SIAP Esquire Interview with ED!!!

[johnnybgoood]

As you can see by the amount of posts, I'm not much of a typer. I read the Esquire article with Van Halen as well. No doubt that Ed was a musical prodigy but he discovered his sound through dumb luck like most great inventions.

Ed's comments about his Super Lead confirms Friedman's post dated Feb 2 and Mar 20, 2011. "None of you have a power transformer that is doing exactly what his (EVH) does either. ...... Any old great superlead with a variac and the right tubes will get you close....by RACKSYSTEMS."

In summary, Ed's sound was destined to happen out of necessity. He bought a 220 volt plexi with european transformers from the classifieds. Trying to get it to work he blew out his parent's fuse box. After getting in deep trouble with the folks, he went out and bought a variac and connected it to his amp. Even with the american variac maxed out, he discovered that he still wasn't close to running the european-voltage plexi at 220 volts with his pots dimed out. He could now play clubs like the Whiskey with a 100 watt Marshall aligned for sound in smaller venues. Also, a fortunate byproduct of the variac setup allowed the amp to be biased hotter but the low voltage coming in from the Variac saved "the wear and tear on the tubes." I'm going to venture to say that Ed as a teenage kid didn't know much about biasing a plexi. He couldn't even properly rewire his pickup selector on the Frankenstrat. The previous owner of the amp before Eddie probably set the bias. Serendipity created the brown sound. AWESOME!!

I'm off the forums and going back to practicing twelve hours a day. With any luck, maybe I'll eventually find my tone.

[ampSnob]

Were there any European plexi era amps that were hardwired to 220 without the voltage switch? I was under the impression the American models with the permanent power cord like Ed's reported #1 were hard wired to 120 and European ones with bulgin power jacks could be switched around to 120 or 220 or whatever. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. The numbers on the jack do wear off though, I'm assuming once Ed figured it out what was up, he could easily switch it to 120v.

Are there any 220 only Marshall heads from this era?

[handsoffmatt]

Hey everybody, greetings from New Zealand.
I'm a LONG time lurker (3 years+) but first time poster - finally got the inkling to post during this conversation...

Something really FEELS right to me about this interview... I really believe Ed is telling the truth here. Here is what I took the conversation in the interview to mean

"I bought an English version, I had my 100-volt Marshall. I bought one through the recycling or the newspaper that was from England, and it was set on 220 volts. I didn't know"

- so Ed is saying he already had his 100volt Marshall (his #1), and then bought another one (we all know he had a bunch of amps, even in the early days)

"So I plugged the thing in, but I'm going, "Fucking thing doesn't work. I got ripped off." I just let it sit there. After about an hour, there's sound coming out, but it's really quiet, cause it's running on half voltage. So I go, "Hey, wait a minute. It sounds exactly like it's supposed to all the way up, but it's really quiet." So we had a light dimmer in the house, and I hooked up the two leaves from the amp to the light, so I did it backwards, blew out the fuse box. Then I went down to DOW Radio and asked, "Do you guys have any kind of super duper light dimmer?" They go, "Yeah, it's all Variac, variable transformer, you know." And on the dial you could crank it up to 140 volts or down to zero. So I figured, if it's on 220 and it's that quiet, if I take the voltage and lower it, I wonder how low I can go and it still work. Well, it enabled me to turn my amp all the way up, save the tubes, save the wear and tear on the tubes, and play at clubs at half the volume. So, my Variac, my variable transformer was my volume knob. Too loud, [makes knob turning sound] I'd lower it down to 50."

So after discovering the "volume effect" with this "other" Marshall that he purchased, he went and exploited this effect by buying a variac to use with his #1 (a 110V model).

After reading this interview, I immediately grabbed a variac from work and tried it on my own Marshall. I've tried a variac a bunch of times before, dialed down to 80 or 90% of full power, but had never tried going REALLY low like Ed talks about in the interview. When I tried it, I was somewhat interested to find that yup - you can make things a HELL of a lot quieter. His whole theory of using a variac as a volume control in the clubs seems very VERY feasible to me. Furthermore, the more you turn the variac down, the spongier the sound gets. When you go down REAL low, it's TOO spongy and doesn't react well, but when you are running around 80%, it's real nice - which is maybe why Ed purportedly settled on 90V as his "sweet spot".

I think that the whole gain structure for those first few albums was:

Guitar > Echoplex (volume turned up to drive the amp) > Marshall 1959 (stock, variac'ed).

