Merry Christmas from the tone church. In this build I start whipping together a Rob Robinette-designed “naked” Soldano SLO-style amp—basically the Super Lead Overdrive idea, but scaled to a 6V6 power section. I talk a little history on why the SLO matters (mid-’80s gain wars, cascading stages, tight low end, precise EQ) and how it basically seeded the DNA for modern high-gain amps. Then it’s straight into the messy reality: laying out the chassis, cutting transformer and IEC holes with the trusty Black & Decker, and trying to keep “safety third” from turning into “safety funeral.” As the project moves into New Year’s, I’m building and revising the turret board, ordering the right resistors, and planning a ground scheme that’s a bit different than the layout—specifically separating the reservoir/first node ground from the rest of the preamp grounds. I also nerd out on finding capacitor foil ends with an oscilloscope (tell me in the comments if I’m insane), and I swap bus wire gauges until it feels Goldilocks. Big milestone: the Greenlee chassis punch shows up and changes my life for tube socket holes… right after I realize I laid out the whole amp backwards. So we mirror-image the layout, re-orient transformers 90° to reduce coupling, and keep pushing until it finally starts looking like a real amp with sockets, pots, jacks, fuses, and an ohm selector—tight quarters and all.