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

[harddriver]

jim can't replicate the bloom there is in the album and no studio rack can recreate an amp blooming except an amp itself just listen at rwtd isolated guitar sound tracks the amp blooms a lot. Blooming is caracteristic of early fender and marshall amps. The la2 is the only device that was used that could add bloom but not this much this is bloom coming from the amp itself. The issue is that a 68 lead doesn't bloom like that at all.

plus are you telling me that the testimonies of those above are lies ? it's guys who were there with him since his youth. José was old and probably out of business and retired when he gave the testimony and for the others Ed is dead why would they lie ?

This is stock Les Paul straight in cranked.......HAVE you ever played a real vintage 100 WATT 1968 Marshall Plexi cranked? Alot of people you are denigrating as inexperienced in this thread have, that's why they have the opinions they do, including people like Dave Friedman, Jim Gaustad, Al Estrada, Pete Thorn, George Metropolous. Then add two echoplexes, MXR 6band, MXR flanger and MXR phaser to the mix. I would also add that if one really wants to replicate exact tones then you may want to consider a standard fender trem versus a Floyd as they are quite different as to how they affect tone.

After all the talk, you have not posted one clip of a Jose amp that sounds better or more correct than a 68/72 plexi/SL doing Ed tones with or without the exact same signal chain.

If you can actually say these 68 plexi don't have the qualities heard on VH1 then you are not being honest.

 

[DanTravis62]

If one listens well to the isolated room mic clips and has played actual 1968-1972 Marshall plexis/superleads with a similar effects chain/guitars with similar pickups with similar skills quite a few of the people commenting in this thread have done so and know that what we are listening to is a variaced Marshall plexi with some factory variances(50K midpot)(820/.68uf for V1B) or even up to including pulled V4 V5 power tubes, Two EP3 echoplex preamps, and at times an MXR 6 band Eq driving the front end with Ed at the helm for VH1. That really is all the gain that Ed was working with and the studio room mic clips seem to prove that out it you are honest with yourself.

Now the nastier, rattier crunchy nature that rides the notes of VH1 versus VHII and later albums is another topic. but not a topic of gain from a 68 plexi.

We all know that Ed's amp had that pot on the back of the amp, that infers some type of mod. But what type of mod would a house amp from the Rose Palace have that was eventually removed sometime later when it was photographed quite a bit later????? But even this dissection is irrelevant when Ed's tone sounded as good or better from July 1978 to December 1978 since he was using replacement Marshall's on the tour both plexi's and superleads.

While a standard cascaded Jose modded Marshall sounds good it does change how the amp sounds compared to a stock non cascaded preamp with only two gain stages anyone that plays a good cranked 2203 compared to a good cranked 68-72 Plexi/Superlead will tell you they are different both for the player and listener.

You can't out-logic someones religious beliefs

Ironically, i think if he was a bit more advanced a player he'd be less convinced of his conspiracy theories

 

[harddriver]

You can't out-logic someones religious beliefs

Ironically, i think if he was a bit more advanced a player he'd be less convinced of his conspiracy theories

I think you are correct on this...some people either can't hear the actual proof or they won't hear it.

He really needs to consider the ToneX 78/79 package......it's damn good and as close to my 68 Marshall than I have heard yet. But he has already said Jim Gaustad is a hack and his amps are not even close to the original tones.............

 

[DanTravis62]

I think you are correct on this...some people either can't hear the actual proof or they won't hear it.

He really needs to consider the ToneX 78/79 package......it's damn good and as close to my 68 Marshall than I have heard yet. But he has already said Jim Gaustad is a hack and his amps are not even close to the original tones.............

Honestly any good modeler i've tried has great brown sound tones. It's one of the most modeled and obsessed over amp tones on earth, and has been absolutely nailed a million times over.

I can get ridiculously close with just the stock kemper plexi tone and some tweaking.

 

[Amp_chaser]

This is stock Les Paul straight in cranked.......HAVE you ever played a real vintage 100 WATT 1968 Marshall Plexi cranked? Alot of people you are denigrating as inexperienced in this thread have, that's why they have the opinions they do, including people like Dave Friedman, Jim Gaustad, Al Estrada, Pete Thorn, George Metropolous. Then add two echoplexes, MXR 6band, MXR flanger and MXR phaser to the mix. I would also add that if one really wants to replicate exact tones then you may want to consider a standard fender trem versus a Floyd as they are quite different as to how they affect tone.

