Van Halen 1 and 2 gear and racks in HD

Are you researching information to make a Yout tube video? Sounds like it.

I love talking and theorizing about what Ed could have used as much as the next VH guy as part of the Metro amp forum from 2005 onwards, but I do believe the Dave Friedman and John Suhr are 100% correct about 12301 not having any extra gain stages, but having a 50K mid pot and some select parts that did make it somewhat special and I feel the 330uf V2 fat cap was added later after 1978/79. You will note that Jim Gaustad nails the tone without using an MXR 6band up front and a stock Gibson Burstbucker PAF which Robin L stated both tonebender boxes were bypass looper boxes for the MXR 6 band and the echoplexes. Jim Gaustads amp is just variaced heavily, down to 65-75 ACV, MXR flanger, MXR phase 90 and EP3 echoplex, that's it buthe did use all the speculated mics preamps and such to get it mostly exact to the album tone but the amp was not modded, besides the variacing, you can also go far into whether or not Ed was slaving the amp for VH1 and Pat Badger says he was slaving into a Marshall PA amp fpr VH1, and Robin L says he was using Marshall Superleads and Super bass Plexis as powers amps and those Selland Arena videos show he was using Musicman HD130's and HD65 as power amps as well.



You must remember Ed's 68 was the house amp for the Rose Palace, there is a prominent builder who believes that amp was worked on by Jose prior to Ed owning it and that may shed some light on what the knob on the back was and as a house amp chances are it had a master volume of some type in it, but since Ed could get the same tones out of any Marshall Superlead live, 12301 wasn't as much of a factor as we make it out to be even though Ed liked that amp best and his wooden headbox Super bass that Mike Soldano said he used alot as well.

To bolster my comments about 12301 not being gain modded here are some videos of simple setups with essentially stock amps.

Here's a guy on the internet(not my video) from 2020 with a stock Suhr SL68 with Ed's known signal chain and there's the CORE Ed tone, no special amp no special gain mods, if you have a good plexi or superlead with Ed's signal chain and playing skills you can have Ed's tone. To my ears this tone is close enough to the album tone to show the amp was not modded with gain stages.

Gear used: EVH Stripped Series (Stock), MXR Phase90, Clinch FX EP-PRE, Suhr SL68 Variac-Mode (everything on 10), UA OX BOX.


Here's 14 minutes of Jacob Deraps jamming into a Germino 68 plexi Lead 55, it's all there...(No Mods) if you have the chops you'll get the tone........
 

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Amp_chaser said:
Wow his sayings seem to corroborate my new findings in another way. I found out that one of the wooden marshall was modded and i thought it was extra gain stages while it could just be modded to be a power amp. That's what he says. Eddie had 2 wooden plexis thats what is interesting. we don't know which one Dave Friedman serviced. He never said he went into both of them and i believe he doesn't know eddie had 2 wooden plexis.


View attachment 345476

see there are 2 wooden plexis.

View attachment 345455

I believe this is one of the wooden ones. it had 2 knobs in the place of the 2 input jacks. I believe it was put back to stock after VH1.

however i know that DLR had an amp made by josé that apparently sounded like van halen and it also has 2 knobs for 2 extra gain stages. here it is :
View attachment 345458


View attachment 345461

those mods on the extra gain stage are insane... but as robin said it could have been repurposed as a power amp who knows...
Click to expand...
There’s only one extra tube in the amp, so it depends on weather or not the added tube is using both halves in series or parallel, which also means the amp in question could also be series or parallel channels. My money is on parallel, meaning it retains its two channels and adds 1/2 of that tube in front of each. The added knobs on the front are push/pull pots to engage various functions of the amp. This looks an AWFUL lot like an amp a former member here did a build of over at GAB a while back (this amp ^ has the push/pulls moved out of the extra input Jack holes though) which is a copy of a particular Jose mod that Jose did back in the day.
 
TheBiggestJerk said:
Damn he wasn’t lying!

“Frankie: hard ash body, vintage fender tremolo bridge, brass nut, maple neck with maple cap fingerboard, original Gibson alnico II PAF pu rewounded by Seymour Duncan (prior to the recording of VH1).
Painted by Ed with bycicle paint.
Its neck pocket was not properly cut, the neck was slightly slanted downwards and the high E string was almost off the edge of the fingerboard behind the 12th fret.
It was not a nice job, rather a piece of shit guitar but Ed made it sound soooo good.”View attachment 345467
Click to expand...
There wasn’t always a tele bridge in the middle was there?
 
harddriver said:
Are you researching information to make a Yout tube video? Sounds like it.

