Blades amps

[Racerxrated]

These new generation Blade'z threads lack a little color without that dude that raged on....truetone?? Was that his name??

reading that manifesto really does sound like some shit a "Wrastler" would come up with...

Billy has his supporters. All 3 of them.

 

[LPHeaven68]

I talked to Mark Abrahamian (rip) back and forth for over a year. In the end, I had him build me a 12xxx series 100w monster with just minimal tweaks. I think he was calling it a mod 4 at the time HA.
Its a special amp. The tweaks tightened up the bass and added a touch more gain. Thats about it. It starts at Fair Warning tone and just gets better. But basically, there is not much modding going on aside from Mark's ears for killer tone.

 

[Chester Nimitz]

Thread save ...

 

[gtrwun]

Yeah, this is going off the rails quick ^^^^^^^ how did Mark Abrahamian get dragged into this shitfest?

 

[sjk]

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Charvel Dan is back!

 

[Mailman1971]

Charvel Dan is back!

 

[sjk]

Charvel Dan is back!

 

[glip22]

Thread save ...

Charvel Dan is back!

Yep!

 

[Chester Nimitz]

I can neither confirm nor deny the presence nor absence of internet spies aboard this vessel.

Adm C. Nimitz, WESCOMPAC

 

[Jayy]

Wow. I'm late to this debacle, but from what I'm reading and have just dug around on the net and read, he has delusions of grandeur. Seems like a text book narcissistic personality.

 

[mooncobra]

Thread save ...

Charvel Dan is back!

Charvel Dan LIVES!!!

 

[311boogieman]

 

[Kelly]

Did anyone ever bother to tell this delusional maniac that Van Halen's Plexi was not modded by jose?
Jose nor anyone else modded eddie's super lead, all the top builders that looked at the amp said it was basically a stock 68 super lead with a few MINOR changes that have little effect on the actual tone.
Certainly there was nothing done to the plexi for more gain or suhr,friedman,bogner and a few others that looked at the guts of the amp would have said so.
Blades is ranting on about how his amps have the Jose secret that was used on eddie's old marshall?
There is NO secret to that marshall.

Except for the fact that by the time these techs examined it, it was 10 years after VH I/II. Easily time to take a mod out. And then there's the pic of the amp during VHII recording where you can see a mod on the back, could have been a Jose master? Or something..

I agree that everything points to that amp being modded by Jose.

From Steven Fryette...

"Having worked on the supposed IT amp on more than one occasion, I can speak first hand on some of this.

First of all, hate to blow anyone’s bubbles, but there’s not a thing especially outstanding or unique about this amp. Matt Bruck brought what he said was Eds main amp to me in 1990/1 to “bring it back to life” He said Ed felt it just wasn’t the same as it once was and thought the output transformer was “getting weak”. I told him OT’s don’t get weak, but went ahead and checked it out from top to bottom and found not a thing wrong with it at all. In fact it was bone stock and rather clean inside. It sounded like a stock Marshall, put out full power and all of the caps were in good shape. I might add, and this is just from memory, but I recall that the circuit was actually closer to a 70 JMP than it was to a plexi, something I attributed to this possibly being a transition model, seeing as how it had a plexi panel, but apparently the newer input and feedback configuration. All that aside, Matt insisted that something needed to be done so I gave it a complete once-over and I then took the liberty of installing a Pittbull Classic output transformer into it to see if anyone would notice. Upon getting it back, Matt told me that they noticed no difference in sound and they still thought it sounded weak. I just presumed that something else was amiss or had changed and thought no more about it. I still have the receipt and copy of the check for the work signed by Ed, in case anyone wants to try to discredit this claim. I don’t usually talk about it, because frankly Scarlett…but since you went to the effort of posting this here, I though it might be fun to respond to some of the idiots history items:

“Eddie would keep it loaded with four Sylvania 6CA7 power tubes (Ed used this American brand because they run slightly cooler than their European counterpart).”

