Well they can only be had used, so they do show up on eBay from time to time. But I suspect that since the word got out, people who were aware of this option have been snatching them up when the opportunity presents itself. Still, for pennies on the dollar (seen them listed at around $450) plus a couple of fairly simple modifications, to have something akin to an SLO......sounds like something possibly worth keeping an eye open for......
Mike Soldano talking about the Yamaha T100/T50 amps he helped design...
"Okay, here's the deal on the Yamaha T50 and T100 amps. I did design those amps for Yamaha back in the late '80s. And yes, I did get paid a "healthy sum" for my services (ha,ha,ha!). Design-wise, it's a very good amp - it wouldn't have done me any good to have my name associated with a piece of junk, now would it? Of course Yamaha had certain design features that they wanted to see - but, for the most part, they left how the amp sounded up to me. Therefore, the gain structure, voicing, reverb, etc. are quite similar to what you'll find in my SOLDANO amps. I had nothing to do with the final physical design or production of those amps. Construction and quality-wise, the Yamahas were no SOLDANOs by any means, but they were still fairly well built units. I felt, at the time, they were a good value - they packed a lot of bang for the buck.
I should point out, however, that there are a few things that Yamaha did that I wasn't happy about on those amps. First, mainly as an effort to reduce costs, they eliminated the filter choke in the power supply and replaced it with a large power resistor. While this is quite a common and acceptable practice in low wattage amps or preamplifiers, I feel that in higher powered amps it hinders the amp's ability to deliver good, punchy low end at higher volumes. The reason for this is that the resistor causes the high voltage supply to drop, or "sag", during times of high demand (such as "chugging" on the low E string), whereas the choke doesn't. Fortunately, this problem is easily remedied by removing the resistor and wiring in a choke. Any competent tech can handle this job, or you can send the amp out to my shop and have us do it for you. The second thing I didn't like was the choice of speakers in the combo amps. Those amps were equipped with 100w Celestions, which I thought sounded very "stiff" and sterile. My last complaint with those amps is a change that was made to the reverb circuits after the amp went into production. They really screwed things up on that, and to this day I still don't know what the hell they were trying to do. All I know is that it made the reverb very weak and lifeless. I opposed the revision, but they went ahead and did it anyway. The early amps had my original design, and the late amps can be modified to get them back to that design."
