Strong hints that Van Halen 1 68 lead was just a slave amp and not the main amp.

[chumbucket]

In addition to my previous post. Since getting the 78/79 Brown sound package and spending some time with it I find the 300-350ms slapback delay with 0 repeats, low mix like 20-25% and correct reverb settings has even more to do with the recorded tones as well as all those Eq's and preamps that gave Ed's amp so much bite, crispness an aggression on VH1. I highly recommend the 78/79 package if you are into all this VH1 stuff, it's alot of fun to mess with and you will find without the correct delay and reverb the VH1 album/recorded tone vanishes.

As noted above the best anyone is going to do is get close to his Live amp tones and then go down the recording rabbit hole like Gaustad did with all the Eq's and preamps, delays, reverbs or use the UA OX box like alot of people do. Trying to get that exact recorded tone out of a live amp is ludicrous when the room mics clearly show the amp was warmer and had all the plexi characteristics underlying what is heard on the processed mastered tones put to tape for VH1.

Van Halen - Live in St. Paul, MN (April 13th, 1980) - Super 8 Film​

Hey @harddriver, have you tried the new 80/81 pack yet? It's very cool too. There's some raw amps in there now for using your own IR or a power amp/cab setup.

 

[harddriver]

Hey @harddriver, have you tried the new 80/81 pack yet? It's very cool too. There's some raw amps in there now for using your own IR or a power amp/cab setup.

No not yet, I still haven't gotten the latency issue fixed yet on my interface. To be honest I haven't been playing it much right now been busy with everything but music

I did watch Gaustads video where he said he thought the Celestion G1265 was used on the 80-81 era, I found that to be interesting.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

One thing you have to understand VH1 is unique from the rest.

The mods that were in it probably didn't last long. Eddie didn't like that sound. It's probable that just after the recording the amp was brought back to stock just leaving the pot there.

you can see that in japan he tried slaving amps in 1978. Then in 1979 you can see the power tubes changed and it was probably just a plexi biased very hot. Then rudy leiren said a lot of mods were done including that zeke clark mod to the ot. it's safe to say that mid early 80's the amp was very different from a stock 68 lead. Dave even said it had weird components and weird filtering in it and he brought it back to stock.

Another thing that was explained by some people on all those online shows is that some records had multiple amps and that the 68 lead was not used for everything. There is also the possibility of slave setups for recording.

In fact guitar magazines and some people say a second amp was used in van halen 1 as a power amp.

There are nda about eddie's tone and it's probable that the evh company and the vh family will sue anyone that will spill the beans about all those mods that went into that amp around the years. Plus eddie didn't want people to copy his sound. Just remember when seymour duncan run this add for the van halen humbucker ? what did ed do ? he said he will sue seymour so seymour retracted...

Eddie saw first hand probably dozens of times that when it comes to his sound in particular, the tone really is mostly in the hands. He’d hand his guitar to other players while it was plugged into his rig all the time and there’s a ton of interviews with those other players, and they all came away saying the exact same thing. “I played the rig and didn’t sound like Ed, I sounded like me.” Nuno, Zakk Wylde, and Billy Corgan off the top of my head are all on record saying exactly that.

NDA’s about Ed’s tone? Seriously dude? So you’re saying his tone, gear, and mods supposedly changed constantly, all the time, but despite that, Ed still demanded total and complete secrecy about what he was doing to the point that he had contracts drawn up about it, even though by the time the ink dried, he’d have moved into something else?

Serious question, have you considered therapy?

 

[Racerxrated]

Eddie saw first hand probably dozens of times that when it comes to his sound in particular, the tone really is mostly in the hands. He’d hand his guitar to other players while it was plugged into his rig all the time and there’s a ton of interviews with those other players, and they all came away saying the exact same thing. “I played the rig and didn’t sound like Ed, I sounded like me.” Nuno, Zakk Wylde, and Billy Corgan off the top of my head are all on record saying exactly that.

NDA’s about Ed’s tone? Seriously dude? So his tone, gear, and mods supposedly changed constantly, all the time, but Ed still demanded total and complete secrecy about what he was doing to the point that he had contracts drawn up about it, even though by the time the ink dried, he’d have moved into something else?

Serious question, have you considered therapy?

Let's not forget Nugent; on whatever tour VH & Ted were on, Ted played Ed's rig and sounded just like Ted.....Ed played Ted's cranked Fenders and sounded like Ed.
Gear plays a huge part too, of course but no one is going to sound like Ed, except Ed. Even the great ones like Al and the other players...still not exact. Damn good though.

