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

[Amp_chaser]

Ralle tried everything including cascades but his original two gain stage specs were the best and even he went back to them, I looked through my saved layouts for his original specs and I don't have it, just his cascaded versions.

If I remember correctly his original Ralle specs were pretty much a stock 68 like the Friedman specs and then he ran .1uf cap on the PI coupling caps and he would try different NFB values like 27K, 47K and 100K on the different feeback taps, like the standard plexi NFB tap on the 8 ohm for a cleaner more headroom tone versus the 4 ohm tap. 47K on the 8ohm tap is a bit cleaner and Jose like the 100K NFB on the 4 ohm tap like the later superlead amps.

PM me if you want the Ralle cascade layouts.

Ralle settup sounded insanely good i remember a that when i came late and that the forum was dead he had some links to his audios the few sound samples he had left sounded really good.

There is one thing i want to add hard driver. There is a mod i want to try that in fact doesn’t add any component except it transforms one of the volumes into a master volume. It’s no jose master no diodes no extra gain stage. It’s no cascade and not the fat cap. It adds 40% of additionnal gain. Perhaps that’s just what it needs ? 40% of gain from a super lead doesn’t seem that much compared to the traditional plexi and way less than an extra gain stage. It’s a different order to wire some components.

However one thing that i question a lot is that weird thing that fryette said that the plexi looked more like a mk2. I wonder if at some point it had 2k7 .68 uf after the 820r .68 uf. That would perhaps explain why jose was obsessed with the .68 uf 2k7. Who knows…

 

[Lightning]

My Rockstah Mod 5(last amp that Mark modded before he passed away)has gain up the ass and there’s no extra(tube 12ax7)gain stage is still has the plexi flavor and openness.

 

[Mike Oxhuge]

It definitely is not cascaded. I missed the clip of your own moded and frankly that clip is off by miles and has some sort of top end "whistling" do to whatever it is you did to get that harsh top end, not to mention wrong gain structure and considerably more gain than anything Ed ever put to tape. Did you ever listen to the isolated tracks posted earlier in this thread? Its obvious the only difference in the 2 clips is the JBL to anyone that has ever tried that experiment. And also obviously its a stock Plexi. Period. Nothing else sounds exactly like that except a cranked variaced all knobs including the bass channel knob on 10 variaced Plexi with a mixture of greenbacks and JBL'S. Do you have proper studio monitors for comparing? Without those you will continue to chase your tail. Hell, a stock JCM 800 will get closer than your clip did. Just won't have the brightness or quite as much gain. I know as I had a good 800 that could get in the ballpark, if I used the eq in a frown in front of it. Which Ed also had available. Good luck in your search, just don't drive yourself crazy trying to reinvent the wheel on what many of us already tried every reasonable combo available. And it was the 70's man, everyone in all your interviews were alcoholics and on drugs as well. They don't remember shit of how it went down at this point.

 

[legend71]

We have a saying in the USA. Don't put the cart before the horse. Play your guitar.

View attachment 409369

So what I am reading here is that what guys like Al Estrada are doing isn't close enough for you? You have an upcoming gig or recording where you need to get a closer to original EVH sound than what Al needs to play Van Halen songs while on tour with David Lee Roth?

Agreed - It is interesting reading all the theories on EVH's tone but in reality its all about him and how he plays. I am sure its fun to chase all that info down and postulate etc and that's cool. I guess as I have gotten older it matters less to me than the man behind the music.

 

[RevDrucifer]

I go down Gilmour rabbit holes to recreate some of his tones and as rewarding as it can be once you step in the ballpark, there’s also a bit of an empty feeling once it’s over, like “Ok, now what do I do with that?” Obviously learning something new is always a good thing and the information learned in the process can be applied in different areas, especially if you’re actually working on the playing part of it, but there’s certainly an aspect of ‘ruining the magic’ that comes along with it, for me anyway.

 

[Amp_chaser]

It definitely is not cascaded. I missed the clip of your own moded and frankly that clip is off by miles and has some sort of top end "whistling" do to whatever it is you did to get that harsh top end, not to mention wrong gain structure and considerably more gain than anything Ed ever put to tape. Did you ever listen to the isolated tracks posted earlier in this thread? Its obvious the only difference in the 2 clips is the JBL to anyone that has ever tried that experiment. And also obviously its a stock Plexi. Period. Nothing else sounds exactly like that except a cranked variaced all knobs including the bass channel knob on 10 variaced Plexi with a mixture of greenbacks and JBL'S. Do you have proper studio monitors for comparing? Without those you will continue to chase your tail. Hell, a stock JCM 800 will get closer than your clip did. Just won't have the brightness or quite as much gain. I know as I had a good 800 that could get in the ballpark, if I used the eq in a frown in front of it. Which Ed also had available. Good luck in your search, just don't drive yourself crazy trying to reinvent the wheel on what many of us already tried every reasonable combo available. And it was the 70's man, everyone in all your interviews were alcoholics and on drugs as well. They don't remember shit of how it went down at this point.

Well that amp is just based on the vai's amp and on the josé in the david lee roth basement.

it hisses a lot because there are some caps missing because i don't have the right values.

There are some people that told me that i got very close to the iso track of RWTD. I'm talking about vh1 exclusively. If you listen to iso guitar tracks you'll notice that the sound evolved a lot threw time and that vh1 exclusively has a huge tonal difference. It's sublte in a mix but in guitar isolated tracks it's obvious :

no stock plexi has that punch, it almost sounds like a chainsaw.



i'm very sloppy it has been years i only mod and build amp without playing a lot. but here is how it sounds with less gain :



this is the amp with full gain.



I also use g12h30 blackbacks instead of the jbl d120f because zeke clark and a seller of flag system cabs said Ed used g12h30 blackbacks 55hz.

however i don't know if the mod i did is the right one. However i admit there is probably way less gain. In the tracks there is more gain than a stock plexi. Perhaps that cascade or things like that were done but that's already a mod.

 

[Anje]

no stock plexi has that punch, it almost sounds like a chainsaw.

I really don't know what you are talking about; "that punch... like a chainsaw" ?!

In the tracks there is more gain than a stock plexi.

No, there's not to me.
A "good stockish" late 60's / early 70's "Plexi" has plenty of "punch" or "gain" to do what I can hear from all those old VH recording tracks; depends how you play, what/how you plug into it, what/how you play the amp into, how you record it...
VH1 album does sound slightly different from the later ones or same era live recordings, but does not sound like most of the difference is coming from any significant amp change to me.