EVH Stealth head, EVH Wolfgang special

[sandman]

All I can say is dang...what a beast! I picked up the head from bhuard75 here on rigtalk...I got an evh 4x12 cab also. I honestly can't believe how much gain the amp has but yet it's usable at the same time. Very articulate amp and responds to your playing dynamics. I haven't got it dialed in exactly the way I want yet. Just been messing around with it for a little while..but I can tell it's a keeper...Clean channel is quite nice. Maybe not as nice as the clean on the evh 50 watt I had. Channel 2 (blue) has a lot of gain but has a different feel to me than the blue channel on the 50 watt. Punchier and more organic than the 50 watt. The Red channel on the Stealth...HOLY CRAP....It's my favorite.....never has so much gain been so tame and musical...
Very easy and forgiving amp to play. Sounds great. 80's heaven for me...however I may venture into some more modern sounds also and this amp will surely handle it.

I also picked up an EVH Wolfgang special (made in mexico) with natural finish...this guitar far exceeded my expectations in build quality...The guitar plays and sounds great.
I also picked up a Digitech Hardwire delay and an EHX Holy Grail Neo pedal. They both sound great also.

I had taken a long break from guitar..a couple of years...my playing is extra crappy right now...gotta practice and get what little chops i ever had back. I'm on a pedal hunt now...phaser, wah, and other goodies in my near future...in the meantime I gotta pay off all this stuff....Maybe i'll just tell my wife to work some overtime ok..yeah...i'm not that brave

 

[metalmaniac93]

Congrats!! Cool amp!!! Bobby is good people!!

 

[f550maranello2]

All I can say is dang...what a beast! I picked up the head from bhuard75 here on rigtalk...I got an evh 4x12 cab also. I honestly can't believe how much gain the amp has but yet it's usable at the same time. Very articulate amp and responds to your playing dynamics. I haven't got it dialed in exactly the way I want yet. Just been messing around with it for a little while..but I can tell it's a keeper...Clean channel is quite nice. Maybe not as nice as the clean on the evh 50 watt I had. Channel 2 (blue) has a lot of gain but has a different feel to me than the blue channel on the 50 watt. Punchier and more organic than the 50 watt. The Red channel on the Stealth...HOLY CRAP....It's my favorite.....never has so much gain been so tame and musical...
Very easy and forgiving amp to play. Sounds great. 80's heaven for me...however I may venture into some more modern sounds also and this amp will surely handle it.

I also picked up an EVH Wolfgang special (made in mexico) with natural finish...this guitar far exceeded my expectations in build quality...The guitar plays and sounds great.
I also picked up a Digitech Hardwire delay and an EHX Holy Grail Neo pedal. They both sound great also.

I had taken a long break from guitar..a couple of years...my playing is extra crappy right now...gotta practice and get what little chops i ever had back. I'm on a pedal hunt now...phaser, wah, and other goodies in my near future...in the meantime I gotta pay off all this stuff....Maybe i'll just tell my wife to work some overtime ok..yeah...i'm not that brave

so..... how would you like to be a contributor to the community by taking some pics of the mods inside the amp?

 

[MichaelG]

Congrats on the amp! Yes, they are really fun to play and for me the blue channel alone is worth the price of entry. First amp that I have had where the boost pedal stays off because the low end is tight and deliciously chunky without it.

I can't set the gain on the red channel past noon.... there was a thread a while back where a guy had good success in using an 12AT7 tube to calm the red channel down a bunch and allow it breath some more, and that is my next thing to try on the amp.

 

[311boogieman]

yeah - pics would be sweet

 

[Distored]

Pics, you know you want to!

 

[Racerxrated]

Congrats!

 

[fusedbrain]

Hey, glad you're liking your stealth!! The shear amount of gain available on these amps is crazy, but they sound phenomenal.
The Stealth is the standard 100watt circuit board with a few mods done by EVH after the fact. There are cut traces and a couple of coax jumpers added along with a few other tweaks. What they've done looks to me a lot like the 2x12 schematic. If you open the amp up, you'll notice that they've also added a 25uf bypass cap right on top of the board across the cathode resistor at V3, and it sounds to me like they've also added a bright cap on the Blue channel gain pot ( like the 2x12), but it's not visible when you open up the amp. I think it might be under the board, but I havn't pulled the board to check.
Anyway, I actually struggled with the amount of gain at first, and decided to do a little tweaking. My goal was to see if I could lower the gain a touch on the Blue and Red channels but not change the tonality of the amp at all, and not get into any major surgery or removing the board.
The first thing I did was remove that added bypass cap on R37. This had a very small effect on both channels, and kept the tone intact.
Next I paralleled another 220k resistor over R82 on V1A, which is the plate resistor for the first gain stage feeding both channels on the stealth. ( one of the cut traces and coax jumpers feeds this stage into the Blue channel . On the original, V1A only feeds the Red channel)
Ive never really liked 220k plate resistors on the first gain stage, as the tone can be a little unfocused and mushy, and with so many gain stages in the Stealth, a 220k here is overkill. Again the effect was subtle, but in a good way and in combination with removing the cathode cap, the Blue channel is perfect now. Because of what sounds like an added bright cap on the Blue gain pot, the tone really thickens up as you get the gain up around 6, but before my tweaks, this was a little too much gain. Now it's perfect!!
The only thing left now was to bring the gain down a touch on the Red channel, without effecting what I had on the Blue. I tried the parallel resistor thing on a couple of the later red channel gain stages, but this changed the tone too much. Then I popped a 5751 into V5 and that was the ticket!!. Dropped the gain of the Red channel slightly to match the Blue channel, but left the tone intact. I also tried 12AT7's and 12AU7's in various spots in the amp, but they all changed the tone too much.
So, 3 easy little tweaks and now the gain on the Blue and Red is usable all the way around the dial, and the original tone is still intact. Even if you don't want to bust out the soldering iron, try the 5751 in a few spots and see what ya think.