 

[harddriver]

Eddie saw first hand probably dozens of times that when it comes to his sound in particular, the tone really is mostly in the hands. He’d hand his guitar to other players while it was plugged into his rig all the time and there’s a ton of interviews with those other players, and they all came away saying the exact same thing. “I played the rig and didn’t sound like Ed, I sounded like me.” Nuno, Zakk Wylde, and Billy Corgan off the top of my head are all on record saying exactly that.

NDA’s about Ed’s tone? Seriously dude? So his tone, gear, and mods supposedly changed constantly, all the time, but Ed still demanded total and complete secrecy about what he was doing to the point that he had contracts drawn up about it, even though by the time the ink dried, he’d have moved into something else?

Serious question, have you considered therapy?

Let's not forget Nugent; on whatever tour VH & Ted were on, Ted played Ed's rig and sounded just like Ted.....Ed played Ted's cranked Fenders and sounded like Ed.
Gear plays a huge part too, of course but no one is going to sound like Ed, except Ed. Even the great ones like Al and the other players...still not exact. Damn good though.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
His backstage amp in these 1984 videos is a S/S Gallien Kreuger ML250

 

[Amp_chaser]

Eddie saw first hand probably dozens of times that when it comes to his sound in particular, the tone really is mostly in the hands. He’d hand his guitar to other players while it was plugged into his rig all the time and there’s a ton of interviews with those other players, and they all came away saying the exact same thing. “I played the rig and didn’t sound like Ed, I sounded like me.” Nuno, Zakk Wylde, and Billy Corgan off the top of my head are all on record saying exactly that.

NDA’s about Ed’s tone? Seriously dude? So his tone, gear, and mods supposedly changed constantly, all the time, but Ed still demanded total and complete secrecy about what he was doing to the point that he had contracts drawn up about it, even though by the time the ink dried, he’d have moved into something else?

Serious question, have you considered therapy?

Eddie's studio gear wasn't the same as his touring gear. That's why he sounded so different live from the studio and many artists don't use the same grea live than in the studio. As proof of this if you look into the japanese 78 tour pictures ed's 68 is not the main amp he is just one the many amps that are daisy chained.

I'm sorry but even his mxr phase 90 was modded.

did you even saw the interview with zeke clark he was ed's tech after rudy leiren ? he clearly says José did rebuild the amp and modded it.



Then you have this :

this comes from neil's zlozlower's book he was friend with eddie and make a biography about him.

Even Kevin Dugan michael's anthony bass tech says some of ed's amps were modded :

Eddie said it clearly during vh1 he used a combination of 2 amps in a guitar interview one which voltages were lowered and the other one boosted. Probably transformer changes and caps changes. getting higher voltages in a guitar amp cleans the tone and removes fuzziness and muddyness. Guitarist Bryan Jay confirmed that josé did indeed replaced transformers with new ones and changed stock marshall components. Guess who also said that ? eddie. He said that josé changed his transformers and put beefier ones in his amp. However as eddie didn't like the tone of vh1 he then changed back to stock.

He also mentionned that his mxr pedal was modded by josé. Dweezil zappa said in one online article that it was indeed modded and that it was a very important element of ed's tone. In a blog someone reported that joe Holmes confirmed it and he even has the same josé mod in his phase 90 :

When acdc played with van halen once angus young made fun ed's gear saying something like : it's like the nasa here. Implying there were heavy mods on ed's gear...

Can you get the sound of RWTD with a stock plexi ? never only in your dreams the same with feel your love tonight compare it to any isolated vh track and you'll see you're way off with a stock plexi.

VH1 is clearly not a stock plexi. Perhaps a plexi with some kind of cascade that's possible and the r/t mod from mike audette seems to indicate that it's possible that it was a simple cascade + a kind of slave. Because people think it was still a stock plexi despite many testimonies they say it was the studio and they heavily eq the tone of a plexi to approximate that sound.



finally there is this obvious marshall head in ed's studio it sits on top of 5150 amps this means it was still heavily used. Eddie had a hangar with lots of amps. Whatever was in the studio recording floor was used. As this amp was not in the hangar but in the studio room it was used on some recordings :

Even if it proves nothing, Carl Esperanza which worked with josé when he was young told me that one mod of josé was to turn a plexi into a single channel amp and add a master volume. That mod was done to his brother's amps. That's exactly what we see on this amp in the 5150 studio, a plexi turned into a single channel amp.

On the metroforums days one of the most successfull vh modders was rockstah who made the mod 5. If i remember correctly someone in the forum wrote that chris merren told him to try to turn a plexi into a 2203 and 1959 hybrid. Why is that important ? Chris did apparently see the amp guts during its glory days but he always said it was stock but sometimes he wrote some interesting stuff that contradicted the stock statement. He was apparently the one who wrote about the cerrem mod and how it was done.

finally for those don't believing that there aren't nda and secrets around ed's tone. Just look at what eddie says :

this doesn't meant it was modded for sure but there are strong hints that it is. As all of this conflicts with the main stock statement we should be in between saying we don't know and that it's possible that it was indeed modded. Everyone can have it's own opinion but denying this possibility will all those elements is not rational.