After all the talk, you have not posted one clip of a Jose amp that sounds better or more correct than a 68/72 plexi/SL doing Ed tones with or without the exact same signal chain.

If you can actually say these 68 plexi don't have the qualities heard on VH1 then you are not being honest.

i never said you couldn't get close. For most people getting 70%-80% they are happy. But that's not 100%. Without ed's fingers what could be realizable is probably around 90% and deraps could perhaps go to 99% of he had the right gear because of his way of picking and palm muting.

i just wonder what do you do of all of those tesitmonies i gave you and even gave you some sources ? Are they all lying ?

Another thing what is this weird amp siting inside 5150 studios ? it's over a stack of peavey 5150. Why would he be on the top ? Perhaps that's because that's one of the amps that he uses the most.

oh wait 3 input are closed and there was a hole for a master plus the volume 1 knob is the same that josé added to the amps he modded...

van halen isn't a single amp only but multiple amps. Moreover in 1978 in the japanese setup the 68 lead is used as a slave and there are multiples pictures where it is used as a distortion box. the 68 lead is rarely used as the main amp most often it's another amp or the wooden one.

finally it makes sense to mod the 68 if it is used as a distortion unit for another amp.

look at those tube socket holes on the extra tube socket please. I have a 70's super lead if i remove the cover of the socket there is no markings of the washers... This means those were screwed and unscrewed a lot of times. Why would you do that ? Only if you had solder terminals there and you were experimenting with values. Then no mustard coupling cap in v1a no mustard coupling cap in v1b, Lemco and RS mica treble and mixer caps are not present. Moreover dave friedman when released the specs about the 68 lead said the cap can was 32/32uf judging by size of the first picture it's impossibe it has to be way smaller. Finally John Suhr said the solder joins were stock in the preamp section... Tell me where it is stock ? most of the preamp board has been hacked. And wait van Wheelden didn't touch components he rewired the amp that's not the same thing... If van wheelden was asked to bring it back to stock he would have used mustards the guy is not crazy moreover he has quite a good reputation despite the teflon wire issue. You can search online many techs who work on famous artists gear have to sign NDAs and it is pretty common.

Finally, please i ask you is Rudy Leiren a liar ? Is Kevin Dugan a liar ? Is José Arredondo a liar ? Is Pete Frampton a liar ? are they all liars ?

It's weird you that prefer to believe people who were not there during the van halen days than guys which met eddie and were directly part of his musical journey.

it's also weird that the granger x gain kit and the audette R/T mod are in every aspect better than any stock marshall you linked :





those are modded 68 leads and the fact that Dario is an excellent player also plays a role.

i will tell you if josé did indeed mod eddie's amps for vh1 and did create vh1 setup then it would be one of the biggest injustice of the musical world to say and assume the amp was stock.

the right way would be to say we don't know if it was stock or not and there are many elements suggesting that josé could have modded it. However saying it was stock ? How do we even know ?

 

[SpiderWars]

Finally, please i ask you is Rudy Leiren a liar ? Is Kevin Dugan a liar ? Is José Arredondo a liar ? Is Pete Frampton a liar ? are they all liars ?

EVH was a liar, that much we know for sure.

 

[harddriver]

Ed admitted he lied about his setup to keep people from copying him, even said he ran the variac at 140VAC. It is critical that one uses their own ears and really listen to how the amps respond and make you own decision as to what you like. Yes a cascade does give extra gain but it does not replicate the response you get from diming a two gain stage plexi at loud volumes or into a load box and slaved to other power amps. I have an RT cascade in one of my amps and it does sound very good but the 68 amp does it better. As I thought you cannot or will not hear the differences being pointed out to you. Jose was never known to cascade an amp as Audette does with all the examples of his amps out there. A multitude of players hear these differences and prefer a stock two gain stage amp for early Ed tones, myself included. You are welcome to conclude what ever you wish but others may have different conclusions.



The cascades do sound great but they do not sound as exacting as these 68 clips by Eddy Lenz.....as good as those cascades sound they are not as good as a two gain stage plexi.

 

[Chubtone]

So to the OP, let's say you took your amp that you think is 90% of the way there and your best sounding guitar and took them with you in a time machine to 1977 and broke into Van Halen's rehearsal room. You walked in with your guitar and amp and you stole Eddie's magic Marshall and you stole the black and white striped guitar leaving your gear in their place. The next day Van Halen goes in to Sunset Sound and Eddie records that first album with your plexi and your guitar, we would all still be chasing whatever sound Eddie got on that album with your gear. Even if it was 10% different than the actual sound he got on there with his gear. It would have had the exact same impact.

