F.U.C.K. vs Balance Tone: SLO-100, 5150 Reissue, or x88ir for the ultimate '90s Ed rig?

[TheGreatGreen]

The Axe-Fx does a great EVH detune effect. The detune effect is honestly one of the more important elements of his tone from that era. I think the detune I dialed in here might be a bit overdone but it was more for illustrating the effect.

1 dry
2 pitch mono
3 pitch stereo
4 pitch stereo + delay

 

[brunocormack]

The Axe-Fx does a great EVH detune effect. The detune effect is honestly one of the more important elements of his tone from that era. I think the detune I dialed in here might be a bit overdone but it was more for illustrating the effect.

1 dry
2 pitch mono
3 pitch stereo
4 pitch stereo + delay

I had Kemper/Fractal/Helix/Tonex and they do the trick but at some point I was not feeling the dynamics and the "under the finger" feeling while playing them.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

I had Kemper/Fractal/Helix/Tonex and they do the trick but at some point I was not feeling the dynamics and the "under the finger" feeling while playing them.

If you don't like the amp modeling, you can always use it as an effects only thing in the loop of your amp.

 

[brunocormack]

If you don't like the amp modeling, you can always use it as an effects only thing in the loop of your amp.

I do like it and I keep going back to them time to time. The Kemper "Brown Sound" pack from Top Jimmy was dead on.

Also the modeling stuff is awesome, you are playing VH Sammy area and half second later you are playing Hendrix, it's very convenient.

I have been waiting for the AXE FX IV to come up so I can buy a III - Guess it's another topic

 

[311boogieman]

I have a mesa boogie Mark V around that is going to fund whatever I am going to buy

You just got your 50th post so trade away

Best of luck mang

 

[harddriver]

You just got your 50th post so trade away

Best of luck mang

At least he engaged in constructive interesting conversations.

 

[harddriver]

The Axe-Fx does a great EVH detune effect. The detune effect is honestly one of the more important elements of his tone from that era. I think the detune I dialed in here might be a bit overdone but it was more for illustrating the effect.

1 dry
2 pitch mono
3 pitch stereo
4 pitch stereo + delay

Great demonstration of how important the stereo delays make to this tone widening the tone.

 

[311boogieman]

At least he engaged in constructive interesting conversations.

Yep. Even that thread he necrobumped from 15 years ago was at least thoughtful and not just "cool".

Great demonstration of how important the stereo delays make to this tone widening the tone.

I'm not the expert in the room on this but I love how the TC Mimiq spreads the tone out right in front of me when I stand in front of the two cabs.

 

[harddriver]

I was listening to F.U.C.K. this afternoon in my workshop and this album sounds way drier than Balance to my ears so I started digging around and found some interesting info from a 1995 GW interview Ed did. Most sources say Ed was doing the -9 +9 Cent detune with the H3000 on F.U.C.K. but I'm not so sure if we are hearing an Eventide 949 set to .998 cents (instead of an H3000 with -9+9 cents) like Ed states in the attached interview making it different and drier from Balance. Either way it seems like Dry/Wet mix of about 25%-40% maximum on my Pitchfactor( which has the 949 and H3000 modes) while most sources recommend a Dry/Wet mix of 70% with the H3000 -9 cents +9 cents setting + stereo delays for that more processed Balance tone.

Anyway... here's the GW interview for those interested.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/1995-guitar-world-interview-eddie-van-halen-regains-his-balance

Excerpt from interview:


From GW 1995:
”Even though this record has a drier sound than For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the guitars still have that chorus-y shimmer that's become a staple of your sound lately. Do you double most of your rhythm tracks?

No, not at all. But everything has the Eventide harmonizer on it. The dry guitar signal is on the left, and the duplicate sound that the Eventide generates is on the right. I barely use the harmonizer as an effect; it's just to split my guitar to both sides of the stereo spectrum. I have it set to detune to 98, so it harmonizes just a little.”

When did you start splitting your signal like this?