It's like all those people who bought 6ca7 thinking it was the secret, when you look at the japanese tour just after the 1978 record eddie had regular el34 ERA german tubes in it. Many people bought them not even knowing why eddie switched to those tubes because some of his later mods made his amp redplate. Eddie even said to dave friedman that his favorite tubes were in fact regular el34 from telefunken. So why would he use sylvanias 6ca7 ? because those tubes are tougher and they resist high currents and voltages way better... The amp was biased very hot and ruy leiren confirmed that there was indeed a bias mod in the amp.

 

[Racerxrated]

Eddie's studio gear wasn't the same as his touring gear. That's why he sounded so different live from the studio and many artists don't use the same grea live than in the studio. As proof of this if you look into the japanese 78 tour pictures ed's 68 is not the main amp he is just one the many amps that are daisy chained.

I'm sorry but even his mxr phase 90 was modded.

did you even saw the interview with zeke clark he was ed's tech after rudy leiren ? he clearly says José did rebuild the amp and modded it.



Then you have this :

View attachment 414545

this comes from neil's zlozlower's book he was friend with eddie and make a biography about him.

Even Kevin Dugan michael's anthony bass tech says some of ed's amps were modded :

View attachment 414562

Eddie said it clearly during vh1 he used a combination of 2 amps in a guitar interview one which voltages were lowered and the other one boosted. Probably transformer changes and caps changes. getting higher voltages in a guitar amp cleans the tone and removes fuzziness and muddyness. Guitarist Bryan Jay confirmed that josé did indeed replaced transformers with new ones and changed stock marshall components. Guess who also said that ? eddie. He said that josé changed his transformers and put beefier ones in his amp. However as eddie didn't like the tone of vh1 he then changed back to stock.

He also mentionned that his mxr pedal was modded by josé. Dweezil zappa said in one online article that it was indeed modded and that it was a very important element of ed's tone. In a blog someone reported that joe Holmes confirmed it and he even has the same josé mod in his phase 90 :

View attachment 414552

When acdc played with van halen once angus young made fun ed's gear saying something like : it's like the nasa here. Implying there were heavy mods on ed's gear...

Can you get the sound of RWTD with a stock plexi ? never only in your dreams the same with feel your love tonight compare it to any isolated vh track and you'll see you're way off with a stock plexi.

VH1 is clearly not a stock plexi. Perhaps a plexi with some kind of cascade that's possible and the r/t mod from mike audette seems to indicate that it's possible that it was a simple cascade + a kind of slave. Because people think it was still a stock plexi despite many testimonies they say it was the studio and they heavily eq the tone of a plexi to approximate that sound.



finally there is this obvious marshall head in ed's studio it sits on top of 5150 amps this means it was still heavily used. Eddie had a hangar with lots of amps. Whatever was in the studio recording floor was used. As this amp was not in the hangar but in the studio room it was used on some recordings :
View attachment 414555

Even if it proves nothing, Carl Esperanza which worked with josé when he was young told me that one mod of josé was to turn a plexi into a single channel amp and add a master volume. That mod was done to his brother's amps. That's exactly what we see on this amp in the 5150 studio, a plexi turned into a single channel amp.

On the metroforums days one of the most successfull vh modders was rockstah who made the mod 5. If i remember correctly someone in the forum wrote that chris merren told him to try to turn a plexi into a 2203 and 1959 hybrid. Why is that important ? Chris did apparently see the amp guts during its glory days but he always said it was stock but sometimes he wrote some interesting stuff that contradicted the stock statement. He was apparently the one who wrote about the cerrem mod and how it was done.

finally for those don't believing that there aren't nda and secrets around ed's tone. Just look at what eddie says :

View attachment 414557

this doesn't meant it was modded for sure but there are strong hints that it is. As all of this conflicts with the main stock statement we should be in between saying we don't know and that it's possible that it was indeed modded. Everyone can have it's own opinion but denying this possibility will all those elements is not rational.

It's like all those people who bought 6ca7 thinking it was the secret, when you look at the japanese tour just after the 1978 record eddie had regular el34 ERA german tubes in it. Many people bought them not even knowing why eddie switched to those tubes because some of his later mods made his amp redplate. Eddie even said to dave friedman that his favorite tubes were in fact regular el34 from telefunken. So why would he use sylvanias 6ca7 ? because those tubes are tougher and they resist high currents and voltages way better... The amp was biased very hot and ruy leiren confirmed that there was indeed a bias mod in the amp.