 

[the rossness]

I had one of the first hundred 5150 III's. I loved the red channel, thought the green was ok and hated the blue. Currently, I have a 50 watt 5153 and never plan on selling it. The green channel is great, the blue channel is the reason to use the amp. The red channel isn't as good as the 100 watt. I set the red channel with the gain very low for a tight sound.
I also have a MIJEVH Wolfgang special and its a hell of a guitar!

 

[shreder75]

Nice new toys you got there. Love my evh stuff. The mim special is great

 

[ElMuchoDingo]

to respond to someone in an earlier post i threw a jj 5751 in the V1 spot and it is a very interesting change which i like. to me it opens it up a bit more and takes a little of the compression out. I was on another site and there was a video a guy did rolling tubes thru a 50 w in V1. i really like the tung sol so i threw those in V2-3-4 with results i like. im surprised that the stealth is that subjective to preamp tubes.

 

[Mailman1971]

Cool man....glad to see ya around again. The Stealth is really really a great amp.
Mine got shipped off in the last merry go round I had of wanting to check out new amps.
But its definitely one of my top 3 ever. Thing is just a monster!!

 

[RedPlated]

I had a Stealth a while back. Monster amp with tons of gain. Too much for me, so I ended up selling it.

Cool thing about the Stealth is that you can crank the gain on channel 1 and get some great crunch tones out of it...

 

[Mailman1971]

I had a Stealth a while back. Monster amp with tons of gain. Too much for me, so I ended up selling it.

Cool thing about the Stealth is that you can crank the gain on channel 1 and get some great crunch tones out of it...

Yeah my favorite setting was the blue channel but the gain barely cracked. Maybe on 2. Cranked it up and pretty much nail all tones. I can see another one coming back in the future.

 

[crwnedblasphemy]

Interesting read by many.

I have the Stealth, and through the Splawn cab I don't get the gain you guys are talking about. Sounds clear and huge. Love it. Different than my 2x12 combo for sure. Probably partial the cab. Preamp tubes make a big difference. I did a walkthrough swap, and an Amperex Bugel Boy in v1 was crazy. I tried 2 12at7 in different spots, and it didn't do it for me. In fact putting it in v5, even changed the blue channel slightly, which is weird since it should be only for channel 3.

I prefer though a combo of JJ ecc83s high gain in v1, and v4.

Blue channel is a little dry, but that's fine cuz I play fast stuff through it. The green channel is great. Red is a little over the top, but I only use it for leads.

1 other point. I like running it in 8ohm stereo over the 16ohm mono. Sounds less thin and better to my ears.

 

[Rick Lee]

If no one's gonna post photos, allow me.

 

[RedPlated]

I used to have a Stealth and the standard 5153 that was modded to Stealth specs.

 

[Lord Toneking]

I knew you'd love it

I had the regular 100w and a couple 50w heads and now have the stealth. The others were great but were just lacking something, the stealth however doesn't lack anything. All 3 channels are very good and usable...I love it

 

[Rick Lee]

I bought the 100w and 100s on the same day to do extensive side-by-side testing. The 100w is still a total badass monster of an amp. The 100s has a little bit more rocket sauce, but I hated the gain on the green channel. It was too much, even when turned down to 9 o'clock. Since I got the 100s for free courtesy of FedEx, I sold the 100w. It was for sale for a long time, like six months. On the day I went to meet the buyer I fired it up to make sure everything still worked. It sounded so awesome, I almost regretted selling it. I had my 100s modded such that the green channel now sounds like a Twin Reverb. You can't go wrong with either one.

 

[biggness]

I bought the 100w and 100s on the same day to do extensive side-by-side testing. The 100w is still a total badass monster of an amp. The 100s has a little bit more rocket sauce, but I hated the gain on the green channel. It was too much, even when turned down to 9 o'clock. Since I got the 100s for free courtesy of FedEx, I sold the 100w. It was for sale for a long time, like six months. On the day I went to meet the buyer I fired it up to make sure everything still worked. It sounded so awesome, I almost regretted selling it. I had my 100s modded such that the green channel now sounds like a Twin Reverb. You can't go wrong with either one.

Who offers this? I am intrigued. Haha