Variac a Super Lead instead of attenuating

[stef]

A battery in my 6band lasts for months! I played dozen gigs without changing the 9v battery... The blue box sounds best with something like 8.5volts

[rgalpin]

Had another band practice. For the majority of stuff we're doing, I'm just leaving the amp around 70 to 74v and the 6 band off. I'll kick it in if I want some crunchy crunch, but the phase 90 will also get things to cut through. If anything, I was getting a little trebly, so i actually tried the CH2 input (all knobs dimed), and that was rather nice. That's like, the first time i've ever purposefully plugged into CH2 when going for a lead sound.

the room sure makes a big difference.

Cool! Reading these real world applications of this setup is enlightening, intriguing, and invigorating. Not joking. Seriously - I hope people will continue to post about various scenarios with variances of this setup and let us know how its working and what you are tweaking. Awesome. Thanks Mr. T!

[Pasian4life]

In my experiments the 6band is way too noisey-With a good amp guitar etc... It's just to much. I think ed kicks it in the chain when he mimics hendrix feedback noises. Ain't no way that a stock blue six band is used for any rhythm guitar. Dimebag yes. Ed no.
The right guitar, pickup, amp, variac, speaker, cab , and technique are the key ingredients. The plexi volume is also critical as well as his volume use on the guitar. Bedroom vol. I like the 2203 for VH. I have no doubt that a great plexi cranked variac, sweet sounding cab with those vintage greenbacks are the core. Times 2 sounds even better. I like the clean natural amp distortion (power tubes). VOLUME!!! I like the ep pre. A clean boost at most. Just my opinion.
With that being said I love that sound for Van halen. If I'm doing zep or gnr acdc same setup but I like a good les paul.

[Pasian4life]

Also, in the early days he was trying to get that sound at lower volumes (smaller venue) when they hit the large venues he is trying to get more volume. One thing that did not change was his amazing skills.

[Strat78]

Also, in the early days he was trying to get that sound at lower volumes (smaller venue) when they hit the large venues he is trying to get more volume. One thing that did not change was his amazing skills.

[Pasian4life]

Yes Volume is amazing.

[Tone Slinger]

We have definately heard VERY convincing clips of Super Leads getting at '77/'78 era Ed-tone WITHOUT a eq box. We have also heard clips of Super Leads WITH a EQ box get at early Ed-tone. Here at Metro EVERY single scenario has been tried.

Two things Ed did that made the MOST difference, imo.

1st, He managed to get CRANKED tone, at lower volumes (variac). Not sure when he discovered it (variac), but other Bands like say THIN LIZZY only turned up half way or so, obviously for them controlling volume for smaller clubs was at the loss of some gain/juice. That was the same for MOST bands of that era.

2nd, He seemed to be trying to get a Strat to sound more like a Gibson. Obviously there is MUCH more to that than a mere pickup can do ( imo an EQ box was what he settled on). Modern,high gain amps (like the 5150 ) can pretty much get (single coils) to sound like a hb'ersl,because of the gain and eq power/control of the circuit. 1987/1959 spec amps really let the guitar itself come through.

[JoeyParm]

2nd, He seemed to be trying to get a Strat to sound more like a Gibson. Obviously there is MUCH more to that than a mere pickup can do ( imo an EQ box was what he settled on). Modern,high gain amps (like the 5150 ) can pretty much get (single coils) to sound like a hb'ersl,because of the gain and eq power/control of the circuit. 1987/1959 spec amps really let the guitar itself come through.

Right and didn't he say something about the Strat body fitting his style of play better and that a Gibson would have looked goofy because of how high he would have had to wear it?

