M Soldano on EVH's plexi

[heavision]

Hey everyone, this is my first post! Great to be here.

Check this out. At seven minutes Mike S. starts telling a story in which he talks about working on Ed's #1 plexi. Interesting. Bone stock!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBIcicqI ... .be&t=7m4s" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cheers!

[MrBeasty]

Nice find!

[jake5150]

Thanks for sharing!

[SteadyEddie]

Nice. Soldano seems like a super cool guy.

[heavision]

I hope this isn't too noobie a question; but what sort of luck/results have people had variacing/dimming down to 88 or 90 volts, putting out 35-ish watts--like he said? Things get squishy? Chewy? More/less gain? Is it specific to 12xxx plexis?

Just curious. I've never played through one set up that way.

[SteadyEddie]

I hope this isn't too noobie a question; but what sort of luck/results have people had variacing/dimming down to 88 or 90 volts, putting out 35-ish watts--like he said? Things get squishy? Chewy? More/less gain? Is it specific to 12xxx plexis?

Just curious. I've never played through one set up that way.

I think a few guys have tried that, with similar results.

[rgorke]

Just do a bunch of reading on the forum and searching regarding the use of a variac.

Mark A. (rochstah) posted a clip of his amp at 120,110,100,90 and 80 I think.

[Sparky4444]

Variac'ing down to 90-95V does work -- but you have to be painstaking with your bias -- it needs to be floating near 50mV...I found that after I set mine, it would drift and I would have to go back and reset it....what I ended up doing was letting the amp warm up for quite a long time at 95V, then move the varic up to 110-115V, at idle, and let it juice up for a while, then lower the variac back down to 90-95ish...that's when things settled and stablized


what I found is the variac will glue the bottom end better -- probably because you're not pummelling your cab with insane SPL's..but it does make it nice and spongy....and the highs aren't as ice-picky -- if you're slamming the hell out of it

[MrBeasty]

You guys are so scientific about this ...

You set your bias all the way up and you turn down the Variac until it sounds good ... just don't forget your Variac when you play gigs !

[heavision]

Does it work with with MV rigs as well? Or is it specific to plexi architecture?

[MrBeasty]

Does it work with with MV rigs as well? Or is it specific to plexi architecture?

Yes.

That said, it will depend on the amp's power-section. If you have a metal panel or JCM, you should get the same results. However, a Major, a Mesa-Boogie or a Soldano will not deliver the same results because their power-sections are designed differently.

[Sparky4444]

You guys are so scientific about this ...

You set your bias all the way up and you turn down the Variac until it sounds good ... just don't forget your Variac when you play gigs !

it's not about being scientific, it's about the bias drifting to values that aren't hot enough...after fudging around and measuring and re-measuring, cranking the bias didn't give me enough juice..I had to modify the circuit so my bias pot could sweep around enough to get me hotter bias values...the amp would never just power up and settle at the proper bias voltage without me having to let it warm up or sweep the variac down and then back up again, etc, etc...very strange...

In the end, the most stable I got it was by starting the amp up at 90-95 volts, let it warm up, then turn up the variac to 110-ish, let it idle, and then turn it back down to 90-95V...at that point the bias would be hot enough...

If you don't have the bias hot enough with the variac, you won't get the sound, period...it needs to be at least 48mA and more into the low 50mA...

[awangotango]

listen to what he says and you'll hear that he wasn't running the amp correct prior to inserting the variac and that is the reason he wasn't getting 'the tone'. 110v will give up ed tones if dimed. You can't blame a SL for not sounding like ed if it's not run on correct settings. He should know this.

[Tazin]

I've heard both stories over the years regarding the bias thing....One being set the bias at wall voltage and let it track (go cold) as you turn the variac down to 90Vac, and the other being bias the amp at the variac voltage (i.e 90Vac). If you go the latter route then your not really reducing the volume of the amp which would seem counter-productive to what Ed was initially trying to achieve. Secondly, since it appears that Ed only used one 4x12 cab per head then wouldn't he be frying speakers by dumping all those watts into one cab? I think it was either George or Dave that said the amp yielded like 355Vdc at 50ma when set to 90Vac which would put you at pretty much normal 18 watt dissipation per tube.
If you go the cold bias route then it seems to make more sense in regards to volume reduction and being able to use one 4x12 cab per head since there would be a decent reduction in output power from the amp. Of coarse the down side is the loss of dynamics from the amp as a result of the cold bias.

[Strat78]

90v is really not low enough to get any kind of significant effect if people have been following some of Rgalpins variac clips over the last couple years. Once you get down below 80v things start happening, but in order to get some wind back in the sails at these levels you have to start boosting the front end. This is where the 6-band comes in. Just bias really hot with the plates at or bellow 400v and just drop from there. It's not a pretty tone, but it is still a beautiful thing.