I love talking and theorizing about what Ed could have used as much as the next VH guy as part of the Metro amp forum from 2005 onwards, but I do believe the Dave Friedman and John Suhr are 100% correct about 12301 not having any extra gain stages, but having a 50K mid pot and some select parts that did make it somewhat special and I feel the 330uf V2 fat cap was added later after 1978/79. You will note that Jim Gaustad nails the tone without using an MXR 6band up front and a stock Gibson Burstbucker PAF which Robin L stated both tonebender boxes were bypass looper boxes for the MXR 6 band and the echoplexes. Jim Gaustads amp is just variaced heavily, down to 65-75 ACV, MXR flanger, MXR phase 90 and EP3 echoplex, that's it buthe did use all the speculated mics preamps and such to get it mostly exact to the album tone but the amp was not modded, besides the variacing, you can also go far into whether or not Ed was slaving the amp for VH1 and Pat Badger says he was slaving into a Marshall PA amp fpr VH1, and Robin L says he was using Marshall Superleads and Super bass Plexis as powers amps and those Selland Arena videos show he was using Musicman HD130's and HD65 as power amps as well.



You must remember Ed's 68 was the house amp for the Rose Palace, there is a prominent builder who believes that amp was worked on by Jose prior to Ed owning it and that may shed some light on what the knob on the back was and as a house amp chances are it had a master volume of some type in it, but since Ed could get the same tones out of any Marshall Superlead live, 12301 wasn't as much of a factor as we make it out to be even though Ed liked that amp best and his wooden headbox Super bass that Mike Soldano said he used alot as well.

To bolster my comments about 12301 not being gain modded here are some videos of simple setups with essentially stock amps.

Here's a guy on the internet(not my video) from 2020 with a stock Suhr SL68 with Ed's known signal chain and there's the CORE Ed tone, no special amp no special gain mods, if you have a good plexi or superlead with Ed's signal chain and playing skills you can have Ed's tone. To my ears this tone is close enough to the album tone to show the amp was not modded with gain stages.

Gear used: EVH Stripped Series (Stock), MXR Phase90, Clinch FX EP-PRE, Suhr SL68 Variac-Mode (everything on 10), UA OX BOX.


Here's 14 minutes of Jacob Deraps jamming into a Germino 68 plexi Lead 55, it's all there...(No Mods) if you have the chops you'll get the tone........
Click to expand...

Last winter I grabbed a 72 50w Bass that was turned into a lead head. But, they used a bunch of non original orange drops among other things...since my 72 SuperTrem is 100% original, I looked at its circuit and basically copied what it had and re did the 50. While I was at it, I started looking into what Eds 68 had, according to Metro/Marshall and another forum I forget. There was a pic, supposedly that Cameron got ahold of, which was taken by Suhr in the early 90s. I remember in the thread Friedman chimed in and said "How the hell did he get that?" which implies it was legit. Of course, this was 15 yrs after the first record so who knows what was really in that amp back in 78. But, basically the magic Marshall according to Suhr, Friedman, and others was a bone stock 68 but with a few factory 'differences' that sometimes occurred. First was an 820 ohm resistor on V1B Cathode instead of a 2.7k.....next, a big 'fat' bypass cap on V2A cathode, 330uf. Next, the NFB resistor was 100k instead of 47k. After reading this, I decided to put the same values/parts in my 72. After I was done, the amp had easily 2204 gain levels. You take that gain amount, then push the power section hard into compression/distortion I can EASILY hear that the amp clearly has more than enough gain to do VHI, or II for that matter.

I always believed that the 68 HAD to be modded; but after hearing this revelation right in front of me, I have NO DOUBT that Ed's amp could have easily been completely stock; just had those factory 'anomalies' that led to a very gainy 68 Superlead.
 
Racerxrated said:
Last winter I grabbed a 72 50w Bass that was turned into a lead head. But, they used a bunch of non original orange drops among other things...since my 72 SuperTrem is 100% original, I looked at its circuit and basically copied what it had and re did the 50. While I was at it, I started looking into what Eds 68 had, according to Metro/Marshall and another forum I forget. There was a pic, supposedly that Cameron got ahold of, which was taken by Suhr in the early 90s. I remember in the thread Friedman chimed in and said "How the hell did he get that?" which implies it was legit. Of course, this was 15 yrs after the first record so who knows what was really in that amp back in 78. But, basically the magic Marshall according to Suhr, Friedman, and others was a bone stock 68 but with a few factory 'differences' that sometimes occurred. First was an 820 ohm resistor on V1B Cathode instead of a 2.7k.....next, a big 'fat' bypass cap on V2A cathode, 330uf. Next, the NFB resistor was 100k instead of 47k. After reading this, I decided to put the same values/parts in my 72. After I was done, the amp had easily 2204 gain levels. You take that gain amount, then push the power section hard into compression/distortion I can EASILY hear that the amp clearly has more than enough gain to do VHI, or II for that matter.

I always believed that the 68 HAD to be modded; but after hearing this revelation right in front of me, I have NO DOUBT that Ed's amp could have easily been completely stock; just had those factory 'anomalies' that led to a very gainy 68 Superlead.
Click to expand...
Teh 50kΩ mid pot was stock because the solder joints had the factory dye on them.