View attachment 414558

Dude. Seriously.

I have a large stash of Siemens EL34s. I also have a few Sylvania, and GE 6CA7s. You do know that a 6CA7 is basically an EL34 right? Pop in and play, they run the same bias settings. The only difference I can tell with any 6CA7 is they have a touch more low end. Same mids, same highs. In fact I'd venture to say KT77s and 6CA7s might be damn near indistinguishable.

If I compare Winged C El34s to 6CA7s, they sound surprisingly similar in the lows. If Ed recorded with half an album with Siemens 34s, and the other half with 6CA7s nobody would know. The differences aren't THAT drastic.

When I goose my 68, if I have 34s or 6CA7s no one could tell the difference.

 

[Anje]

Eddie's studio gear wasn't the same as his touring gear. That's why he sounded so different live from the studio and many artists don't use the same grea live than in the studio. As proof of this if you look into the japanese 78 tour pictures ed's 68 is not the main amp he is just one the many amps that are daisy chained.

I'm sorry but even his mxr phase 90 was modded.

did you even saw the interview with zeke clark he was ed's tech after rudy leiren ? he clearly says José did rebuild the amp and modded it.



Then you have this :

View attachment 414545

this comes from neil's zlozlower's book he was friend with eddie and make a biography about him.

Even Kevin Dugan michael's anthony bass tech says some of ed's amps were modded :

View attachment 414562

Eddie said it clearly during vh1 he used a combination of 2 amps in a guitar interview one which voltages were lowered and the other one boosted. Probably transformer changes and caps changes. getting higher voltages in a guitar amp cleans the tone and removes fuzziness and muddyness. Guitarist Bryan Jay confirmed that josé did indeed replaced transformers with new ones and changed stock marshall components. Guess who also said that ? eddie. He said that josé changed his transformers and put beefier ones in his amp. However as eddie didn't like the tone of vh1 he then changed back to stock.

He also mentionned that his mxr pedal was modded by josé. Dweezil zappa said in one online article that it was indeed modded and that it was a very important element of ed's tone. In a blog someone reported that joe Holmes confirmed it and he even has the same josé mod in his phase 90 :

View attachment 414552

When acdc played with van halen once angus young made fun ed's gear saying something like : it's like the nasa here. Implying there were heavy mods on ed's gear...

Can you get the sound of RWTD with a stock plexi ? never only in your dreams the same with feel your love tonight compare it to any isolated vh track and you'll see you're way off with a stock plexi.

VH1 is clearly not a stock plexi. Perhaps a plexi with some kind of cascade that's possible and the r/t mod from mike audette seems to indicate that it's possible that it was a simple cascade + a kind of slave. Because people think it was still a stock plexi despite many testimonies they say it was the studio and they heavily eq the tone of a plexi to approximate that sound.



finally there is this obvious marshall head in ed's studio it sits on top of 5150 amps this means it was still heavily used. Eddie had a hangar with lots of amps. Whatever was in the studio recording floor was used. As this amp was not in the hangar but in the studio room it was used on some recordings :
View attachment 414555

Even if it proves nothing, Carl Esperanza which worked with josé when he was young told me that one mod of josé was to turn a plexi into a single channel amp and add a master volume. That mod was done to his brother's amps. That's exactly what we see on this amp in the 5150 studio, a plexi turned into a single channel amp.

On the metroforums days one of the most successfull vh modders was rockstah who made the mod 5. If i remember correctly someone in the forum wrote that chris merren told him to try to turn a plexi into a 2203 and 1959 hybrid. Why is that important ? Chris did apparently see the amp guts during its glory days but he always said it was stock but sometimes he wrote some interesting stuff that contradicted the stock statement. He was apparently the one who wrote about the cerrem mod and how it was done.

finally for those don't believing that there aren't nda and secrets around ed's tone. Just look at what eddie says :

View attachment 414557

this doesn't meant it was modded for sure but there are strong hints that it is. As all of this conflicts with the main stock statement we should be in between saying we don't know and that it's possible that it was indeed modded. Everyone can have it's own opinion but denying this possibility will all those elements is not rational.

It's like all those people who bought 6ca7 thinking it was the secret, when you look at the japanese tour just after the 1978 record eddie had regular el34 ERA german tubes in it. Many people bought them not even knowing why eddie switched to those tubes because some of his later mods made his amp redplate. Eddie even said to dave friedman that his favorite tubes were in fact regular el34 from telefunken. So why would he use sylvanias 6ca7 ? because those tubes are tougher and they resist high currents and voltages way better... The amp was biased very hot and ruy leiren confirmed that there was indeed a bias mod in the amp.