I think Fair Warning, or the album after. Maybe 5150.. I forget. But that's been my thing ever since. In the old days, Donn Landee [engineer on every Van Halen album from Van Halen (Warner Bros, 1978) through OU812 (Warner Bros, 1988)] would have my dry signal on the left and a little echo or reverb on the right. And I'm going, "Well, why don' t we use the harmonizer and get the whole ****ing guitar over there instead of just [makes breathy noise to imitate the decay of a reverb or Echoplex unit] -- the tail-end of everything I play. I hated that sound.

Really? I always thought of it as a really cool trademark of your sound.

I can't stand it. I guess it worked for the first record. But after that it got old really fast. If you have a car and the left speaker's blown, the guitar is gone. If you're sitting on the right in the back seat, you don 't hear the guitar even if both front speakers work. What kind of **** is that?

 

[Techdeth]

Balance has fantastic tone, but it does sound more processed than FUCK.

It just sounds so much heavier and crunchier though . It’s uprising heavy af at times. I really love Balance . It’s no Dave album but killer

 

[mentoneman]

The Axe-Fx does a great EVH detune effect. The detune effect is honestly one of the more important elements of his tone from that era. I think the detune I dialed in here might be a bit overdone but it was more for illustrating the effect.

1 dry
2 pitch mono
3 pitch stereo
4 pitch stereo + delay

sounds great to me.
i’ve been messing with my H3000 and tweaking some micropitch/chorus dirty sounds, but i’m not really into that sound so it’s just a novelty to see how close i get to it.

i understand why vh went there—something different, more pop rock stereo shimmer swirl for sam’s lovey dovey lyrics and complimentary of his shrieking sinus vocal style—but i still massively prefer the raw pre 5150 era tones.

 

[Alpha Stryke]

Everyone knows FUCK was Marshalls & Les Pauls.

 

[Anje]

I was listening to F.U.C.K. this afternoon in my workshop and this album sounds way drier than Balance to my ears so I started digging around and found some interesting info from a 1995 GW interview Ed did. Most sources say Ed was doing the -9 +9 Cent detune with the H3000 on F.U.C.K. but I'm not so sure if we are hearing an Eventide 949 set to .998 cents (instead of an H3000 with -9+9 cents) like Ed states in the attached interview making it different and drier from Balance. Either way it seems like Dry/Wet mix of about 25%-40% maximum on my Pitchfactor( which has the 949 and H3000 modes) while most sources recommend a Dry/Wet mix of 70% with the H3000 -9 cents +9 cents setting + stereo delays for that more processed Balance tone.

Anyway... here's the GW interview for those interested.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/1995-guitar-world-interview-eddie-van-halen-regains-his-balance

Excerpt from interview:


From GW 1995:
”Even though this record has a drier sound than For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the guitars still have that chorus-y shimmer that's become a staple of your sound lately. Do you double most of your rhythm tracks?

No, not at all. But everything has the Eventide harmonizer on it. The dry guitar signal is on the left, and the duplicate sound that the Eventide generates is on the right. I barely use the harmonizer as an effect; it's just to split my guitar to both sides of the stereo spectrum. I have it set to detune to 98, so it harmonizes just a little.”

When did you start splitting your signal like this?

I think Fair Warning, or the album after. Maybe 5150.. I forget. But that's been my thing ever since. In the old days, Donn Landee [engineer on every Van Halen album from Van Halen (Warner Bros, 1978) through OU812 (Warner Bros, 1988)] would have my dry signal on the left and a little echo or reverb on the right. And I'm going, "Well, why don' t we use the harmonizer and get the whole ****ing guitar over there instead of just [makes breathy noise to imitate the decay of a reverb or Echoplex unit] -- the tail-end of everything I play. I hated that sound.

Really? I always thought of it as a really cool trademark of your sound.

I can't stand it. I guess it worked for the first record. But after that it got old really fast. If you have a car and the left speaker's blown, the guitar is gone. If you're sitting on the right in the back seat, you don 't hear the guitar even if both front speakers work. What kind of **** is that?

Cool to revisit that!
Few interesting points to me:
- Ed only talks about « dry/wet » / left right for his guitar mix on the record, not full w/d/w like he used live;
- « detune to 98 » would make me think he was still using the good old H910; the H949 and later models had more digits and I don’t recall ever seing photos of H949 in 5150 studio racks?

 

[harddriver]

Cool to revisit that!
Few interesting points to me:
- Ed only talks about « dry/wet » / left right for his guitar mix on the record, not full w/d/w like he used live;
- « detune to 98 » would make me think he was still using the good old H910; the H949 and later models had more digits and I don’t recall ever seing photos of H949 in 5150 studio racks?

Can an H3000 be set to .998 cents? I am unfamiliar with them. That would indeed mean Ed used either an H910 or H949 for F.U.C.K. and the H3000 was then used for Balance and I think was hearing that listening to F.U.C.K. yesterday.

I think the H910 and H949 were made from 1977-1984 and the H3000's were made from 1988 until the early 2000's.

On my Eventide Pitchfactor the H3000 algorithm goes by 1 cent detents only, is that how the real H3000 is?

 

[BenoA]

Cool post. About a year ago, I got an EVH delay and Eventide Micropitch and did some tests using 3 Katana to create a W-D-W. It was a fun experiment and I got inspired by the Andy Wood video available on YT.

It sounded quite nice and liked the feel of the setup in my small music room. I never went much further. Recently, I added a SDE-3 and PS-6 to my pedal collection. I really need to put this back together and try recording something. Thanks for the inspiration.

Old photo with my cat bombing the take

 

[DrewJD82]

I think I got pretty close to the Balance tone here using a 5150 Block Letter model in the AxeFX, just a basic -9/+9 detune after the amp and the dual delays. I always associate Right Here, Right Now with the FUCK tone more than the actual album itself, so it’d be Peavey all day for me.



The original guitar is in there, but you can hear my guitar is quite a bit louder due to my fuckups.

 

[Anje]

Can an H3000 be set to .998 cents? I am unfamiliar with them. That would indeed mean Ed used either an H910 or H949 for F.U.C.K. and the H3000 was then used for Balance and I think was hearing that listening to F.U.C.K. yesterday.

I think the H910 and H949 were made from 1977-1984 and the H3000's were made from 1988 until the early 2000's.

On my Eventide Pitchfactor the H3000 algorithm goes by 1 cent detents only, is that how the real H3000 is?

The H3000 pitch shifting algos usually have parameters that can be set «-xxxx» to «+xxxx» cents; so you enter the + or - variation in cents from the unison reference.

The old H910 directly displays the full « x.yz » value, with 2 digits precision.
The H949 works in the same way as the H910, but offers and displays one more digit so reads « x.yzz ».

When I read Ed saying he was setting his Eventide to « 98 » as a slight detune, that to me relates to reading « 0.98 » on an old H910 display.

A H949 would read « 0.980 » and H3000 « -2 cents » for the same setting.
Not even talking about the fact a H3000 algo would be stereo so that would mean he was only using one side for the way he described it in that interview you quoted, doesn’t really ads up to me.

 

[harddriver]

The H3000 pitch shifting algos usually have parameters that can be set «-xxxx» to «+xxxx» cents; so you enter the + or - variation in cents from the unison reference.

The old H910 directly displays the full « x.yz » value, with 2 digits precision.
The H949 works in the same way as the H910, but offers and displays one more digit so reads « x.yzz ».

When I read Ed saying he was setting his Eventide to « 98 » as a slight detune, that to me relates to reading « 0.98 » on an old H910 display.

A H949 would read « 0.980 » and H3000 « -2 cents » for the same setting.
Not even talking about the fact a H3000 algo would be stereo so that would mean he was only using one side for the way he described it in that interview you quoted, doesn’t really ads up to me.

You're totally right about the H910 showing only 2 digits, I've never paid attention to that before.

Here's a guy on YT with an real H910 with a .99 detune in a stereo biamp rig. One side dry and one side Wet with the H910 and he just adjusts the wet/dry mix on the wet side.


Same guy with an SLO into a Suhr reactive load and in this clip he uses an Eventide micropitch algorithm but he doesn't state if it's an H3000 unit or something newer

 

[Philhouse]

I was listening to F.U.C.K. this afternoon in my workshop and this album sounds way drier than Balance to my ears so I started digging around and found some interesting info from a 1995 GW interview Ed did. Most sources say Ed was doing the -9 +9 Cent detune with the H3000 on F.U.C.K. but I'm not so sure if we are hearing an Eventide 949 set to .998 cents (instead of an H3000 with -9+9 cents) like Ed states in the attached interview making it different and drier from Balance. Either way it seems like Dry/Wet mix of about 25%-40% maximum on my Pitchfactor( which has the 949 and H3000 modes) while most sources recommend a Dry/Wet mix of 70% with the H3000 -9 cents +9 cents setting + stereo delays for that more processed Balance tone.

Anyway... here's the GW interview for those interested.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/1995-guitar-world-interview-eddie-van-halen-regains-his-balance

Excerpt from interview:


From GW 1995:
”Even though this record has a drier sound than For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the guitars still have that chorus-y shimmer that's become a staple of your sound lately. Do you double most of your rhythm tracks?

No, not at all. But everything has the Eventide harmonizer on it. The dry guitar signal is on the left, and the duplicate sound that the Eventide generates is on the right. I barely use the harmonizer as an effect; it's just to split my guitar to both sides of the stereo spectrum. I have it set to detune to 98, so it harmonizes just a little.”

When did you start splitting your signal like this?

I think Fair Warning, or the album after. Maybe 5150.. I forget. But that's been my thing ever since. In the old days, Donn Landee [engineer on every Van Halen album from Van Halen (Warner Bros, 1978) through OU812 (Warner Bros, 1988)] would have my dry signal on the left and a little echo or reverb on the right. And I'm going, "Well, why don' t we use the harmonizer and get the whole ****ing guitar over there instead of just [makes breathy noise to imitate the decay of a reverb or Echoplex unit] -- the tail-end of everything I play. I hated that sound.

Really? I always thought of it as a really cool trademark of your sound.

I can't stand it. I guess it worked for the first record. But after that it got old really fast. If you have a car and the left speaker's blown, the guitar is gone. If you're sitting on the right in the back seat, you don 't hear the guitar even if both front speakers work. What kind of **** is that?

Sweet link. Love reading the old interviews again. Forums and internet myths and lore change over time, but the old printed guitar interviews still have the information from the horses mouth. Picking up on bits I missed years ago, esp since I wasn't really into the album back when it came out and would have overlooked this interview. Mid 90's I was more listening to Machine Head, Pantera, Deicide and not interested in VH.

I absolutley love the lead in 'Not Enough' and it was cool to read about.


"It sounds like you have your guitar plugged into a Leslie on "Not Enough."

We plugged the Marshall into the Leslie via this preamp box that my tech, Matt Bruck, brought over. He had used it on the demo tape for his band, Zen Boy. He hooked me up and I just played it.

What inspired the solo on that song?

I was hearing a Beatles-ish feel, so I went for a "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" kind of thing.

The songs on Balance seem to have more key changes than your previous work.
It 's called "better songwriting." [laughs]"

 

[Anje]

You're totally right about the H910 showing only 2 digits, I've never paid attention to that before.

Here's a guy on YT with an real H910 with a .99 detune in a stereo biamp rig. One side dry and one side Wet with the H910 and he just adjusts the wet/dry mix on the wet side.


Same guy with an SLO into a Suhr reactive load and in this clip he uses an Eventide micropitch algorithm but he doesn't state if it's an H3000 unit or something newer

Yep, those early H910 are gems IMHO; they have a « sound » like no other.
Should have never sold mine, like that AMS 1580

Ed had several in 5150 racks.

The H3000 has a dedicated « dual H910 » preset that is meant to emulate 2 of them, including the glitches lol; sounds great, actually the best replication I’ve heard and you get 2 independant ones, but not quite the same.

Do you know those were used to create most sound effects in Star Wars?