Van halen 1 choke wasn't a c1999 choke

Racerxrated said:
Dude, listen. This isn't hard. There's PLENTY of clips out there, with stock NMV Marshalls and the gain they get. Again, I USED to believe that a stock NMV Marshall HAD to be modded, to get VHI/II gain. Not after hearing MANY clips, including George's Plexi, AND after just changing the parts I mentioned which we all know are FACTORY on occasion, and I was SHOCKED as to the AMOUNT of the gain. Did my amp sound just like EVH's?
NO..absolutely not...BUT the AMOUNT of gain was EASILY 2204 + a little more. Especially through greenbacks.

I never said it was EXACTLY THE SOUND of Ed's magic 68 but the gain levels are EASILY explained by what I experienced, and we all know every Marshall sounds a little different to the next. Then, adding in the other items Ed and the studio used to record, one can easily see that the amp could have been totally stock, albeit with the factory 'accidents' that led it to have a bunch of gain.
Again, I'm only talking about the amount of gain here, NOT the overall tone of the records.
Lets not forget, how much gain is actually used when you record....I've only recorded twice in my life, way back in 89 for a professional demo with 2 inch tape, and then early 2ks for more demos but that was with a pro tools board. With 2 inch tape, my tone to my ears was SUPER clean with a hint of gain...yet, on the tape, it was very gainy. Maybe you've heard a cranked Plexi and it doesn't have much gain? Yet, you record that amp and you'd be surprised how much gain is there.
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Yes to all this.
 
thegame said:
These guys are chasing the mixed, mastered, (outboard gear) compressed, reverbed and EQ'd tone. The ACTUAL amp from the ACTUAL TAKE, from a room mic'd perspective sounds like a very nice plexi (perhaps on the gain-ier side of average) but still with way less gain than the finished product. Remember, EVH literally said that engineer Donn Landee "made it sound like more than it actually was", regarding VH 1 tone. With these recently revealed recordings, now we know what he meant:

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And there it is................. Thank You Mr Game......This wraps up my closing arguments in 1 minute and 52 seconds. This sounds exactly like the all live videos and bootleg clips from the 78 tour. Ed had just enough gain to pull off what he was doing. The final mix down sounds much gainier and nastier almost fuzzier/fizzier more sizzle probably from the Pultec and other preamp and Eq'ing according to Jim Gaustad.

So yes in a nutshell VH1 recorded tone is the product of Studio Magic.


I'll repost this again for Mr Amp Chaser..............................



This live outtake clip does not sound like any Jose Modded amp to my ears at least his later ones. The Jose's get greasier, more compressed, lose some of that Plexi clarity,clank and jangle, yes they have more gain but there is a tradeoff, they do have a sound of their own IMHO. They sound good, but they sound different to what I hear in this 1:52 nonmastered clip from SUNSET SOUND nonetheless.
 
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harddriver said:
The Jose's get greasier, more compressed, lose some of that Plexi clarity,clank and jangle, yes they have more gain but there is a tradeoff, they do have a sound of their own IMHO. They sound good, but they sound different to what I hear in this 1:52 nonmastered clip from SUNSET SOUND nonetheless.
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It's the clank, jangle, clarity; that's the dead giveaway that it's not a jose modded or cerrem/etc whatever the heck cascaded gain stage.

You can get lots of great sounds with a cascaded gain stage type amp - the later VH records, for one!

But VH1 is simply not one of those sounds. It's clearly a relatively stock plexi, with some component drift, pultec, variac, and a whole lot of volume.

If you want those tones at hobbyist volumes, get a powerstation and a stock plexi circuit, and do some minor electrolytic component/6CA7/variac mods and you'll see exactly why it works the way it does. You don't even have to get a real deal one - a Ceriatone or Mojotone superlead kit will do it just fine to prove the point.

Trying to recreate that tone (which is mostly a product of really high volumes and the interaction between the components at those volumes) with a cascaded gain stage amp is what every amp maker has been attempting to do for the last 40 years because it's easier for home hobbyists to enjoy the facsimile that way; not because it's what was used by EVH to get the tone in the first place.
 
Just some guy having fun on YT....

1971 Super Bass ran into a Marshall powerbrake as a load then slaved to a Marshall Valvestate Power amp, it is a cheap samick blues saraceno guitar tv twenty, a Marshall 1971 super bass with a powerbrake connected in one output as a load and a 5k line box in the other connecting the line signal to a valvestate power amp .it also has a little delay effect with a Eventide timefactor pedal....
 