View attachment 414558

Again, nothing new here, you post the same things over and over.
There is nothing, no clear fact, in all that you posted, that clearly tells us what "could" have been done in details to Ed's amps back then. Only very vague sentences that you interpret / project your own very hypothetical things from, it's all speculation and fantasies as this point.

What we know is Jose for sure worked for Ed and his gear, what he did exactly you can only speculate about it now. Maintained it and made it as sturdy & reliable as possible, most probably to start with. Experiment with things, probably as both him & Ed loved that. Could be anything, and probably lots of small iterations over the years as he said himself (Jose). Probably on several different amps anyway. Could be that it ended with the specs that we know now on his "main" '68 SL as shared by Mike/John/Dave, etc.
Not sure anybody still here with us today really knows/remembers what was exactly in "the" amp that was used during the precise short period of time of VH1 recordings.

Hell, again Ed himself again said he didn't like the tone of this album so much and quickly moved away from it; and even Jose in the Zloz book you reference above said in his own words: "Mainly, we tried to keep the amplifier with the early sound of the Marshalls".
In my world, that means whatever was done, first and foremost they wanted anyway to stay as true / close to the sound & feel of a stock-ish NMV early Marshall as possible.

Adding my personal opinion / speculation on all this: I think whatever was done by Jose & Ed on his main amps, was mainly to:
- make them more reliable / sturdy
- probably "fine tweak" key component specs to whatever Ed was feeling / having in his head
- while trying over time to be able to more easily manage the volume and make the amp slightly easier to play, while still keeping the original early NMV feel & sound as much as possible.
= what most of us often try to accomplish in this kind of gear/tone personal quest when we love old Marshall core sound & feel.
Taming an old original Plexi Marshall is not easy thing in most situations, especially linked to the volume implied; I can only guess this was a driving thing, even for Ed.

Again, chasing things & "tone" is good if that helps you discover new things and evolve as a player/musician/builder/whatever...
And discussing anything old EVH is cool, love him a lot.
But please, let's not fall into the "chasing tales of the hidden secret" down-pit just for the sake of it. It starts to sound like a broken record to me by now.

Btw, the modded Phase 90 you posted a photo of is Joe Holmes' if I recall correctly; the switch/mod is to freeze the sweep from what Joe shared years ago = becomes a filter, that can be used in some way like a fixed wah, ala Schenker.

 

[Jccobb2]

How the fuck are we still discussing this 17 pages later

 

[Anje]

Because we love this Ed guy & music gear too much probably, and have too much time on our hands it seems; it strikes me now, isn't it what this and other forums are all about actually?

 

[DrewJD82]

thx it's always good to get feedback. I'm looking for that sizzle right know. Those records were made with the josé master at 1-2. It adds sizzle it's weird how it reacts with some boost. However i don't know why when i use genome only it's not that fuzzy and when i use genome in the reaper fx it get instantly way more fizzier.

i keep wondering if rockstah was right but just didn't all the values he needed. If i remember correctly not sure : but apparently chris merren told him that eddie's amp was turned into a jcm 800 style circuit and was in reality a 2 holer. Which is weird because eddie got a plexi which was turned into a 1hole input in his home. I wonder how true this is.

View attachment 413874

This is where having some studio knowledge will come in handy, mic placement on a cab/speaker can go a LONG way in the sizzle department. Add in some EQ and you’ve got your sizzle dialed in to taste.

 

[DrewJD82]

What i know is that vai recieved a mod which was very close to eddie’s and that caused according to some rumors a break into ed and josé’s friendship. It was dlr who introduced vai to josé.

However i stongly believe the mod wasn’t the exact same thing. That on the paper it’s similar but way different in the way it’s wired.

still way too much gain. The way i implemented it makes it muddier. but the eq of the tone seems getting close.

however i have 4-5 main mods to try. after i will build a 68 lead to ed's specs with the same transformers.



even if it's not quite it yet, i learnt so much by modding those plexis that i even found out new mods and varieties of how a plexi can sound.

I have many ideas of mods that could be related thatpeople never thought of or that i never seen done to any amp. On the metro forums they did a lot of good work but unfortunately for them there is a josé mod that was never mentionned and that would have sparkled a lot of debate. A lot of experiments could be done with this mod. People tend to think plexis are obsolete because everything has been done to it. But that's not true at all if you are very creative there are infinite ways to mod a plexi without even changing a component just by adding or injectif things at different stages. when i look at many famous modders they mostly do josé variants but they don't think further and think it's sad because it's like for them josé only did those 3-4 mods. Why don't people try things on their josés ? I don't think josé invented every mod for eddy he could just have taken circuits from amps or pedals he used to deal with and implemented them on a plexi. In fact the ceramic caps over plates were a current thing on vox amps and its nowadays mainly associated with josé or friedman amps and we know he worked for vox amps... that's not a coincidence.