[Pasian4life]

The best brown I was getting guitar wise was a jackson pc1 1vol 78pickup. That was before I realized it was thin on the g,b,e strings. Then I slapped a frankenstein together with a Frankie pup and slanted it. 9-40 gauge nickel.
At that point I ordered a trem spaced im1 a2 custom and stuck it in the pc1. Thinness gone and sounds great but not as sweet as that slanted basswood. The cc didn't work either. Have a n4 as well and it's thin issues was driving me nuts with all those pups. Took the super3 from the pc1 and bam!! But we are talking 1 trick ponies.

All the demos I listen to are great but it sounds like everyone over shoots it. Like most I hear lots of gain but it's not. Ime, The closer I get the cleaner and louder I get... The closest I am right now is very loud.... A plexi and 2203 in stereo! Awesomeness
Not so great recorded b/c I suck. But in a band context it's pretty close.

Just want to share my experiences. Maybe help some kiddos.

[Strat78]

Had another band practice. For the majority of stuff we're doing, I'm just leaving the amp around 70 to 74v and the 6 band off. I'll kick it in if I want some crunchy crunch, but the phase 90 will also get things to cut through. If anything, I was getting a little trebly, so i actually tried the CH2 input (all knobs dimed), and that was rather nice. That's like, the first time i've ever purposefully plugged into CH2 when going for a lead sound.

the room sure makes a big difference.

Cool! Reading these real world applications of this setup is enlightening, intriguing, and invigorating. Not joking. Seriously - I hope people will continue to post about various scenarios with variances of this setup and let us know how its working and what you are tweaking. Awesome. Thanks Mr. T!

Yes, and how!

[Pasian4life]

Eddie Van Halen always described the sound he was chasing as “brown,” but frankly I think of it as big. Think big, like John Bonham’s drums rattling the stones at Headley Grange in When The Levee Breaks. Think big, like an F-18 taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier right in front of your face. BIG.

His peers in the ’80s (who all had the same big Marshall stacks) didn’t sound like Eddie. Go put on Ozzy Osbourne’s Diary of a Madman, and then spin Van Halen II. Randy Rhoades was a fantastic guitarist, but the guitar tones of the two aren’t even close. Even with a wall of amps and cabinets, the other guys’ tones are thin and piercing like a very loud horsefly buzzing in your ear. Not Eddie’s tone. It’s warm. It has sustain. It’s clear. It’s not harsh. Gain and distortion are a part of his sound, but that’s not really the essence. It’s something more fundamental.

When Eddie Van Halen hit the scene in 1978, he utterly changed the face of rock-and-roll guitar. How the hell did he do it? How could this skinny kid from Pasadena playing gear that was pretty much like everyone else come up with such a revolutionary tone? How did he get that sound?

These questions have plagued a lot of guitarists for a long time. Like most of the fools before me, I’ve always felt like the secret–the key to unlocking everything–was just around the corner. I have chased Eddie Van Halen’s sound for damn near 25 years. In some ways I’m closer than I’ve ever been. But the more I learn, the more I realize I have a long way to go.

Part of Eddie’s sound comes from his choice of gear. He doesn’t play the same stuff that someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan did. Both guitarists are some of the all-time greats, but with two very different sounds. Instead of playing a Stratocaster with single-coil pickups through a Fender Tweed, Eddie is more likely to run a hot-rodded PAF humbucker through a Marshall. These are pretty fundamental choices when it comes to sound, and they form the base of each player’s unique style and tone.

[Pasian4life]

But there’s no magic box that makes that Van Halen tone. No fuzz boxes or distortion pedals. A little reverb, a little echo, maybe some phaser here and there (in very small, judicious amounts), and some occasional flanger. Other than that, it’s all pretty straightforward stuff. If you’re going after that tone, you need a gutsy tube amp cranked-up, vacuum tubes glowing red-hot and those speakers moving the hair on your arms. Nothing else comes close.