All that does is take away that "crashing" sound when you dime all the knobs.

kl2JmF9.png
 
Cless357 said:
A variac doesn't reduce much volume. I don't think Eddie would need to reamp to get a huge volume back because of a variac.
Click to expand...
Depends how low you put it. Eddie said he would set up his light dimmer until when he hit the high e string the light of the amp would flicker. I tried this on my 50watters I had almost no sound but the tone was amazing if you biased all the way down.
 
Racerxrated said:
Last winter I grabbed a 72 50w Bass that was turned into a lead head. But, they used a bunch of non original orange drops among other things...since my 72 SuperTrem is 100% original, I looked at its circuit and basically copied what it had and re did the 50. While I was at it, I started looking into what Eds 68 had, according to Metro/Marshall and another forum I forget. There was a pic, supposedly that Cameron got ahold of, which was taken by Suhr in the early 90s. I remember in the thread Friedman chimed in and said "How the hell did he get that?" which implies it was legit. Of course, this was 15 yrs after the first record so who knows what was really in that amp back in 78. But, basically the magic Marshall according to Suhr, Friedman, and others was a bone stock 68 but with a few factory 'differences' that sometimes occurred. First was an 820 ohm resistor on V1B Cathode instead of a 2.7k.....next, a big 'fat' bypass cap on V2A cathode, 330uf. Next, the NFB resistor was 100k instead of 47k. After reading this, I decided to put the same values/parts in my 72. After I was done, the amp had easily 2204 gain levels. You take that gain amount, then push the power section hard into compression/distortion I can EASILY hear that the amp clearly has more than enough gain to do VHI, or II for that matter.

I always believed that the 68 HAD to be modded; but after hearing this revelation right in front of me, I have NO DOUBT that Ed's amp could have easily been completely stock; just had those factory 'anomalies' that led to a very gainy 68 Superlead.
Click to expand...
It’s weird I have built 2 amps with the same preamp board that Friedman leaked and I had less gain than a mark 2 I had to add gain stages to get good gain levels. I don’t believe Eddie had an extra gain stage but I believe Jose added them to his customers to simulate the slaving that Eddie did into mark 2 plexis. Those having 2k7 .68 which were the usual old values of the Jose mod.

However the Jose master volume mod radically changes your tone when it’s engaged. And I believe that if eddies amp had it he didn’t use the transistors in every song. Those transistors don’t increase gain but they change the coloring of the distortion and its eq.

There is a particular set of transistors I tried which were on an old Jose schematic which when engaged give you an atomic punk and rwtd kind of distortion. Contrary to popular belief those transistors are not always used threw low voltages. It’s rather the opposite when you want something subtle.
 
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Amp-chaser the photo you posted in the beginning of this thread with Ed’s Destroyer from the 1978 japan magazine take a good look at the pole pieces of the neck black pickup and the chrome covered bridge pickup look at the pole pieces
 
Amp_chaser said:
It’s weird I have built 2 amps with the same preamp board that Friedman leaked and I had less gain than a mark 2 I had to add gain stages to get good gain levels. I don’t believe Eddie had an extra gain stage but I believe Jose added them to his customers to simulate the slaving that Eddie did into mark 2 plexis. Those having 2k7 .68 which were the usual old values of the Jose mod.

However the Jose master volume mod radically changes your tone when it’s engaged. And I believe that if eddies amp had it he didn’t use the transistors in every song. Those transistors don’t increase gain but they change the coloring of the distortion and its eq.
Click to expand...
A Jose master will drop the vol when engaged; in my experience.

I was shocked at the amp suddenly putting out 2204 gain after changing those values, adding the fat cap...then, when you push the vol up even more, boom there it is.
 
Lightning said:
Amp-chaser the photo you posted in the beginning of this thread with Ed’s Destroyer from the 1978 japan magazine take a good look at the pole pieces of the neck black pickup and the chrome covered bridge pickup look at the pole pieces
Click to expand...
Yeah you’re right it has a mighty mite in the neck. That’s weird because in the rwtd video clip he has 2 black pafs. I think that after cutting the shark he began to try humbuckers and was first experimenting with the neck ? He said cutting it made it lose its tone. Who knows.
 
i just wonder what you do when you actually figure it all out and nail the tone?? smoke a cig? drink a beer? what happens though if you find the tone on a dry cool day, then the next day its rainy, humid and warm? all those water particles in the air are definitely gonna change the way the mids react, whats the move then?
 
RaceU4her said:
i just wonder what you do when you actually figure it all out and nail the tone?? smoke a cig? drink a beer? what happens though if you find the tone on a dry cool day, then the next day its rainy, humid and warm? all those water particles in the air are definitely gonna change the way the mids react, whats the move then?
Click to expand...
5xA3YFg.jpeg
 
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