When i look at those possibilities i tend to believe that marshall just slept on their fame. They could have done so much more...

if i ever get very close i'll ask a friend to play those vh riffs. i stopped playing 5-6 years ago i'm so rusty. The riffs i play are mostly muscle memory.

Man, I posted the Vai interview and even timestamped where Vai starts talking about his history with the Jose’s. Steve Stevens is the one who introduced him to Jose while letting him borrow one of his own Jose’s for Eat ‘Em And Smile while Vai’s were being built. The only thing DLR had to do with it was not digging the sound of Vai’s Carvins he showed up with.

 

[Nigel]

Anyone that plays the "It's really his hands" card has likely never played a variac'd amp with underbiased tubes.

That is the first question: "Are you experienced?"

You do not get early Ed without this, you cannot understand the evolution of his sound without this.

You cannot understand him without playing pure nickel strings either. HALF of the icepick people bitch about is nickel plated steel strings.

Pure Nickel strings have a higher tension, allowing you to play lighter gauge for the same scale length and remove mud from the bottom end of the EQ, allowing for more exaggerated Bass settings like 10. This is how 8.5-40 on a 25.5" scale makes sense.

It's clear Ed's bottom had the hardness of a Fender TMB tonestack, which produces a smile "Loudness" EQ when dimed. Less so with a 50K mid pot, but still necessary to boost mids if you want the vocal, full bodied midrange.

Bandmaster theory makes a lot of sense, and if you've not played a modified '59 style TMB you won't understand. Zinky's OD circuit in the Tone Master and MOFO amps does this, mated with overbias and low screen resistors, somehwat like a 5150, which only sound right at high volume.

If you aren't slaving, the power amp gain and drive has to breathe, and that happens with low screen resistors. 5150's have 100 ohm, Zinky's have 470 Ohm. Old Marshalls had none, or lower than 1K values which were introduced to balance for inferior modern EL34 type offerings.

In other words, there are so many links in the chain to create ED tones that most non-obscessed (read: NOT real Disciples/Enthusiasts) will ignore and simplify causuistry (set of relationships) for cause, or one factor: "Hands."

Without the proper power amp mojo, it ain't what Ed was talking about. If you haven't felt it, go for it, because it's probably the most essential aspect of his idea of tone.

 

[Amp_chaser]

Anyone that plays the "It's really his hands" card has likely never played a variac'd amp with underbiased tubes.

That is the first question: "Are you experienced?"

You do not get early Ed without this, you cannot understand the evolution of his sound without this.

You cannot understand him without playing pure nickel strings either. HALF of the icepick people bitch about is nickel plated steel strings.

Pure Nickel strings have a higher tension, allowing you to play lighter gauge for the same scale length and remove mud from the bottom end of the EQ, allowing for more exaggerated Bass settings like 10. This is how 8.5-40 on a 25.5" scale makes sense.

It's clear Ed's bottom had the hardness of a Fender TMB tonestack, which produces a smile "Loudness" EQ when dimed. Less so with a 50K mid pot, but still necessary to boost mids if you want the vocal, full bodied midrange.

Bandmaster theory makes a lot of sense, and if you've not played a modified '59 style TMB you won't understand. Zinky's OD circuit in the Tone Master and MOFO amps does this, mated with overbias and low screen resistors, somehwat like a 5150, which only sound right at high volume.

If you aren't slaving, the power amp gain and drive has to breathe, and that happens with low screen resistors. 5150's have 100 ohm, Zinky's have 470 Ohm. Old Marshalls had none, or lower than 1K values which were introduced to balance for inferior modern EL34 type offerings.

In other words, there are so many links in the chain to create ED tones that most non-obscessed (read: NOT real Disciples/Enthusiasts) will ignore and simplify causuistry (set of relationships) for cause, or one factor: "Hands."

Without the proper power amp mojo, it ain't what Ed was talking about. If you haven't felt it, go for it, because it's probably the most essential aspect of his idea of tone.

i'm not saying ed's hands don't play a role but even if you had thanos's hands you couldn't get that punchy sound from running with the devil there is clearly another thing going on. A slave ? Some kind of mod. Same for the amount of bass in feel your love tonight. That's quite interesting for the latter because even when a super lead is cascaded bass gets similar but way too muddy compared to the record.

