and told him to call me when he has his transformer and impedance switch in hand.

Fast forward to today.

He drops off the amp and the new parts and says "I talked with Mike and explained your diagnosis and he sent me the parts at no cost, I only had to cover shipping". I told him that I kinda expected that to happen but didn't want to make promises for someone else.

Now that's customer service! He didn't have to do that...that's pretty much the coolest thing I've seen a businessman do in a long time.:friday:
Click to expand...

That's really awesome! A great guy and a wonderful business sense...Glad to hear it!
 
Re: Mike Soldano is one class act

My Avenger 100 had a bad OT recently too. The amp has Mercury Magnetics tranny's and it's an early version SN#153. (2001)
My tech called Bill at Soldano and Bill offered really no help. Other than suggesting sending the amp to him for repair of course.
My tech found that many of the amps componant values did not match the marked values on the board. This caused all sorts of fun for my tech while trying to diagnose the problem. Soldano would also not provide any schematics. Bill told my tech that they got a bunch of resistors and capacitors for cheap so threw them in a bunch of their amps. They had to jerry rig a bunch of other values to make everything work within spec.
My tech finally found that there was a burn spot on one on the windings on the OT. He took a few winds off the OT and it's running normally again.
The OT problem took out my power tubes and melted a few resistors. I also had some leaky caps replaced while he was in there.
I should have it back in a week or two, so I'll see if it still turns my crank.
If not I'll unload it for something else.
My tech had a SLO in his shop at the same time and he said it was all the same stuff inside with the componant value discrepancies. He was shocked. The build quality is good, but the frankenstein and subbed out values was really dissapointing.
Good thing is that my tech has been inside the amp so much that he says he can handle anything that goes wrong with Soldanos now because of so much time with it. So that's good to know if I decide to keep it.
 
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