The extra "sizzle" of the first album likely came from high output pickup (DSD?) and some JBL speakers mixed in with the Greenbacks.

Just my $0.02

[cary chilton]

Hey welcome Handsoff, have you been to shire recently? Stop by Bilbo Baggins? hehe j/k I agree with what you said. It is the stuff Dave Friedman told me about, too.... so he did a little wiring trick on my 1969 super trem so the amp is at 90V.

[somethin'else]

... When I tried it, I was somewhat interested to find that yup - you can make things a HELL of a lot quieter. His whole theory of using a variac as a volume control in the clubs seems very VERY feasible to me.

Yep, I finally, finally threw mine down to 85-90V last night for the first time ever and it does drop the volume a noticeable amount, and got "softer". Sounded good too.

Welcome! I think that's a good simple interpretation, and simple is most times better. You got some beautiful country there. One day I'll go!

[lowit]

I think that the whole gain structure for those first few albums was:

Guitar > Echoplex (volume turned up to drive the amp) > Marshall 1959 (stock, variac'ed).

The extra "sizzle" of the first album likely came from high output pickup (DSD?) and some JBL speakers mixed in with the Greenbacks.

Just my $0.02[/quote]



I agree with you. Also mic placement and the use of more than 1 mic can really shape the tone and give sizzle.

[unimind]

Furthermore, the more you turn the variac down, the spongier the sound gets. When you go down REAL low, it's TOO spongy and doesn't react well, but when you are running around 80%, it's real nice - which is maybe why Ed purportedly settled on 90V as his "sweet spot".
...
Guitar > Echoplex (volume turned up to drive the amp) > Marshall 1959 (stock, variac'ed).

And it would sound something like this. This clip sounds really really spongy/squishy. Almost too much.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EiKtb0oYmY[/youtube]

Around this time (early 1976) is when you start to hear the squishy "brown" sound. Before that it sounded like he just had a overdriven cranked plexi. Maybe this is around the time he discovered the variac.

The extra "sizzle" of the first album likely came from high output pickup (DSD?) and some JBL speakers mixed in with the Greenbacks.

The sizzle on VH1 comes from over biased power tubes.

[handsoffmatt]

... When I tried it, I was somewhat interested to find that yup - you can make things a HELL of a lot quieter. His whole theory of using a variac as a volume control in the clubs seems very VERY feasible to me.

Yep, I finally, finally threw mine down to 85-90V last night for the first time ever and it does drop the volume a noticeable amount, and got "softer". Sounded good too.

Over here we are on 240V, like the UK, so all our numbers are different....but check this out. Knowing that Ed had a 110V Marshall that he apparently ran for years on around 90V - I always figured I should be Variacing my 240V Marshall to around 210V to get similar effect. It squishes things up nicely and is a tad quieter. After reading the Esquire interview I dropped that sucker down as low as 100V and it made things a HELL of a lot quieter. Like Ed says in the interview, "Too loud? Down to 50"

I'd never even THOUGHT to run it down that low. The sound is less than ideal, but it would sure work for a club and explains why Ed would not NEED slaving or cascaded preamps. It's all right there.

[quote="somethin'else] Welcome! I think that's a good simple interpretation, and simple is most times better. You got some beautiful country there. One day I'll go![/quote]

Many thanks. I like your country too!

[DaveMcLain]

The only real problem with running the amp way down with a variac is that it can drastically reduce the life of the tubes due to cathode stripping which is caused by having the filaments run too cold due to the lowered heater voltage. Another option might be to run a separate transformer just to feed the filaments a full 6vac.

[handsoffmatt]

The only real problem with running the amp way down with a variac is that it can drastically reduce the life of the tubes due to cathode stripping which is caused by having the filaments run too cold due to the lowered heater voltage. Another option might be to run a separate transformer just to feed the filaments a full 6vac.

I've this whole cathode stripping comment a number of times before. I asked my tech about it recently who seems to think that running a Marshall at extremely low input voltages will NOT incur cathode stripping.

A quick google found this thread with some contentious views
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/archiv ... 94910.html

I'd love if somebody could provide some evidence of cathode-striping actually occurring whilst running low variac settings. The arguments seem to be all hearsay, with no actual evidence.

[rdodson]

How did Roy set the Blankenship Variplex up?

[markstullkc]

I have been told when you power the plexi up or down, return the voltage to 110

I think this cathode stripping has gotten way outta hand. I know guys that have been doing it for many years without issue