Lastly there is another interesting amp in the 5150 studio and it's this one :

He played it with chip ellis in the frankenstein video. It has two red lights on the channels. It doesn't seem to be a 5150 evh amp because there is one in front of it. Perhaps another prototype or an amp that someone built him. However Dave Friedman talked about an amp that josé and Eddie tweaked together and that they would perhaps release but they never did. In an online vdieo Dave said he saw that amp josé's shop when he was 18years old he said it had two channels and one channel had a cover and it was written ed's tone on it. He also said that the amp's size was huge. I wonder if it's that amp and that eddie decided to not release it or to wait for the right time for evh to realease it one day.

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/dave-friedman-jose-arredondo-eddie-van-halen-mystery-amp

 

[DrewJD82]

The whole ‘Jose made an amp for Vai and caused a falling out between Jose and Ed” is pretty bunk; Vai wasn’t even attempting to play or sound like Eddie a single bit and nothing sounded like Ed when it came out on the albums. There were dozens of dudes getting Jose mods back then and most certainly a good percentage of dudes getting those mods WERE asking him to make the amp sound like Ed’s and plenty of opportunity to piss Ed off came before Vai even got the call from DLR.

 

[Drew]

The whole ‘Jose made an amp for Vai and caused a falling out between Jose and Ed” is pretty bunk; Vai wasn’t even attempting to play or sound like Eddie a single bit and nothing sounded like Ed when it came out on the albums. There were dozens of dudes getting Jose mods back then and most certainly a good percentage of dudes getting those mods WERE asking him to make the amp sound like Ed’s and plenty of opportunity to piss Ed off came before Vai even got the call from DLR.

I now see where you got that about Sykes and Vai. I had never heard that before. That's absolutely not true. The only connection between those two guys gear-wise was that amp I mentioned.

John and Steve lived very close to one another. Their sons went to the same school and were friends. But John and Steve never met.

John had Jose mod several amps for him. John liked Jose to mod 50 watters. Jose preferred to use 100 watters. Jose made John buy a bunch of transformers to use for modding the 50's. One day I lifted a guitar shaped road case and expected it to be empty --or maybe have a guitar in it. But I could barely lift the thing. Turns out it had all the original Marshall transformers John saved after Jose changed them on the amps he modded for John. John had 8 or 9 Jose amps at the time of his passing,

 

[Amp_chaser]

I now see where you got that about Sykes and Vai. I had never heard that before. That's absolutely not true. The only connection between those two guys gear-wise was that amp I mentioned.

John and Steve lived very close to one another. Their sons went to the same school and were friends. But John and Steve never met.

John had Jose mod several amps for him. John like Jose to mod 50 watters. Jose preferred to use 100 watters. Jose made John buy a bunch of transformers to use for modding the 50's. One day I lifted a guitar shaped road case and expected it to be empty --or maybe have a guitar in it. But I could barely lift the thing. Turns out it had all the original Marshall transformers John saved after Jose changed them on the amps he modded for John. John had 8 or 9 Jose amps at the time of his passing,

The issue wasn't Vai but i think it was more that it was David Lee Roth that told Vai to meet josé and as Roth asked josé to mod Vai's amp i think eddie didn't like it. In the José Vai vidéo with dave and pete thorn, Vai tells the story with Roth and José. But i believe the Vai mod was way different from what eddie got. I could be wrong tho. A lot of elements seem to point to a cascaded amp with 3 preamps tubes and an unknown mod for Vh1. Steve Vai got something totally different an extra gain stage with the option to jump channels internally. By the way no online schematic will give you that extra gain stage that vai got (it was not the usual josé 3 in 1 mod). I can do that mod but i don't know what values josé used on Vai's amp ( there are many values which can tweak and shift the tone a lot),i think that lenz is making the closest one.

 

[Amp_chaser]

i'm not saying ed's hands don't play a role but even if you had thanos's hands you couldn't get that punchy sound from running with the devil there is clearly another thing going on. A slave ? Some kind of mod. Same for the amount of bass in feel your love tonight. That's quite interesting for the latter because even when a super lead is cascaded bass gets similar but way too muddy compared to the record.

Lastly there is another interesting amp in the 5150 studio and it's this one :

View attachment 414726
View attachment 414727

He played it with chip ellis in the frankenstein video. It has two red lights on the channels. It doesn't seem to be a 5150 evh amp because there is one in front of it. Perhaps another prototype or an amp that someone built him. However Dave Friedman talked about an amp that josé and Eddie tweaked together and that they would perhaps release but they never did. In an online vdieo Dave said he saw that amp josé's shop when he was 18years old he said it had two channels and one channel had a cover and it was written ed's tone on it. He also said that the amp's size was huge. I wonder if it's that amp and that eddie decided to not release it or to wait for the right time for evh to realease it one day.

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/dave-friedman-jose-arredondo-eddie-van-halen-mystery-amp

I just recieved a mail from evh fender : they know nothing about that amp. It's not one of their builds.

