When Ken Schaffer called me out of the blue during a typical day in the GP office in 2015, I wasn’t immediately certain where his rapid-fire dissertation on Filippo Olivieri and the Italian
When Ken Schaffer called me out of the blue during a typical day in the GP office in 2015, I wasn’t immediately certain where his rapid-fire dissertation on Filippo Olivieri and the Italian guitarist’s obsession with Angus Young’s AC/DC guitar tone was going. I certainly knew about his Schaffer-Vega wireless system of the ’70s, because I had owned one at some point. I didn’t know it was the secret sauce for Angus’ classic and iconic roar, and I never thought some crazed tone hound would not only unlock that mystery, but also start a company (SoloDallas) to manufacture a user-friendly version for the rigs and pedalboards of today.
Sometimes, you’re just glad you picked up the phone.
Olivieri’s passion certainly matched his R&D chops, as the SoloDallas TSR pedal ($369 direct) won an Editors’ Pick Award in our June 2015 review. The classic and retro EX Tower ($1,333 direct) received high praise in the January 2018 issue, and it narrowly missed another Editors’ Pick Award due to its higher price and slightly fragile construction. But the Storm ($335 direct) is my new favorite of the product line.
If you’re not familiar with what these devices do, it’s kind of a supernatural input/preamp spell that transforms your guitar tone into something with more articulate midrange frequencies that are stout and blissfully savage. I’m sure there was more science going on than a wizard’s wand, but when you plug in, you’ll definitely appreciate the magic.
The Storm is actually the result of further study into the original Schaffer-Vega circuitry, where Olivieri and crew discovered they had missed an optical limiter in the wireless system’s TX10 transmitter when producing the TSR pedal. Although the TSR possesses more headroom and midrange punch compared to the Storm, if you’re