By Chris Butler [As reprinted from Guitar World, May 1993]

"The X99's substantial brain power is completely masked by its ease of operation."

THE OTHER DAY I came home after a hard day of looking for a job to rind my power off again -- and all the digital stuff in the house flipping out. Sitting on my sofa was Cadillac, my cat, staring at the flashing digital clock on the VCR. Kept him entertained for hours.

I mention this because I had the same reaction with respect to the motorized controls on the Soldano/Caswell X99 preamp. Change a preset and the knobs dance like plump little Rockettes. Hook up a synthesizer, wiggle the joy stick, and voila -- real-time MIDI control. It was magic...ghostly...and kept me entertained for hours.

A cheesy gimmick? Not. There are serious electronic and esthetic principles involved here. The X99 is a hybrid of two different technologies--a tube-driven preamp that's also MIDI-controlled with 128 user-programmable presets. Since microchips can't talk directly to vacuum tubes or analog eq pots, an intermediary component is required. Usually, these are VCA's (Voltage Controlled Amplifiers), active circuits that introduce an additional gain stage and otherwise color the signal in an undesirable way. Instead of VCA's, the X99 uses MIDI-controlled motors that are directly attached to the passive volume and eq pots, so the signal's sonic purity is preserved. It's a very, very hip design solution.

Which pretty much describes the X99 in general. It sounds fabulous offering a great crunch plus clean and overdrive channels with a bright switch. Inside, there are five 12AX7A's with ceramic sockets (bonus points!) mounted on the mother p.c. board (not the best place, since tube heat can crack the board), plus one of those new lightweight "Baby Gouda" ring power transformers that makes it possible for the unit to weigh in at about nine pounds. Also inside is a monster sound that -- thanks to the memory circuitry--is instantly "get-back-able" with the push of a button or a kick of a MIDI foot controller. All you have to do is scroll to a preset, adjust the tone and gain levels to taste, then push the save button. If the memory is not protected, the number on the display will stay the same and decimal points will light up. If the program number is okay, push the save button again to store the exact settings in memory. How exact? Well, the resolution on the motors is 128 increments, which is very precise. And recalling a preset is instantaneous: punch up the preset number and the knobs readjust themselves in a flash. Users can also copy between presets, assign any or all of the five motors to external controllers and change the MIDI receive channel. And just to be on the safe side, the memory defaults to a protected status after powering up to prevent accidental changes to the programs. For even more insurance, a user can back-up the memory on a computer, sequencer or MIDI data storage device via a system exclusive patch dump.

The X99 showed up at my door at the top of a super-busy week, so it got a thorough workout on everything from a quick home demo to a multi-track recording session. In every application the preamp was a champ, whether called upon to add warmth to a budget electric-acoustic 12-string or the proper amount of chainsaw distortion to a metal-ish overdub. In fact, the only trouble I had was locating and learning to drive a MIDI foot controller, which is essential for getting the most from the unit.

The X99's capabilities were shown in a particularly good light in the following scenario: A tune required two different tones (clean verses and overdrive choruses), plus an additional volume and brightness change during the solo. Our sound source was comprised of a Strat, the X99 patched into a Tubeworks MosValve 962 power amp and a Mesa 4 x 12 Celestion-loaded cabinet; the MIDI controller was a Lake Butler Sound RFC-1 MIDI Mitigator. The clean setting (patch I0) was initially programmed in the manner described above, then the crunch (patch 11) was punched in for the choruses, with extra care taken to match the gain levels between them. I should note here that the clean channel seems not to have as much gain as the fuzzy ones, which might mean that the three channels are cascaded instead of being truly independent. Also, the X99 is a teeny bit noisy, but that's often the price one pays for that glorious tube overdrive.

For the solo, we copied patch 11 into patch 12, then raised the gain and re-saved the setting. I also wanted more treble to kick in at the end of the solo, so we copied 12 into 13 and toggled on the bright switch, then saved again. The software in our test unit did not allow the bright switch to be accessed via the MIDI controller, which is something that could be included in future software versions. Lastly, we assigned the Mitigator's footswitches to match the pre-sets, and rolled tape. Four minutes and twenty-three seconds later we had all the guitar parts recorded and pre-mixed.

The X99 had even more tricks up its sleeve. On another track, I envisioned a fuzz bass following a single-note guitar part, with the bass gradually getting lost in splashy reverberation. This time we plugged the unit directly into the console, and since the studio had only minimum outboard gear, we printed the part with the reverb rather than waste a useful effect on my dumb idea later on during mixdown. After getting our tone settings, we patched the X99 into a Rocktron Intellifex (note: the X99 has no effects loop) and then had the Mitigator talk to the effects box via the X99's MIDI Thru jack. With the Mitigator's expression pedal, we were able to manually increase the reverb wash as desired. My idea still sucked; but the technology worked fine.

And that's about it. The X99's substantial brain power is completely masked by its ease of operation. And oooh that prestigious, custom-Soldano sound. Prestige costs, of course. The X99 lists at about the book value of my car, and is designed to be a part of a professional rack system. And a MIDI foot controller is mandatory, unless you're a "set it and forget it" player. But man, it'd be cool to have...