 

[Amp_chaser]

Again, nothing new here, you post the same things over and over.
There is nothing, no clear fact, in all that you posted, that clearly tells us what "could" have been done in details to Ed's amps back then. Only very vague sentences that you interpret / project your own very hypothetical things from, it's all speculation and fantasies as this point.

What we know is Jose for sure worked for Ed and his gear, what he did exactly you can only speculate about it now. Maintained it and made it as sturdy & reliable as possible, most probably to start with. Experiment with things, probably as both him & Ed loved that. Could be anything, and probably lots of small iterations over the years as he said himself (Jose). Probably on several different amps anyway. Could be that it ended with the specs that we know now on his "main" '68 SL as shared by Mike/John/Dave, etc.
Not sure anybody still here with us today really knows/remembers what was exactly in "the" amp that was used during the precise short period of time of VH1 recordings.

Hell, again Ed himself again said he didn't like the tone of this album so much and quickly moved away from it; and even Jose in the Zloz book you reference above said in his own words: "Mainly, we tried to keep the amplifier with the early sound of the Marshalls".
In my world, that means whatever was done, first and foremost they wanted anyway to stay as true / close to the sound & feel of a stock-ish NMV early Marshall as possible.

Adding my personal opinion / speculation on all this: I think whatever was done by Jose & Ed on his main amps, was mainly to:
- make them more reliable / sturdy
- probably "fine tweak" key component specs to whatever Ed was feeling / having in his head
- while trying over time to be able to more easily manage the volume and make the amp slightly easier to play, while still keeping the original early NMV feel & sound as much as possible.
= what most of us often try to accomplish in this kind of gear/tone personal quest when we love old Marshall core sound & feel.
Taming an old original Plexi Marshall is not easy thing in most situations, especially linked to the volume implied; I can only guess this was a driving thing, even for Ed.

Again, chasing things & "tone" is good if that helps you discover new things and evolve as a player/musician/builder/whatever...
And discussing anything old EVH is cool, love him a lot.
But please, let's not fall into the "chasing tales of the hidden secret" down-pit just for the sake of it. It starts to sound like a broken record to me by now.

Btw, the modded Phase 90 you posted a photo of is Joe Holmes' if I recall correctly; the switch/mod is to freeze the sweep from what Joe shared years ago = becomes a filter, that can be used in some way like a fixed wah, ala Schenker.

I know that there are mostly guitar players here but there are amps builders and people who like to experiment too.

What i wished was to get back to those old metroforums days. My posts aren't made to annoy players but it was more directed to amp builders trying to get that tone. I think that since eddie is gone many new elements and clues came forth and it is an opportunity to try new things. That's why i do those threads. Why ? because you could easily think that all those techs said it was stock so it is. The same with Jim's Gaustaad's experiments but what people seem to forget is that there is a console doing some work behind his clips. Perhaps it was done that way but what if not ? Jim did a great job and contribution however he never went threw the modding rabbit hole so he leaves half of the possibilities open. Moerover he never took into account the fact that it was clearly 2 amps that were used in the first record.
I think that the 2 people which are the closest are Mike audette with his r/t mod and Ossie Ahsen with his number 1 amp. In my opinion they are way closer than jim because they don't use any eq.

yes you're right for the freeze mod. however i tend to believe there is perhaps a little bit more inside ed's pedal like a small clean boost. That would explain the rise in volume when kicking a pedal on. Or perhaps some kind of buffer when you look at the long cables he was using it would make sense.

 

[harddriver]

I know that there are mostly guitar players here but there are amps builders and people who like to experiment too.

What i wished was to get back to those old metroforums days. My posts aren't made to annoy players but it was more directed to amp builders trying to get that tone. I think that since eddie is gone many new elements and clues came forth and it is an opportunity to try new things. That's why i do those threads. Why ? because you could easily think that all those techs said it was stock so it is. The same with Jim's Gaustaad's experiments but what people seem to forget is that there is a console doing a lot of eq behind his clips. Perhaps it was done that way but what if not ? Jim did a great job and contribution however he never went threw the modding rabbit hole so he leaves half of the possibilities open. Moerover he never took into account the fact that it was clearly 2 amps that were used in the first record.
I think that the 2 people which are the closest are Mike audette with his r/t mod and Ossie Ahsen with his number 1 amp. In my opinion they are way closer than jim because they don't use any eq.

yes you're right for the freeze mod. however i tend to believe there is perhaps a little bit more inside ed's pedal like a small clean boost. That would explain the rise in volume when kicking a pedal on.

You have no idea how many people on here build amps do you??? Do you think you are the only one? There are some really great amp builders on this forum if you venture outside of your VH1 threads...........