A
Amp_chaser
Active member
Hi guys,
after doing some research and reasoning threw interviews pictures and testimonies and guitar isolated track there are things that don't add up to the widely accepted theory that it was just a 68 plexi under variac or that the studio was the main cause of the sound.
here are every arguments against it :
1. Van halen 1 blooms too much that kind of strong bloom is almost non existant in 68 plexis.
2. Disortion is way bigger than amps at that time and it is asymetrical which hints that there was another device creating another kind of distortion or a mod doing it.
3. Kevin Dugan which is Michael Anthony bass tech claims that eddie's heads were modded and that he was even tasked multiple times to bring eddie's heads to arrco electronics aka josé's shop.
4. José arredondo said in an interview for Neil Zlozlower's biography of van halen that they met around 72 73 and that it took them 5 years to mod and create a tone they wanted.
5. Ted templeman in a conference about a biography of van halen said that the gain was way bigger that what he usually heard and that the amp was quite quiet.
6. Sound Engineer assistant which was there for van halen 1 Peggy “Mac” McCreary said that sunset sound were known to not alter the tone a lot and sought to replicate sounds as accurately as possible.
7. Rudy Leiren which was the first van halen live amp tech said that the original amp was modded and that mods evolved around the years. The only one he disclosed was a mod allowing to bias hotter.
8. Pete frampton asked eddie how he would get his tone in 1978 eddie told him that he had a guy modding his amp. That guy was josé. José told frampton he couldn't do the same thing as eddie but he would do something similar. Pete still owns and uses that amp and john suhr cloned it for him.
9. After George Lynch and Randy Rhoads learnt more about how eddie got his tone they looked for hot rod marshalls. José or Jackson lee mods.
10. Multiple interviews and even magazines mentionned that van halen 1 was 2 guitar amps.
Mike soldano, Joh Suhr and Dave Friedman saw the amp after the 90's. the back knob of van halen 1 and 2 was already removed which means that amp was probably brought back to stock way before they saw and inspected it. When john suhr said that he inspected the solder joints and said it was stock he was probably under nda because dave friedman some years later posted the gut shots of the preamp section ed's 68 marshall and the mustards were missing and there is definitely excessive solder on the preamp filtering cap. The mixer cap and treble cap are also not stock. So it was surely modded at some point. top one is eddie's amp bottom is a stock 68 :
Now are there arguments against the 68 being the main amp ?
The answer is yes even if those aren't strictly proofs.
1. Inconsistencies about dating what they called the main head or the top head : the first mention of the amp was that it was a plexi pannel and early 60 amp. Then they refered to it as a 65 plexi. Always refering it to an early mid 60's.
2. Too much bloom in van halen 1 not caracteristic of a 68 super lead at all.
3. Pictures of Eddie using yellow light marshall in a slaved setup. Yellow pilot lights are characterstic of marshall jtm45 and 45/100. Here on the right it's clearly a 100w head with a yellow pilot light.
look the guitar cable is connected to the yellow pilot amp which means it is the main guitar amp. The red pilot lamp seems to be slaved in the jtm amp and it's probably the 68 super lead.
Lastly there is an even stronger argument that the main amp was not the 68 lead during a short time period in 1978. Rudy Leiren said in multiple interviews that during the early day of van halen the main amp ate power tubes like crazy becaused they red plated a lot : aka we would watch the tubes melt. This caused the OT transformers to fail 2-3 times a week and this was not reliable at all. That's probably why this settup was put to rest using the 68 lead only with a variac and some bias mods.
in Marshall's history believe it or not there is an amp that fits this category of red plating amp perfectly and it's a jtm 45/100 and it's the v4 of it :
"Version 4A: First EL34s (February 1967)
In February 1967, the Drake 1202-119 output transformer was introduced together with EL34s. When changing from KT66s to EL34s, the primary impedance of the output transformer was reduced greatly (from 4K to 1.75K). However, the new transformer still has the same stack thickness and the same secondaries as its predecessor. It is not known whether the impedance was changed in order to accommodate EL34s or in order to produce more power. Although EL34 load lines suggest that a 1.7K load is appropriate for a quad (and 3.4K for a pair), this presupposes voltages around 420V (as shown by Randall Aiken). However, Marshall used the 1204-43 transformer, meaning that the voltages are significantly higher. The combination of low primary impedance and high voltages results in a very powerful amplifier that runs the EL34s very hard (leading to redplating). However, good tubes (Mullard xf2 EL34s) and power supply sag alleviated this problem somewhat. Theoretically, the change of output transformer would double the output, making it a powerful amp indeed. In reality, the power is less than doubled although it exceeds the 115-120 watts produced by later EL34 amps. The new transformer results not only in a louder amp but also changes tone and feel somewhat, making it more dirty and aggressive. The harmonic overtones contain more 3rds, 5ths, and 7ths; it is not as good for playing complex cords (e.g., E7+9) as its forerunners. This amp excels at crunchy rock and light breakup. The clean sound is very good, but not as great as the KT66s amps. Overall, the sound is very similar to the later 1967 amps, although slightly cleaner sounding.