If you feel like after 10 years of chasing this that your amp is 90% of the way there, what percentage would you say your fingers and chops are at? If you don't say 100% then you have been wasting your time and focusing on what is less important instead of focusing on what is most important.

And you never answered my question. What gig or recording do you have coming up that it is more important for you to get even closer to Eddie's sound than it is for Al Estrada who is playing Eddie's songs while touring with David Lee Roth?

 

[harddriver]

 

[Anje]

"Bweaaah" indeed

 

[harddriver]

 

[Greazygeo]

View attachment 409623

look at those tube socket holes on the extra tube socket please. I have a 70's super lead if i remove the cover of the socket there is no markings of the washers...

Both of my ‘69’s have those extra tube socket holes with the factory covers. Those black oxide washers have “eaten” into the chassis from being there for 50 years or whatever. Hard to say how many years it tales for the chemical reaction to take place. They used the same chassis as Super Trems etc that used more preamp tubes and just ised the covers on the amps that didn’t.

The Jamie’s Cryin room mic sounds like mine when my old basketweave cab still had good G12m-20’s with the 014 cones. It was a bummer when those speakers died.

 

[mentoneman]

interpretations and opinions are like snowflakes and fingerprints.

 

[Amp_chaser]

Ed admitted he lied about his setup to keep people from copying him, even said he ran the variac at 140VAC. It is critical that one uses their own ears and really listen to how the amps respond and make you own decision as to what you like. Yes a cascade does give extra gain but it does not replicate the response you get from diming a two gain stage plexi at loud volumes or into a load box and slaved to other power amps. I have an RT cascade in one of my amps and it does sound very good but the 68 amp does it better. As I thought you cannot or will not hear the differences being pointed out to you. Jose was never known to cascade an amp as Audette does with all the examples of his amps out there. A multitude of players hear these differences and prefer a stock two gain stage amp for early Ed tones, myself included. You are welcome to conclude what ever you wish but others may have different conclusions.



The cascades do sound great but they do not sound as exacting as these 68 clips by Eddy Lenz.....as good as those cascades sound they are not as good as a two gain stage plexi.

Yes i use my hears RWTD is impossible to reproduce with a 68 lead. The Bloom isn't there, the distortion structure is also different. Same for feel your love tonight where the bass is overwhelming while a 68 has very few bass compared to older vintage marshall heads. No one reproduced those tones accurately. When people link van halen tone videos it's almost never any of those. Why ? because they are very difficult to get right and spot on. find me a 68 lead without any effect and no ir cab direct mic record that can reproduce those tones in a video perfectly and i'll believe you.

Why would a josé at the end of his life and retired lie ?
why would rudy leiren say we have mods but i can't tell what ?

Answer just those 2 questions... Why would josé tell he knows eddie since 72 and that they took many years to get the mods and the setup right ? that doesn't seem like something he would invent out of nowhere...

another thing if a plexi could do it why did multiple amp gurus and amp builders and tone entousiasts gathered some years ago on the metroforums to try to find out how eddie got his tone ? Because they all knew even if you can get close it's almost impossible to get that tone with a stock plexi.

It has nothing to do with gain but it's with the distortion coloring and levels which are insane. DIstortion does not equal gain. Moreover there is that big bloom. The sound blooms like a flower blooming is term used for the sound of jtm amps. Real jtm amps : the sound isn't instant it blooms coming out stronger. But for people who never played any of those or who only played them threw modeling they can't understand what that is because modelers struggle copying that even if one day they will perhaps...

 

[Chubtone]

Does the noise in my head bother you?

 

[erniecaster]

This is really difficult.

My wife was born in 1978. I really love her and I still think she is pretty but she is not a young hot chick anymore.

If you ask me for my rig at the last gig one week ago, I probably don´t know every detail. My luthier can´t remember the guitar on which he did the setup for me one year ago. And some techs remember every knob and screw of an amp of one of their clients that was used in 1978? Nah.

It seems a little odd to put that much energy in - sorry - an old guitar sound which has been duplicated a 1000 times in average modelers.

I don´t want to insult anybody but isn´t it time to call it a day and get a life?