DanTravis62 said:
It's the clank, jangle, clarity; that's the dead giveaway that it's not a jose modded or cerrem/etc whatever the heck cascaded gain stage.

You can get lots of great sounds with a cascaded gain stage type amp - the later VH records, for one!

But VH1 is simply not one of those sounds. It's clearly a relatively stock plexi, with some component drift, pultec, variac, and a whole lot of volume.

If you want those tones at hobbyist volumes, get a powerstation and a stock plexi circuit, and do some minor electrolytic component/6CA7/variac mods and you'll see exactly why it works the way it does. You don't even have to get a real deal one - a Ceriatone or Mojotone superlead kit will do it just fine to prove the point.

Trying to recreate that tone (which is mostly a product of really high volumes and the interaction between the components at those volumes) with a cascaded gain stage amp is what every amp maker has been attempting to do for the last 40 years because it's easier for home hobbyists to enjoy the facsimile that way; not because it's what was used by EVH to get the tone in the first place.
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:2thumbsup:
 
harddriver said:
Just some guy having fun on YT....

1971 Super Bass ran into a Marshall powerbrake as a load then slaved to a Marshall Valvestate Power amp, it is a cheap samick blues saraceno guitar tv twenty, a Marshall 1971 super bass with a powerbrake connected in one output as a load and a 5k line box in the other connecting the line signal to a valvestate power amp .it also has a little delay effect with a Eventide timefactor pedal....
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That guy’s playing technique is not up to par with EVH but the tone is shockingly close. Much closer than ampchaser’s examples. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
 
Rdodson said:
Okay.

I mean, I worked for Ed for a bit but okay.

The Boss EQ pushing could give whatever amount of gain you wanted. And turned down via the variac it gets squishy.

I love Ossie. I just disagree.
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I don’t dislike your ideas it’s just that exclusively thinking that because the amp was stock when Mike saw it in 1990 and then Fryette, Suhr and Dave said the same thing because they saw it after doesn’t inform us a lot about what was going on in the early days. I know that you can get close with the eq as a boost in front of the amp and that’s how kemper got his brown sound profile. The thing is that people who were involved in the first albums were often close friends of Eddie or of the band members and those often give testimonies indicating that the amp wasn’t stock, that there was slaving included and weird things included. Recently we even found out in a picture of the Japan tour of 1978 Eddie using an early 2203 head. We discovered that he used dbx 160 live and the Nady cordless which also apparently gave a big boost to the sound. However if it’s the same boost as the Schaffer it’s not enough. I would like to think that if the amp wasn’t modded that the nady wireless was not innocent in the equation.
 
Amp_chaser said:
Guys there is one thing we gotta admit if it was josé, the guy really deserves to get more recognition. He made many legendary tones by himself and many people don't know it : Ratt, Motley Crue, Metallica, Billy Idol, Whitesnake, DLR even Pete Frampton used a josé as his main amp for many years.

Remember that some years ago until dave friedman and ossie ahsen began to do explainations about those amps the guy was part of guitar folklore. It was linked to cameron but more like a myth. Most People joked about josé and few people knew it was real.

So if josé did indeed mod eddie's amp then he is one of the most influencal amp builders in the world. I think the guy deserves some recognition if it's the case and there are many testimonies supporting it.

Even if the guy had sloppy work he did came out with some serious mods for high profile artists.
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You serious? I man how much more name recognition could a guy have that never actually built a line of amps than Jose?

I'm an old codger by now and even back in the day everyone knew who Jose was. He's pretty much the Godfather of mods not to mention most of the amp modders who have either mastered his mod or done their own take on it. That's just a weird take. I mean EVH and Jose pretty much created a cottage industry.
 
harddriver said:
Compare away.................................................pull all the reverb and Mark's chops and you will have a different sound, the mod 5 is a good plug play circuit but it does not sound like a heavily variaced plexi. FWIW some 68's had 820/.68uf V1B cathode compliments at times, so those would have more gain than 2.7K/.68uf that became the standard compliment. Just listen to the two different circuits and how different they are, they are not and will never be the same. Once you start getting away from two gain stages the sound and feel changes....period end of story.

Do you hear how warm this amp is in this room clip from sunset sound..... this sounds nothing like a Jose modded Marshall.........