The gear is only a part of the equation, though. The bigger part of the tone comes from the hands, body and soul of the player. The real essence of his tone (or any other great player’s tone) comes from his hands and how they work that wire and wood. It comes from how he varies his picking attack. It comes from all the subtle shades of palm-muting he employs. It comes from his choice of which notes are articulated with individual pick-strokes and which are played legato using hammer-ons and pull-offs. The details are endless.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the years about Edward’s speed and technical innovation. But his rhythm playing doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. Listen to the rhythm work in the solo section of Mean Street. The solo is great, but the rhythm guitar is absolutely on fire. Along with Eddie’s brother on drums and the bass, the rhythm section is locked in and killing it. What other hard rock guitarist had such a deep pocket and feel for the groove?

Another crucial part of Eddie’s rhythm playing is his choice of chord voicings. Despite being a “hard rock” guitarist, he doesn’t use many standard “power chords” like any number of players in the same genre. Instead he often implies harmonies with a very careful selection of notes. With a cranked-up Marshall, the interaction between notes played simultaneously has a huge affect on the final tone. More often than not, he’ll play a two- or three-note chord instead of a five- or six-note chord because more notes would sound muddy and garbled. But he doesn’t just pick any couple of notes: he picks the ones that are the most powerful.
Listen to the chorus of Panama. It sounds huge, but most of those chords are two-note double stops. Anything more would diminish the impact. I suspect most listeners wouldn’t associate the word minimalism with Van Halen, but in this case, less is most definitely more.
Eddie Van Halen has been a rock fixture for so long that it’s easy to forget what an impact he’s made on the art of electric guitar playing. Not only did he change the equipment we play, but also how we play it. The more technical aspects of his playing are notorious, but his true mastery is heard in the subtle choices he makes with every note he plays. This variety is what gives him his unique sound. It’s also what so many of his imitators failed to capture.

Chasing down any one player’s style and tone can turn into a lifelong pursuit. Consider how sound is made with the electric guitar: your hands make steel strings vibrate that cause little magnets to create an approximation of those sounds in the form of a tiny electrical signal that travels through cables and effects, into an amplifier and out to speakers. It’s a wonder any of us can sound like anyone else. The gear is certainly part of it, but the bigger part is in the hands of the player.

I’ve chased “the brown sound” for more than two decades. I’ve played most of these songs hundreds (if not thousands) of times, and yet I still find new things to learn from Edward’s style. With such a deep catalog of material I’ll be busy studying Eddie’s playing for another few decades trying to master it all—and I won’t mind it one bit.The starting point of Eddie’s tone comes from a humbucker in the bridge position. Look at the original black and white “FrEddie Van Halen certainly wasn’t the first to put a humbucker in a Stratocaster body. Players the world over have loved the shape and form-factor of the Stratocaster. But for hard-rock and metal players, they wanted something beefier than the stock single-coil pickups. Until the rise of Eddie, the “super-Strat” was largely a construction of tinkerers and hobbyists willing to get their hands dirty modifying their guitars. Eddie brought it to the masses, and in retrospect, the concept of the “super-Strat” seems so obvious. By the ’80s, every manufacturer had some kind of “super-Strat” in their lineup, thanks to Edward Van Halen.

His amp of choice for a long time was a 1970s Marshall Super Lead. A lot of experienced amp gurus have looked this amplifier over and pronounced it “stock,” but with one exception: Eddie hand-wired a Variac voltage controller into the output circuit. This allowed him to crank everything up, including the master volume, yet still control the final output. A big part of his sound comes from driving both the pre-amp and power-amp tubes.ankenstein” guitar on the cover of Van Halen. It has one humbucker right where he wants it, near the bridge. He’s dabbled with different sounds through the years (e.g. Little Guitars, Top Jimmy, The Best of Both Worlds), but his core sound comes from that bridge humbucker.