With the exception of EL34s and the 1202-119, this amp is identical to its immediate predecessor. However, the Vox vents are no longer used; all headcabs use a long narrow went, although its thickness varies. It is uncertain whether all amps used 16uf filtering in the preamp or whether dual preamp filtering was introduced. Although a few pictures, reports, and recordings exist, this amp is very rare and has not been reissued or recreated (except by the present author). Serial numbers seem to be confined to the 7200 range"
Only around 100 of them were even produced which means that eddie could have used one of the rarest marshalls in history.
source : http://www.amparchives.com/2019/10/...-from-jtms-to-jmp-superleads/nggallery/page/3
It's true that we could assume it was a bandmaster or a marshall PA 2003 that was slaved but i think that knowing eddie accoring to his testimonies he would never let anyone know what he was really using.
Lastly another big hint that the 68 marshall was probably used as distortion box amp is this picture :
the 68 super lead is again used not as the main amp. Ed was Experimenting with amp-to-amp linking to get a thicker, more aggressive tone.
Here the main amp seems to be a 70's mark 2 plexi. But for the records and for a short period of time it was probably a jtm45/100 that redplated.
It's higly probable that what we are lacking is that marshall head. if that's the case, the real the real deal and settup would likely be that :
modded 68 Super lead => José load box => Jtm 45/100 input => cab with vintage 20w greenbacks.
another hint that this was the real deal when testimonies talk of the josé load box they said he turned the knob for the desired amount of drive. A load box doesn't drive an amp it controls the amount of line signal it lets threw. That means that wathever was before it was driving the main source of audio that processed the speaker's sound.
finally apparently the gene simons van halen 0 records were done with another amp head the jtm45/100 seems to do this tone quite well. here is an example of how a 8 holer jtm 45/100 (this is not the 4 hole 4a variant) sounds with van halen playing :
there is no way that the amp used in van halen 0 (the record with gene simmons) is the 68 super lead and that's probably this amp that was played there that was used with the 68 lead as a slave. That's probably this amp that is responsible for the chewiness and blooming of the tone in van halen 1 :
it's just a theory until people test it. That's my main objective with that particular setup.
after doing some research and reasoning threw interviews pictures and testimonies and guitar isolated track there are things that don't add up to the widely accepted theory that it was just a 68 plexi under variac or that the studio was the main cause of the sound.
here are every arguments against it :
1. Van halen 1 blooms too much that kind of strong bloom is almost non existant in 68 plexis.
2. Disortion is way bigger than amps at that time and it is asymetrical which hints that there was another device creating another kind of distortion or a mod doing it.
3. Kevin Dugan which is Michael Anthony bass tech claims that eddie's heads were modded and that he was even tasked multiple times to bring eddie's heads to arrco electronics aka josé's shop.
4. José arredondo said in an interview for Neil Zlozlower's biography of van halen that they met around 72 73 and that it took them 5 years to mod and create a tone they wanted.
5. Ted templeman in a conference about a biography of van halen said that the gain was way bigger that what he usually heard and that the amp was quite quiet.
6. Sound Engineer assistant which was there for van halen 1 Peggy “Mac” McCreary said that sunset sound were known to not alter the tone a lot and sought to replicate sounds as accurately as possible.
7. Rudy Leiren which was the first van halen live amp tech said that the original amp was modded and that mods evolved around the years. The only one he disclosed was a mod allowing to bias hotter.
8. Pete frampton asked eddie how he would get his tone in 1978 eddie told him that he had a guy modding his amp. That guy was josé. José told frampton he couldn't do the same thing as eddie but he would do something similar. Pete still owns and uses that amp and john suhr cloned it for him.
9. After George Lynch and Randy Rhoads learnt more about how eddie got his tone they looked for hot rod marshalls. José or Jackson lee mods.
10. Multiple interviews and even magazines mentionned that van halen 1 was 2 guitar amps.
Mike soldano, Joh Suhr and Dave Friedman saw the amp after the 90's. the back knob of van halen 1 and 2 was already removed which means that amp was probably brought back to stock way before they saw and inspected it. When john suhr said that he inspected the solder joints and said it was stock he was probably under nda because dave friedman some years later posted the gut shots of the preamp section ed's 68 marshall and the mustards were missing and there is definitely excessive solder on the preamp filtering cap. The mixer cap and treble cap are also not stock. So it was surely modded at some point. top one is eddie's amp bottom is a stock 68 :
Now are there arguments against the 68 being the main amp ?
