Picture of Eddie's Recording Rig for Early Albums

[chrisom]

chrisom wrote:
...I'm sure on Letterman Ed didn't bring his holy grail plexi...
JimiJames:
In '85 ? He sure did have 12301. You can see it?

You're right- I DO see it.. I was watching the wrong Letterman video...

[JimiJames]

All good. Now you can be a part of the Chapter ....
Zakk is guarding it know and if you wanna' hear it these days, you're gonna have to go through his fellow Chapters and pry it from his hands to do that

[JimiJames]

Didn't Ed say he had two Marshalls? One he bought at a music store he worked at and the other from the Rose Palace? The one from the music store was set to 220.

yeayea, by the 1984 tour it was retired, and actually there were six of 'em. Another six as backup. The one that was acquired on the road from that point was specifically used to run the H&H power amps to feed the stage.

[guitar007]

That 2nd early Marshall was purchased through an advertisement in the paper, according to Ed.

Didn't Ed say he had two Marshalls? One he bought at a music store he worked at and the other from the Rose Palace? The one from the music store was set to 220.

[guitar007]

Jimi,

I'm referring to the very early days...pre club days.

Didn't Ed say he had two Marshalls? One he bought at a music store he worked at and the other from the Rose Palace? The one from the music store was set to 220.

yeayea, by the 1984 tour it was retired, and actually there were six of 'em. Another six as backup. The one that was acquired on the road from that point was specifically used to run the H&H power amps to feed the stage.

[plexified]

Late to the party here , but two variacs could mean a few innocent things . First a variac is a great way to insure you get an honest 110 volts into the old head. If you want to turn down into the lower voltages its cool too , makes it proper to know where your voltages are at and make it repeatable . Next a second variac is a back up possibility if one goes down or for the backup rig as he has noted was essential when things fail . Even if its just a fuse at the variac that goes , its much simpler for the tech to just swap it out easily .
I don't think Ed had volume issues in terms of being too loud . A 100 watt top and a single cab is like a laser line focus , especially with a bottom 4X12 cab. I see pics of his 12301 atop a nice angle 4X12 a lot and its actually a better cab to disperse and you really do not loose anything and I like the sound better in blind tests .
To keep up with a drummer a 50 will be ok in practice with one cab , but Al hits mega hard and I can see more cabs and the 100 to get it 'even' with AL . So If he were to load a 50 watt head and go into the 100 , that is a good sound man. I found that Ken Fischer would often defer to this set up . And he is the wizard man. So its a prod in the right direction too.
So to really get some club control and be able to keep up with the beast of Al pounding away and getting some real volume shaking you need more cabs and that's where an additional PA head comes into play to power more cabs.
I know that the 12 series heads of old have a 'certain' sound , stock or wildly modded. I have had my own stock , modded to Jose specs and Kolbe specs and every variant under the sun. It still had the certain brown sound magic that is the core EVH tone. The cab and speakers is critical and the Variac turned down with a single head , not so much. I get a sweet spot or an attempt to save expensive tubes being replaced and the critical hassle in doing it with specific bias , but a guy would certainly find simplicity in repeating something like that for reliability AND expense.
So what that pic shows is just a cat next to some gear , we know the rest , its what we do .

[Ralle]

The pa must be perfect for adjusting the venue volumes... wouldn't need any variacs or attenuators...

[harddriver]

Finally found the pic you were referring to Ralle. That's a cool find I have never heard or seen the reference to a Marshall PA being used to re-amp before but there it is.

I think I have an old layout drawing of your plexi circa 2005 and you already had the PLAAP specs then.

[johnnybgoood]

If it sounds like the brown sound....it's the brown sound.
The eyes might deceive but the ears can't. Too many independent guitarists getting that gain and sizzle using the amp-slave amp setup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0uUXZejA_A
TheMarshallmaniac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STj8RDDqbcY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A7MsY3hMGk
Jim Humble

Even Rockstah (RIP) thought this way before he went the route of the cascaded low-filtered Mod5 amp.
"i would go as far as saying,..
after all ive done and been through,..
having had this setup in my hands,..
Edward did run this setup. ....you all NOW need TWO Marshall's"
viewtopic.php?t=20611&start=45#p207396

[garbeaj]

Just to be clear...there is no one "brown sound". I'm going to guess that you are talking about the general sound from the first album.

I feel it is important to specify what "brown sound" you are trying to achieve since Eddie's tones varied A LOT...often from album to album and sometimes from one track to another.

[johnnybgoood]

There is one brown sound and that is the raw guitar tone for the first six albums. The use of the Eventide Harmonizer and Landee's recording/post-production are coloring factors. The amp(s) & speaker cab are the main focus here.

