Metropoulos Forum

It just struck me... It's a well known fact that attenuators or loads of different kinds make the speakers work in a fashion they normally don't when the amp is unatteuated or unloaded... I've allways thought that my sound have had the " voice " of Ed's... eaven when I complained about the " compression " I got with the PB... The impedance is fixed... there's no way around that... But didn't Ed allso have a load? When he slaved, or had a load in parallel with the cab ( in the other speaker jack )... From what I've seen, Ed slaved long before the first album, right... If he did... the seccond amp was working as it should to the cab, but the first amp was seing a fixed impedance... that effects the sound... Isn't that what we hear in his sound? Isn't that a huge part if it?
Running the amp with just a variac and cab should therefore NOT give you the sound we're hearing... I haven't heard any clip with an variac-amp-cab, so maybe I'm wrong...
Just a thought

The earliest date of Ed slaving that can be verified is around 1984 with a load that Bob Bradshaw built for the Bob Bradshaw amp switching system that Ed started to use live.

I'm with you Ralle!

Yes, I think Ed discovered slaving early on... we just are not sure what form it took at what point in time...
1) We know that techs of the day would have had load box's for their bench work.
2) It is not hard to add a line out to a load box. We saw Mark Cameron's pic of such a primitive device.
3) Slaving into the front of an amp generally(but not always) doesn't sound that great.
4) The techs of the day would have known how to mod a Marshall to be a better slave (power amp) by bypassing the tone stack.

Slaving sounds too good for Ed not to have found it!

Well that's one way to look at it but can you verify any of it?

If Ed and Rudy and I suppose Jose were these guys that knew and were using all this slaving stuff then why go to the Bradshaw slaving system around 1984.

All Bradshaw basically offered was a amp switching rig that happened to include slaving mainly to make it all a bit easier and interface with effects.

If Ed knew all this in 1977 then why go to Bradshaw at all. Even if Rudy left, Ed could just hire another tech and keep using his same system which would already be like the Bradshaw switching amp slaved system.

Ed was already using a switching amp system in 1979.

leadguy wrote: If Ed and Rudy and I suppose Jose were these guys that knew and were using all this slaving stuff then why go to the Bradshaw slaving system around 1984.

Like most things Ed related it's a lot of guess work... but imo to answer your question would be... why would Ed want to bother fiddling about with tech stuff, he's living the high life he's paying everyone to do the work for him. Same way he does with his evh brand now... Ed's just the quality control at the end
But yet again it's still not from the horses mouth.

I think the slaving evolved steadily from the early days. At some point early on the loadbox was introduced. This was probably very primitive at first, with Robin manually re-jiggering the connections to the load box as necessary if something went wrong. Better systems were introduced along the way, with better redundancy. At some point the the vintage effects were "remoted" to the racks back stage. I suspect at some point, there were redundant vintage plexis that were pushing miked cabinets. Only one of these would be active at a time... in turn these heads were also lineout-ed to other amps and cabs. I don't have any sort of timeline in mind for this, but based on interviews, etc one can kind of see how things must have evolved.

Ed said he didn't slave in the early days.
Rudy says the same.
Dave Friedman says the same.
All of the amps are hooked up in daisy chaining ways for Japan 1978 and then amp switching in Japan 1979.
What was the use of Ed switching to Bradshaws slaving amp switching system if Ed was already doing it.
Ed was loud and probably has some hearing loss because of it.


But don't let all that stop anyone from thinking Ed was slaving in the early days.

I love the pseudo compression that the Weber Attenuator gives to my sound, and to me, that makes me a lot closer of Eddies tone than without the load. Wihtout the attenuator it seems that we loose some chunk and the sound gets too thin.
Love the results, cannot live without mine.

just my 2 cents

leadguy wrote:Ed said he didn't slave in the early days.
Rudy says the same.
Dave Friedman says the same.
All of the amps are hooked up in daisy chaining ways for Japan 1978 and then amp switching in Japan 1979.
What was the use of Ed switching to Bradshaws slaving amp switching system if Ed was already doing it.
Ed was loud and probably has some hearing loss because of it.
But don't let all that stop anyone from thinking Ed was slaving in the early days.

Ed Lied...
Rudy Lied cause Ed told him to...
Was Dave even there?

Then why was this built?


I guess everyone else is telling the truth, and Mark Cameron is lying?
http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php ... 4&start=29

Now is when this turns into a Robin L. debate thread.

I'm done arguing with people that are protecting long standing opinions.
Open your ears and try it!

