Mats A wrote:Old thread but:
I guess we´ll never really know how he did it. What about the story that he used slaving on VHI. That his signal was Flanger-Phaser-Echoplex-MXR 6 Band set up as mid boost-Plexi-Load Box with volume control and in to upper left input of his Wooden Marshall. He also used the Variac and lowered the Voltage in to the amp. I doubt the MXR 6 Band mid boost. I´ve tried it and you sound more like Tom Scholtz in Boston than Eddie. You get a very nasal tone. Eddie sound more natural maybe a bit toppier. Some say Slaving was very common among guitarists back then. many did it. For VHII the Wooden Marshall was modded so it had kind of like an effects loop so Eddie just used the output stage and did not go in to the input on the front of the amp. The sound is quite different on VHII. But much of the sound is also the studio, the micing and the mixing of the recording.
Check out the GREAT thread started by rgalpin "Variac tests 02". In that thread there is real good evidence (just listen to the clips
) that Eddie was, somehow, running his amp/s at a lower voltage than has previously been thought. I too ran an old blue MXR 6 band in front of a screaming plexi. It was OVERKILL and took the sound further away from early Ed-tone. Thats the point though, when you lower (voltage 'starve') the amp, it gets all saggy and spongy and the volume drops off quite a bit .Problem is that the amp loses a bit of PUNCH and FORTHRIGHTNESS. Judging from the hard, EXTREME upper mids of a 'stock' plexi of Ed's '68 era (v1b 820/.68uf, .0022 plate, v2a 820/.68uf, etc) it is MORE than just THAT, concerning Ed's early tone. Ed's sound was much warmer and broader in the mids, not as harsh and 'tooth/y' as a cranked stock plexi. The difference, is how Ed ran his amp. Like in the afforementioned thread, Ed very well 'might' have backed the voltage back a bit further than 90 volts. The 6 band sliders in that '78 Japan tour photo shows some EXTREME eq settings (War World III
!) . An eq setting like that is BOOST city, raising up the volume,gain as well as giving that unique EQ signature of Ed's early sound. Other amp builders get similar mids with specific component and value tweaks, but in Ed's case, it VERY well could have been that 6 band eq (but ONLY if the amp is voltage starved).