In the mid to late 70’s most available EL34’s were horribly unreliable and the Sylvania 6CA7 was king because it was the only available reliable replacement. It was well known at that time that if you had an EL34 amp you either used the Sylvania 6CA7 or in the case of Marshall, the popular thing to do was swap it over to 6550, which Marshalls US distributor was doing to cut down on warranty claims for failed European EL34s – you know those coveted NOS ones people pay big bucks for now…and by the way, the back was off because tubes got replaced frequently and everybody at that time left the backs off or lost them.

(Although he did crank the Variac up to 140 volts in the studio for Van Halen I)!

Anyone who has ever tried this knows it's BS and the reason you know it’s BS is because after you tried it the guy who replaced your blown power supply capacitors or transformers told you it’s BS. When the first interview where this appeared came out I was a repair tech at Valley Arts Guitars, and I can tell you that article made me a lot of money. But I lost a lot of respect for the big E for being so thoughtless as to say such a thing in print and potentially help people put their lives in danger, or at the very least sacrifice their gear over such a stupid comment.

"Early in Van Halen's career, Ed used to say that his amps were heavily modified by Jose Arrendondo of Arrco Electronics to throw people off that were trying to imitate his sound."

And if it ended there, I would have thought fair enough, but it didn’t end there. He allowed Jose to promote and sell “Eddies Mod” to anyone with cash. As a result, legions of guys got reamed and their amps butchered with a bunch of terrible sounding and horribly executed mods (some now considered desirable as “Cameron Jose mods”) which caused lots of noise, hum, output transformer failures, etc, etc. I had lots of players coming to me wanting to find out why their amps with the blessed Jose/Eddie Grail were giving them so much grief. In most cases it went something like “fix the problem with the amp but don’t touch the mod”. Response: “The mod is the problem, so I either dump the mod or you take it back to Jose”.

 

[Racerxrated]

I don't know. Some original Jose A mods kill..John Sykes, Joe Holmes...I know they are monster players but its clear that original Jose's can be killer. And there's clearly a knob on the back of Eds amp for the VHII recordings. Was it there as a prop? And I like Fryette and his amps but the Cameron amps I've had were all fantastic. Who knows.

 

[74JMP]

It's funny how discussions of Blades amps always bring charveldan out from under his bridge.

Dan and Billy are probably not far from one another on the spectrum...

 

[311boogieman]

It's funny how discussions of Blades amps always bring charveldan out from under his bridge.

Dan and Billy are probably not far from one another on the spectrum...

+1

Except Dan loves Friedman and Billy hates him.

PS: See my sig

 

[MrSticky]

Blade's well oiled, narcissistic carnival style hype approach is forumtastic & enjoyable. I never give his amps a thought but if reality TV ever put him on the screen I'd be glued to the pilot episode.

 

[Chester Nimitz]

It's funny how discussions of Blades amps always bring charveldan out from under his bridge.

Dan and Billy are probably not far from one another on the spectrum...

+1

Except Dan loves Friedman and Billy hates him.

PS: See my sig

Mr. Blades is a dickwad, can't play for shit, can't make an amp to save his life and has shit gear.

Dan is largely misunderstood, a great person, a good GP and has excellent gear.

Other than that they are nothing alike.

Plus Billy most likely has to watch his back for the rest of his life.

 

[LPHeaven68]

Yeah, this is going off the rails quick ^^^^^^^ how did Mark Abrahamian get dragged into this shitfest?

Apologies - wasn't my intention to drag Mark's name into anything. I read above about the mods or lack of mods done to EVHs amp, and was implying that in all my conversations with Mark and during the process of his exquisite build for me, its basically a stock 12xxx 100w Marshall. Also of course posted a pic to show it off at any chance i get.

 

[Mailman1971]

Quick question. Not trying to get people bent out of shape or on a tyrant.
But who here has played a blades?