 

[Amp_chaser]

So to the OP, let's say you took your amp that you think is 90% of the way there and your best sounding guitar and took them with you in a time machine to 1977 and broke into Van Halen's rehearsal room. You walked in with your guitar and amp and you stole Eddie's magic Marshall and you stole the black and white striped guitar leaving your gear in their place. The next day Van Halen goes in to Sunset Sound and Eddie records that first album with your plexi and your guitar, we would all still be chasing whatever sound Eddie got on that album with your gear. Even if it was 10% different than the actual sound he got on there with his gear. It would have had the exact same impact.

If you feel like after 10 years of chasing this that your amp is 90% of the way there, what percentage would you say your fingers and chops are at? If you don't say 100% then you have been wasting your time and focusing on what is less important instead of focusing on what is most important.

And you never answered my question. What gig or recording do you have coming up that it is more important for you to get even closer to Eddie's sound than it is for Al Estrada who is playing Eddie's songs while touring with David Lee Roth?

I don't deny palm muting and picking which are the hardest to come close to ed's playing. I would say those represent 10% of the tone but are the big nuances.

For Van Halen first album : I'd say that the best setups can achieve 80% Mod V, Audette R/T mod, Bray. A plexi under variac with the right specs could get you 70% there. Another thing eddie didn't use 6ca7 tubes during van halen 1 but EL34 ERA tubes which were german telefunken style tubes.

to get the 90% you'd need the right distortion (not the same as gain) amount, coloring, sizzle and bloom. In my opinion there is a slave setup as most testimonies and even some guitar magazines describe it was 2 amps. The 68 was used as a distortion box or distortion unit it would then from the guitar output go threw a 20ohm load box center taped made by josé using a cheap 1:10 turn ratio transfromer and then go to one of the input of the main amp. The 68 lead was probably modded with either ONE of those mods (extra gain stage either with tube or Fet or a master volume with diodes or a tube voltacontrol). the tube voltacontrol seems to be a secret josé mod extremely rare even rarer than the diodes :

then The knob on the load box would act like a overdrive pot feeding the distortion into amp1. Amp 1 is clearly a blooming amp or an early Marshall or fender amp.

the early setup redplated a lot and blew 2-3 Ot transfomers a week. The only stock marshall unit that did that out of the factory was the jtm45/100 variant 4a and only around 100-200 units were produced it is perhaps the rarest model ever produced. It is said that it's one of the greatest crunchs marshall has ever done. But due to issues it had to be modded or you would blow tubes and ot a lot... even more if you biased it hot like eddie used to do at 80mv... Those rarely come out for sale and go around 10-20k usd. In fact reverb has only 2 or 3 listings of those in all of it's existing history.

My plan is to reproduce the amp, the load box and try the slave setup with it on a 68 lead with ed's specs. Heyboer offers replicas of the transformers.

For those who don't know what blooming is and never played a blooming amp here is a description of it :

"The JTM45 has a dynamic response that feels like the note swells after you play it — a slight delay before the full body of the note comes in, almost like a compressor releasing in reverse. It's not immediate aggression like a later Marshall. Instead, it’s smooth, round, and has this chewy sag that gives the notes space to grow and breathe. That’s the ‘bloom’ — the note seems to open up after you hit it." this is true for early jtm amps including jtm45/100 and early fender amps bassman and bandmaster.

Van halen 1 were 2 amps. Some say the wooden amp or a 2003 master PA were used however we never got any factual confirmation. If testimonies confirm that it were 2 amps then you cannot achieve the tone perfetcly with one amp only even if it's close.

 

[Amp_chaser]

This is really difficult.

My wife was born in 1978. I really love her and I still think she is pretty but she is not a young hot chick anymore.

If you ask me for my rig at the last gig one week ago, I probably don´t know every detail. My luthier can´t remember the guitar on which he did the setup for me one year ago. And some techs remember every knob and screw of an amp of one of their clients that was used in 1978? Nah.

It seems a little odd to put that much energy in - sorry - an old guitar sound which has been duplicated a 1000 times in average modelers.

I don´t want to insult anybody but isn´t it time to call it a day and get a life?

I agree with some aspects of it however we all have passions and i think that this one is better than drugs alcool and sex. Moreover thanks to it i learnt how to build amps and service audio gear. I recently recaped 80% of my ada mp1 preamp an thing i would never thought i would be able to do. This tone chase journey was very beneficial.

 

[Lightning]

Jimi Hendrix used Marshall JTM 45/100 amps