[Pasian4life]

Eddie Van Halen certainly wasn’t the first to put a humbucker in a Stratocaster body. Players the world over have loved the shape and form-factor of the Stratocaster. But for hard-rock and metal players, they wanted something beefier than the stock single-coil pickups. Until the rise of Eddie, the “super-Strat” was largely a construction of tinkerers and hobbyists willing to get their hands dirty modifying their guitars. Eddie brought it to the masses, and in retrospect, the concept of the “super-Strat” seems so obvious. By the ’80s, every manufacturer had some kind of “super-Strat” in their lineup, thanks to Edward Van Halen.

His amp of choice for a long time was a 1970s Marshall Super Lead. A lot of experienced amp gurus have looked this amplifier over and pronounced it “stock,” but with one exception: Eddie hand-wired a Variac voltage controller into the output circuit. This allowed him to crank everything up, including the master volume, yet still control the final output. A big part of his sound comes from driving both the pre-amp and power-amp tubes.

But there’s no magic box that makes that Van Halen tone. No fuzz boxes or distortion pedals. A little reverb, a little echo, maybe some phaser here and there (in very small, judicious amounts), and some occasional flanger. Other than that, it’s all pretty straightforward stuff. If you’re going after that tone, you need a gutsy tube amp cranked-up, vacuum tubes glowing red-hot and those speakers moving the hair on your arms. Nothing else comes close.

The gear is only a part of the equation, though. The bigger part of the tone comes from the hands, body and soul of the player. The real essence of his tone (or any other great player’s tone) comes from his hands and how they work that wire and wood. It comes from how he varies his picking attack. It comes from all the subtle shades of palm-muting he employs. It comes from his choice of which notes are articulated with individual pick-strokes and which are played legato using hammer-ons and pull-offs. The details are endless.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the years about Edward’s speed and technical innovation. But his rhythm playing doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves. Listen to the rhythm work in the solo section of Mean Street. The solo is great, but the rhythm guitar is absolutely on fire. Along with Eddie’s brother on drums and the bass, the rhythm section is locked in and killing it. What other hard rock guitarist had such a deep pocket and feel for the groove?

Another crucial part of Eddie’s rhythm playing is his choice of chord voicings. Despite being a “hard rock” guitarist, he doesn’t use many standard “power chords” like any number of players in the same genre. Instead he often implies harmonies with a very careful selection of notes. With a cranked-up Marshall, the interaction between notes played simultaneously has a huge affect on the final tone. More often than not, he’ll play a two- or three-note chord instead of a five- or six-note chord because more notes would sound muddy and garbled. But he doesn’t just pick any couple of notes: he picks the ones that are the most powerful.
Listen to the chorus of Panama. It sounds huge, but most of those chords are two-note double stops. Anything more would diminish the impact. I suspect most listeners wouldn’t associate the word minimalism with Van Halen, but in this case, less is most definitely more.
Eddie Van Halen has been a rock fixture for so long that it’s easy to forget what an impact he’s made on the art of electric guitar playing. Not only did he change the equipment we play, but also how we play it. The more technical aspects of his playing are notorious, but his true mastery is heard in the subtle choices he makes with every note he plays. This variety is what gives him his unique sound. It’s also what so many of his imitators failed to capture.

Chasing down any one player’s style and tone can turn into a lifelong pursuit. Consider how sound is made with the electric guitar: your hands make steel strings vibrate that cause little magnets to create an approximation of those sounds in the form of a tiny electrical signal that travels through cables and effects, into an amplifier and out to speakers. It’s a wonder any of us can sound like anyone else. The gear is certainly part of it, but the bigger part is in the hands of the player.

I’ve chased “the brown sound” for more than two decades. I’ve played most of these songs hundreds (if not thousands) of times, and yet I still find new things to learn from Edward’s style. With such a deep catalog of material I’ll be busy studying Eddie’s playing for another few decades trying to master it all—and I won’t mind it one bit.

[Pasian4life]

https://soundcloud.com/pasian4life/feb_03_2015-020-edit

[Pasian4life]

Is that clip brown? Is it cranked plexi, 2203, pedals, or something else? Curious what other ppl think.