"I used the same Marshall amp to record the first six Van Halen albums, but my guitar sound on each album is different. The drum sounds are different too. That was all Donn." http://www.guitarworld.com/eddie-van-ha ... ios?page=2

[dirtycooter]

Even Vic from plexi palace/mojave slaved to get his VH tone. That was a more VH2 kinda thing he got there.
No blazin shredding solo example.
Even though the clips were good?? It sounded like a fat kid tryin to do the 50yd dash vs a skinny in shape guy on crack.
It was sluggish sounding.

But havin had the fryette power station and dickin around with that I am still closer shiftin the frequency response of the 8tap to 16ohm cab. Dialing down on variac below 90.
Sports car handling vs discinnected feel.
The feel is removed when slaving. Vs just wide open and varaic.
At least in my experience.
I think its more of a tone change 16-16 is more old school fatter blander ac/dc, aerosmith, old school zz and 8-16 brings it to another level, changes it to a more VH land tone. Seems to effect the appearent gain and fry sizzle on top. Makes the amp some quieter doin this. You really hear the texture of the OD change and work more dynamically on the hardest loudest picking.

Some slave. Alot extra stuff to lug. And plug. Maintain.
I shy away here. Many make it sound pretty good.

Mod 5 style thingy with ppimv-more traditional easier to plug and play. Lotta players able to play and use a bray/mod 5 and make it sound very VH.

Then stock cranked and variaced down seems have me torn between this and mod5 type of thing with MV

But for playability I have not seen or heard anyone fly and shred like they can on the PPIMV type thing. Just my observation here. Mark still has the lead here to me and closest to VH1 in his clips. And hearing his mod on dozens of different era amps almost seems like listening to the eras of VH tone changes almost on his soundclick.
This is somethin else I noticed. Some thinner, some fatter, some grainier, some smoother, some more hard sounding. They vary, like the VH catalog of the roth era

[garbeaj]

There is one brown sound and that is the raw guitar tone for the first six albums. The use of the Eventide Harmonizer and Landee's recording/post-production are coloring factors. The amp(s) & speaker cab are the main focus here.

"I used the same Marshall amp to record the first six Van Halen albums, but my guitar sound on each album is different. The drum sounds are different too. That was all Donn." http://www.guitarworld.com/eddie-van-ha ... ios?page=2

Hmm...I see what you are saying. Maybe Landee dialed in completely different tones all the time. That would mean that Landee is responsible for "the" brown sound if it ever existed.

Which makes total sense to me because I hate every album after 0U812 which I believe was Landee's last with Eddie.

[plexified]

With so many folks inside his amp, able to see the original solder joints and claiming it to be mostly stock, I'm surprised no one has deduced what the knob on the back was for.

Ok , ok , you got me. Once upon a time , I was inside the magic marshall and.....

I've come to believe that Ed really told us the story behind this 'knob' . You see when he first started using the dimmer to turn down, he just conveniently left out the part that.......

After he realized the dimmer worked , he knew he couldn't bring the house to the gig. So at first he ran long extension cords into the back yard and had the first house party gigs. Realizing these house gigs were a success , young Ed had to figure out how to get this sound out of the house. So , long before he thought about going to an electronics store to buy a variac , he figured ' What if I could just take the dimmer switch with me?' So young Ed did just that, he installed the light switch dimmer INSIDE the amp. He did not want to give away this 'secret' mod by the knob itself , no that would be a give away. So he left the knob off.

Now having accomplished the goal , Ed had to figure getting a replacement dimmer to replace the one in the wall before mom got home. This is when he fucked up .

Afer installing the new dimmer back in the house wiring he t told of blowing the house fuses. Not too long after, Ed realized he fucked up the wiring to the Marshall and fried the transformer.

Now this is probably when he met Jose. About now Jose told Ed he fixed and rewired the 'magic knob' and installed a new transformer and warned Ed not to mess inside the amp anymore. Jose also probably told him that he was the only one who knew of this mod and it was best to keep it quiet. So Ed went back home and played with the two variacs .

There you go the legend of the 'secret knob'

We joke about putting the variac inside the amp and it being so heavy it would need a crane, but funny to think that he could have actually done this. If I was the tech that opened the amp and saw it , I would have laughed until I peed my pants rolling around of the floor. And then when that was over , I couldn't tell anybody.

But funny enough in my sharing a laugh with you all , this is not that far off from being possible. WHY? because he then uses the variac from the wall , and the dimmer switch between the amp and speakers wired INTERNALLY. So we can laugh at this , but its actually a plausible explanation. It demonstrates a lot of things in a real scenario.

[johnnybgoood]

I'm re-uploading a picture of a typical amp-slave amp setup. I tried to edit the old post containing the pic with an alternate address for the pic but I keep running into this "Access Denied - Sucuri Website Firewall" problem.