How do you explain this..........I would say Jims amp has all the sustain I hear in the actual album clip.
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The video with Jim, I mean how much closer can you get except for Ed's hands.
 
harddriver said:
Mr Amp Chaser you are confusing the perceived gain from VH1 mixdown versus the amount of gain Ed actually was working with in front of the amp, all the live clips and video support this if you listen honestly. That is why I differentiate between recorded gain/tone versus live gain/tone. RacerXrated correctly stated that when recording the perceived/recorded gain is more than what was in front of the live amp. The few times I have recorded with higher gain amps I was always being told to back off my preamp gain from what I liked live because it sounds like shit recorded.
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100% correct. I've done alot of recording with high gain amps i.e. Marshalls, OG 5150's, JSX's, Splawns and you have to back the gain off or it's just mush.
 
Amp_chaser said:
We can not prove it at 100% but i think that all those testimonies, Eddies first rowdie, David lee roth, José Himself and Michael's anthony bass tech which followed him 30 years. That's a lot of very close people who say the same thing.

Add to this that George Lynch that was already used to play plexis said that eddies live tone was out of this world and that's when he went to jackson lee to get his marshalls modded.
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And George just recently said on Tone Talk that he never did anything with Lee Jackson. So there's a story that's been out there for 30 years only for George to say it didn't happen.

So you got guys that say Ed's Marshall was modded and guys that say it wasn't. I mean if you want to play the conspiracy game maybe all those guys said it was to throw Jose a bone. Again I have no dog in this hunt because I've never tried or wanted to copy his tone but the reality is, we'll never know because Ed isn't here anymore. Probably the only guy that knows definitively is Wolfie.
 
jabps said:
And George just recently said on Tone Talk that he never did anything with Lee Jackson. So there's a story that's been out there for 30 years only for George to say it didn't happen.

So you got guys that say Ed's Marshall was modded and guys that say it wasn't. I mean if you want to play the conspiracy game maybe all those guys said it was to throw Jose a bone. Again I have no dog in this hunt because I've never tried or wanted to copy his tone but the reality is, we'll never know because Ed isn't here anymore. Probably the only guy that knows definitively is Wolfie.
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It's pretty obvious that Jose did repairs and maintenance on evhs amps.



They just weren't modded for a cascaded gain stage in vh1
 
Amp_chaser said:
Harddriver i think you are forgetting something there.



Between jim and rockstah there is a world difference and i think rockstah sounds way closer with his mod V

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Lemme get this straight, you, as someone who minitiously researched the most inane things related to EVH's VH1 tone, considers this Rockstah mod video a good representation of true VH1 tone, eventhough it lacks most of the clang, kerrang, fizzle, etc.?!

:rolleyes: :loco:
It's a good tone, fer sure, but it's way too smooth in the 'grit' (most likely clipping diodes), regardless of the over the top reverb and delay. I fear you might just be impressed by Mark's chops, but a same argument could be made for Jim Gaustad's chops and HE gets the closest to true VH1/VH2 tones IMO.

FWIW,
I play some VH1 stuff from time to time at home, at moderate volumes through an Engl Savage 60 and a Marshall 2x12 cab and my experience is that a maple-necked, fb'd Strat with a bright-ish medium/hot output pickup and a Floyd Rose + a Phase 90 already covers 50% of the battle, as long as you don't plug it into some sludgy, wooly sounding amp.
The JB being a very interesting pickup, since it sounds quite muffled clean, but starts 'kerrang-ing' with medium/high gain. An even better option, because of the harmonics, is the DiMarzio Norton. Even the Dimarzio Super Distortion ain't no slouch, because it sounds more 'open' (relatively speaking, for a compressed ceramic based high output humbucker of course) than the tone charts on the website would make you believe; based on that, you'd think pure mud and bass...

If I crank a plate reverb on a TC HOF Mini, run my amp bright, flip on a MXR Phase 95 (in '90' + Script mode), add some Echoplex or Space Echo delay (TC Alter Ego v2), use my Charvel So Cal (maple neck, floyd, Super D bridge pickup with brass FU big block underneath the Floyd Rose), I'm at least 75-80% there already in terms of tone. Then I start playing in EVH's style...BOOM, there's the next 10-15%.
And well, the final 5%... I ain't got the right neighbours or wallet for. :p (nor EVH's hands and full '78 skill, but those are just minor details.. :sneaky:. )
 
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