The answer is yes even if those aren't strictly proofs.
1. Inconsistencies about dating what they called the main head or the top head : the first mention of the amp was that it was a plexi pannel and early 60 amp. Then they refered to it as a 65 plexi. Always refering it to an early mid 60's.
2. Too much bloom in van halen 1 not caracteristic of a 68 super lead at all.
3. Pictures of Eddie using yellow light marshall in a slaved setup. Yellow pilot lights are characterstic of marshall jtm45 and 45/100. Here on the right it's clearly a 100w head with a yellow pilot light.
look the guitar cable is connected to the yellow pilot amp which means it is the main guitar amp. The red pilot lamp seems to be slaved in the jtm amp and it's probably the 68 super lead.
Lastly there is an even stronger argument that the main amp was not the 68 lead during a short time period in 1978. Rudy Leiren said in multiple interviews that during the early day of van halen the main amp ate power tubes like crazy becaused they red plated a lot : aka we would watch the tubes melt. This caused the OT transformers to fail 2-3 times a week and this was not reliable at all. That's probably why this settup was put to rest using the 68 lead only with a variac and some bias mods.
in Marshall's history believe it or not there is an amp that fits this category of red plating amp perfectly and it's a jtm 45/100 and it's the v4 of it :
"Version 4A: First EL34s (February 1967)
In February 1967, the Drake 1202-119 output transformer was introduced together with EL34s. When changing from KT66s to EL34s, the primary impedance of the output transformer was reduced greatly (from 4K to 1.75K). However, the new transformer still has the same stack thickness and the same secondaries as its predecessor. It is not known whether the impedance was changed in order to accommodate EL34s or in order to produce more power. Although EL34 load lines suggest that a 1.7K load is appropriate for a quad (and 3.4K for a pair), this presupposes voltages around 420V (as shown by Randall Aiken). However, Marshall used the 1204-43 transformer, meaning that the voltages are significantly higher. The combination of low primary impedance and high voltages results in a very powerful amplifier that runs the EL34s very hard (leading to redplating). However, good tubes (Mullard xf2 EL34s) and power supply sag alleviated this problem somewhat. Theoretically, the change of output transformer would double the output, making it a powerful amp indeed. In reality, the power is less than doubled although it exceeds the 115-120 watts produced by later EL34 amps. The new transformer results not only in a louder amp but also changes tone and feel somewhat, making it more dirty and aggressive. The harmonic overtones contain more 3rds, 5ths, and 7ths; it is not as good for playing complex cords (e.g., E7+9) as its forerunners. This amp excels at crunchy rock and light breakup. The clean sound is very good, but not as great as the KT66s amps. Overall, the sound is very similar to the later 1967 amps, although slightly cleaner sounding.
With the exception of EL34s and the 1202-119, this amp is identical to its immediate predecessor. However, the Vox vents are no longer used; all headcabs use a long narrow went, although its thickness varies. It is uncertain whether all amps used 16uf filtering in the preamp or whether dual preamp filtering was introduced. Although a few pictures, reports, and recordings exist, this amp is very rare and has not been reissued or recreated (except by the present author). Serial numbers seem to be confined to the 7200 range"
Only around 100 of them were even produced which means that eddie could have used one of the rarest marshalls in history.
source : http://www.amparchives.com/2019/10/...-from-jtms-to-jmp-superleads/nggallery/page/3
It's true that we could assume it was a bandmaster or a marshall PA 2003 that was slaved but i think that knowing eddie accoring to his testimonies he would never let anyone know what he was really using.
Lastly another big hint that the 68 marshall was probably used as distortion box amp is this picture :
Here the main amp seems to be a 70's mark 2 plexi. But for the records and for a short period of time it was probably a jtm45/100 that redplated.
It's higly probable that what we are lacking is that marshall head. if that's the case, the real the real deal and settup would likely be that :
modded 68 Super lead => José load box => Jtm 45/100 input => cab with vintage 20w greenbacks.
another hint that this was the real deal when testimonies talk of the josé load box they said he turned the knob for the desired amount of drive. A load box doesn't drive an amp it controls the amount of line signal it lets threw. That means that wathever was before it was driving the main source of audio that processed the speaker's sound.
finally apparently the gene simons van halen 0 records were done with another amp head the jtm45/100 seems to do this tone quite well. here is an example of how a 8 holer jtm 45/100 (this is not the 4 hole 4a variant) sounds with van halen playing :
there is no way that the amp used in van halen 0 (the record with gene simmons) is the 68 super lead and that's probably this amp that was played there that was used with the 68 lead as a slave. That's probably this amp that is responsible for the chewiness and blooming of the tone in van halen 1 :
it's just a theory until people test it. That's my main objective with that particular setup.
Last edited:
