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

[harddriver]

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.

Here is alot of wisdom for you Mr Ampchaser.

 

[DrewJD82]

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,

That’s a cool story, but it wasn’t me who thought Sykes got Vai’s Jose’s, I think it was @Amp_chaser. I came in all “Nuhhhh uhhhhh cuz Vai still owns his Jose’s” in reply to that.

 

[DrewJD82]

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.

Your refusal to educate yourself on something you seem to be passionate about is somethin’ else, man.

DLR had nothing to do with introducing Vai to Jose. Steve Stevens is the one who told Vai about Jose and got them together, while also lending him one of his Jose’s to record Eat Em And Smile with.

Watch the damn Vai interview and hear it for yourself straight from Vai’s mouth.

 

[harddriver]

Alot of food for thought in this video.............

This vid shows how much the studio production is responsible regarding the final recorded tones....

 

[Amp_chaser]

Your refusal to educate yourself on something you seem to be passionate about is somethin’ else, man.

DLR had nothing to do with introducing Vai to Jose. Steve Stevens is the one who told Vai about Jose and got them together, while also lending him one of his Jose’s to record Eat Em And Smile with.

Watch the damn Vai interview and hear it for yourself straight from Vai’s mouth.

wtf i never thought that sykes had Vai's amp... look into my posts. For the david lee roth part.

"There was a myriad of amps being used, but for the most part I was into Soldanos at the time - early SLO-100s. I also had some older modded non-master volume Marshalls that had been modified by Jose Arredondo who was the guy at the time and had done all of Edward Van Halen’s amps. I was introduced to him through the Roth camp and he did a bunch of amps for me. The Carvin amps were out of the picture at that point."

source from a guitar world interview of Vai : https://www.guitarworld.com/feature...r-thinking-it-was-never-good-enough-back-then


"so I started to try to find some good Marshalls because Roth wanted me to mmm have the right you know the right amps "

"lucky for me because I was working with Dave Roth I inherited a whole crew of people that had worked with Edward and had you know just a lot more of mature experience in these kinds of things you know finding amplifiers and fooling around with them"

"I had decided then to try to to have Jose mod some marshals"



it is not said directly of course but that seems heavily implied moreover steve stevens had josé amps. That's probably one of those that he offered Vai.

See that amp ? it was in David Lee Roth basement... José and David lee Roth knew each other and many times when he needed another guitarist he sometimes would ask josé to mod some marshalls for him this is one of them... You can even see the DLR logo bottom right.

Educate yourself ? i mean it's not my fault if you didn't know about those infos ...

I spent around 10 years looking for each interview, piece of gear, forums, testimonies and even analysing pictures. I don't know everything for sure but i know quite a lot.

 

[Fiesta Red]

it is not said directly of course but that seems heavily implied moreover steve stevens had josé amps. That's probably one of those that he offered Vai.

You're threads are wonderful examples of confirmation bias

 

[Amp_chaser]

You're threads are wonderful examples of confirmation bias

"There was a myriad of amps being used, but for the most part I was into Soldanos at the time - early SLO-100s. I also had some older modded non-master volume Marshalls that had been modified by Jose Arredondo who was the guy at the time and had done all of Edward Van Halen’s amps. I was introduced to him through the Roth camp and he did a bunch of amps for me. The Carvin amps were out of the picture at that point."

interview of vai from guitar world where is that confirmation bias ? If people who worked with david lee roth asked vai to see josé is that vai knew him. Yeah he perhaps didn't tell it directly to vai but it was a least Roth's crew that introduced josé to vai... That tells us that Dave knew about josé and his amps and work. That would probably be enough to trigger eddie even if both artists didn't hate each other at all. But we don't really know whatever happened and who did what.

I admit that there are lots of hypothesis but the fact that Dave knew josé and that his crew introduced Vai to josé is real as it comes from steve vai's words...

let's just end this thread it has been enough of speculation. I'm not asking ofr people to agree with those hypothesis it's just that those are a possibility but many still believe it's just a stock plexi as a fact from eddie's interview we know 1 sure thing : there was a second amp involved in the recording of VH1 and very few did tests using two amps and posted the results.

 

[matttornado]

All this VH tone chasing from newbies just discovering him & his brown sound is getting really silly after all these years. Just Google it. It's not hard to dial in that sound with a PLEXI or 2203.