Post
by cary chilton » Wed Apr 18, 2012 3:10 pm
Goodguest, I think Ed definitely saying that he experimented running his variac to 140volts.... I am sure he did, right? That whole- " I love the sound of pushing an amp to verge of it dying and pull it back a bit" -thing... Also I am sure I read his amp caught on fire on the studio from overheating - prolly from the 140V thang! So that blistering, dripping heat sink sound you hear in the EARLY stuff is probably for real, esp AFTER VH1 when Ed had some money to blow...esp on a healthy collection of sourced trannies, tubes and old marshalls he had and a small army of tone buddies who helping this whole venture out...
I really think WACF and FW were the recordings or the crazy era for Ed, really diving into dynamic types for recording, pickups, amps, speakers etc... Common sense and getting a sense of Ed from interviews tells you everything you need to fill in the blanks. I absolutely believe Ed used a variac for the purposes he said, especially LIVE and the volume thing. Even with 50 Watt cranked would be wayyyyy loud -as he said many times.
I think Ed started with what he had, found a great fuckin marshall -serendipidity (spl?) and his Ibanez with SD pu's -which is what everyone in rock used bar none, Seymour who? Even Jazz monster Di Meola used them, still does, too. The variac put down 90V DOES save tubes and get cranked marshall tone, even saturation than a cranked marshall with 120 V..... The cranked Marshall 120V has much more bass, less sag or close, cleaner, more sustain.
The 90V cranked amp has more sag, a little rasp, less compression, warmer highs. Power Scaling is the ultimate variac, gets you 1 watt to half power to 90 V or full, which is what my 67 spec has. Anyway, as Ed steer away from a mid-flat or mid-scooped, modern ( way before his time -think about it! VH1 is the birth of modern rock amps) slightly hifi-ish to a cleaner tone, more mids, warmer highs. Ed then chose a lower output Alnico pu which gave him the clarity of the note and into much more bluesy tones if he wanted, but it killed the fire so to speak. Here I think he went on a tone quest to get the fire in the tone back via amp and keep the guitar relatively constant. I had a high output pu for ages in my old guitar and never knew it - a tone zone- which was a fun pickup, I miss it actually.... I got into the whole low output A2 pu's and into my amp at the time a 5150 modded to be slightly more of a jcm800, sounded heavenly.... less bloated than the tonezone..... but much more difficult to play... I found myself turning up the gain ( saturation) up more often than not... So again, the old adage here: high gain amp > lower output pickups lower to mid gain amps> A5, A8 and Ceramic high output pu's..... this is the balance... simple. mixed that up and you have too over the top, compression and artifacts and bloated slew of horse piss or tone that is great for cream or a first album of ACDC. Ed NO DOUBT was used to the ceramic >90V CRANKED amp in the studio and fell in love with the feel and the open sound and sustain of a cranked marshall. You CAN'T replicate that with any other set up.... Ed tried.... 140V of a cranked amp in the studio with lower output pickups, the sustain was prolly better, the heat from the searing amp translated, too, but is a different sound than before. Listen to Romeo's Delight, really listen, tell me if that isn't what I am saying here ! Listen to the END of the song, than INSANE feedback, compression,....tell me that is a normal MArshall set up!!!!!!!! Tell me that is simply microphone or monitor feedback!!!! NOPE. I think that amp was cooking steaks and baked potatoes friends.... really. I think it is interesting that the follow DIVER DOWN, the amp tone radically changed to insane treble. Total 180. Crazy shit, huh?
gad he must belaughing 
his head off... 