For sure ..Jose was Ed's neighbour down the road ..engineer for vox amps and when Mark C. got Jose's business he finds the power soak and line out......Why would Ed start using it in 80 ish?...Probably because he used it before but not in a live tour context.....enter the Bradsahw roadworthy power soak and load/lineout system..that's what Bradshaw was noted for back then..The best Roadworthy Tour switching /rack equipment...used by the pro's.

Then I listen to the iso's of Vh1 and I don't really hear a slaved system..just a real good plexi variaced to 140 to achieve the unacheivable...with many effects added...a reamped reverb for the right channel played thru JBL's in a room designed to add too much reverb.

140!
I always thought that was a joke!
I guess you could try with the bias turned down low... a bias that is significantly above 70% plate sound brittle and glassy to me.

I'm not saying that slaving was or wasn't used on VH1... I do think it was used in live situations in that timeframe though...

vh junkie wrote:140!
I always thought that was a joke!
I guess you could try with the bias turned down low... a bias that is significantly above 70% plate sound brittle and glassy to me.

I'm not saying that slaving was or wasn't used on VH1... I do think it was used in live situations in that timeframe though...

I am a believer in the 140 for that album only tho....I'm sure Ed must of done some experimentation cranking the variac up and found something there and in conjunction with Jose came out with something that could be done on a one time basis for that album....to me it all comes down to the 6ca7 and it's 800vdc max plate rating .....even at 140 ac Input the dc would be a far cry from that 800vdc rating ...I always found it kind of weird to LOWER the voltage creating a starved plate and heater tone when it can all be done internally with resistors..one would do it once ..mark down all voltages and then drop them accordingly.

Now with the voltage cranked the only way you will achieve the higher voltage is with the variac..no other way...also that variac would have to be dragged around like an albatross around his neck so to speak now way around it...which is what we see in studio and live pics..can't live without it kind of scenario. Even heaters can be adgusted to 12.6 double the 6.3..the preamp tubes would be working at high gain amp levels @ 300 + vdc..the only real problems would be OT power which may have to lowered with a stick of dynamite resistor lowering the B+ or some other method (******* mod?), and the HV caps which would have to be doubled up to allow for a higher voltage rating. The need for an attenuater to protect the speakers would be desirable and to control volume. but who really knows ..Ed has to write a book about it all or something.

Robin L stated that Ed had a loadbox with 3 lineouts to 3 amp setups in the -78 tour... so, thinking Ed had a simular loadbox, but with maybe one lineout earlier on... for like one amp ( the wooden amp or whatever )
The thing is Ed had a resistive load of some kind, making the fixed impedance... When has Ed ever run his amp with nothing more than a variac? I've read that the only time he did that, was on the first album... but on the other hand, I've allso read that he re-amped on that album, so...
Either way... I'm thinking, can an amp with no loadbox ( fixed impedance is the issue here ) get the job done?

I'm a little slow sometimes I guess!

The thing in the picture is a fixed resistance with a line out, not like the PB. Actually it looks like fixed resistances for two amps where the output is selectable to run to up to three slave amps.

The weird thing is that a few posts earlier, Robin L describes exactly this, and THEN MC show a picture of the same thing?!?!

vh junkie wrote:I'm a little slow sometimes I guess!

The thing in the picture is a fixed resistance with a line out, not like the PB. Actually it looks like fixed resistances for two amps where the output is selectable to run to up to three slave amps.

The weird thing is that a few posts earlier, Robin L describes exactly this, and THEN MC show a picture of the same thing?!?!

Welll Mark C. posted pics of the load box probably a year before Robin L was making his appearance, but that doesn't take away from the ligitamacy of it all one bit ..it just renforces the whole idea. Mark C posted pics of the internals and even the transformer within and the lineout...he even made a clip.

Yeah depending on how you connect the spark plug wires you will get different loads... Those posts actually started the whole Load /Slave /Reamp debate on the forum....I mean it's pretty hard to say No to someone who owns Jose's shop... Really the credibility doesn't get any better than that.IMO

Actually it was Robin L that made sense of the 3 outputs and described in detail where they connected and why etc ..backed up by live shots also...that then started making sense also...and if you ever hook up a load line out device it sounds fantastic so who am I to disagree ..I totally agree with the whole concept....great for time based effects and feedback control and volume control....

Actually what I like doing is just connect the cab to the lineout, if I want a quiet tone with power tube distortion and NO effects..talk about low volume as the z is totally mismatched..sort of like a Fair Warning type of tone...and that is uncascaded....Don't get me wrong tho Ralle's clips walk all over it..but makes a good experiment....