Did Dave Friedman find the josé mods behind Van Halen 1 ?

shar-vell Dan said:
Take away the millions spent with Peavey / Kramer / EBMM / EVH branded stuff. I prefer the tone / talent / music [just 2 albums] / and guitars & gear
that Randy Rhoads had than the lifetime Ed had.
Yeah Ed did alot of cool shit not taking that away but i prefer Randy's legacy than all the Ed tone talk forums in history.
We never actually heard Ed's side of things from him other than the bullshit stories to keep the marketing machine alive.
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Love Randy and Eddie both, but to me Randy's tone sucked whereas Eddie's tone was FIRE. Cannot for the life of me think what Max was hearing.....
 
Speeddemon said:
@Amp_chaser it's clear you WANT to believe the amp is not stock. Eventhough Dave effin' Friedman himself came back to this forum to tell you otherwise.
You can quote your Japanese friends and what not all day long, and surely they are avid fans with tons of knowledge, but how many of them have actually WORKED on ED's own amps? Mr. Friedman did and he outright tell you the amp was stock.

My advice: leave it be.
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when did he come countering me that it was stock ? the only time he countered me was when i said josé used extra transformers for dc voltages on heaters a thing i agree i was wrong about. On the tone talk with ossie ahsen about van halen 1 he said " I don't Know what's going on"
 
I suspect amp_chaser is just trolling all the “oh no! Another EVH thread!” folks while at the same time trolling all the ‘EVH is king’ folks. And is so damn good at it he/she pulled Dave fucking Friedman out of RT retirement.

But I still wonder who the alt account is? I know some people are thinking ‘who smelt it, dealt it’ but I swear it’s not me. I’m not creative enough.
 
Amp_chaser said:
when did he come countering me that it was stock ? the only time he countered me was when i said josé used extra transformers for dc voltages on heaters a thing i agree i was wrong about. On the tone talk with ossie ahsen about van halen 1 he said " I don't Know what's going on"
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See @harddriver 's post. Another 'straight from the horse's mouth' video, stating that it's stock, and maybe there were a few 'factory anomalies'. @Racerxrated said the same thing a few times as well, given his experience with similar era Plexi's.

But look, it's clear that whatever people tell you, you already made up your mind.
Good luck beating that dead horse over and over. 🤣👍
 
jabps said:
Hmm...I saw classic VH multiple times, I saw Van Hagar multiple times and the best live tone I ever heard the guy have was on the VH3 tour. Bad, hardly as it was not only the best tone I had heard with EVH but pretty much the best live tone I've ever heard period, in the well over 350+ concerts I have seen.

Next, you got challenged and @harddriver accepts and then provides a receipt (which there are numerous video's of others doing the same) and you set the goal line back that "oh, needs to be another song".

Look have fun with the obsession, it's obviously been one for players and fans for decades, I have no issue with that but only one person, possibly two know the real history of that amp. Literally every other argument is speculative because EVH is gone and IMO the only other person that would know the complete history of that amp probably isn't ever going to say.
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He only has to provide one clip of an actual Jose modded amp that sounds equal to or better and has all the plexi SL nuances of a stock 67-68 plexi 69-72 superlead and I along with many on this forum would agree with him......so far he has not posted anything that sounds better IMHO.

I have also posted the side by side isolated RWTD clip from Jim Gaustad but he also chooses to not acknowledge that clip as well so I won't bother posting it yet again.

I have posted numerous clips of actual Jose's in his other thread and while they have more gain to do not have the attributes a variaced stock plexi or superlead does. If he keeps overlooking Ed's actual signal chain used and exactly how Ed was using his amps then yeah he will continue to maintain the AMP had to be modded......Even when you point out that after the Japan tour Ed was using any Superlead he could get his hands on so they could keep playing because his plexi's were lost it still does not compute for some reason. And one might even argue Ed's tone with the replacement Superleads almost sounded better...........:unsure::confused::LOL::poke:
 
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Here's a vid from Ossie Ahsen from 8 years ago with a 67 plexi.

@ossieahsen6732


7 years ago

Hi Larry, Thanks for the kind words! Heres my take on gettin the tone, Ed never lied and neither did Ted. The amp was stock. Pushed a bit, but stock. The most important thing i did to get this sound was to use chained 1176 compressors after the mic pre. The 1176 when used this way, one overdriving the other, provides sustain and clipping . Templeman was known to use this (little feat slide tracks). Thats about it... oh- and adding a bit of direct to the mic'd tone before the compressors. Hope that helps :)Ossie
 
harddriver said:
Here's a vid from Ossie Ahsen from 8 years ago with a 67 plexi.

@ossieahsen6732

7 years ago

Hi Larry, Thanks for the kind words! Heres my take on gettin the tone, Ed never lied and neither did Ted. The amp was stock. Pushed a bit, but stock. The most important thing i did to get this sound was to use chained 1176 compressors after the mic pre. The 1176 when used this way, one overdriving the other, provides sustain and clipping . Templeman was known to use this (little feat slide tracks). Thats about it... oh- and adding a bit of direct to the mic'd tone before the compressors. Hope that helps :)Ossie
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Isn’t ossie still looking for that tone ?



The chase ain’t finished. If you have enough and don’t want to believe the modded theory

N1 no one forces you to click and answer this topic. You just want to use you rage or you mockery.

N2 there are other multiple topics where you can type.
harddriver said:
Here's a vid from Ossie Ahsen from 8 years ago with a 67 plexi.

@ossieahsen6732

7 years ago

Hi Larry, Thanks for the kind words! Heres my take on gettin the tone, Ed never lied and neither did Ted. The amp was stock. Pushed a bit, but stock. The most important thing i did to get this sound was to use chained 1176 compressors after the mic pre. The 1176 when used this way, one overdriving the other, provides sustain and clipping . Templeman was known to use this (little feat slide tracks). Thats about it... oh- and adding a bit of direct to the mic'd tone before the compressors. Hope that helps :)Ossie
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here are all the arguments summed up against the stock marshall theory

N°1 José arredondo admitted in neil zlozlowers book that he and eddie modded an amp to get the sound for VH1. Neil zlozlower was eddie's close friend and the photograph of the band he even took the shot of the vh2 recording :
neil (1).jpg

N°2 Rudy Leiren which was eddie first tech admitted there was a bias Mod and some other things he cannot go into details :
rudy1985.jpg


N°3 bass tech of Michael Anthony Kevin Dugan admitted in 2021 the amp was modded and that even michael anthony's amps were modded. He even left multiple times eddie's amp at josé's for tweaks :
kevin dugan.png


N°4 Steve Vai mentionned in the vai josé video that David Lee Roth told him to go see josé to get his amps modded because he did most of eddie's amp.



N°5 Eddie's amp guts :
preamp_2.jpg


evh_amp_001_1_1_821.jpg


No cherry red die, No mustards, It has been resoldered multiple times. Plus the extra socket has a lot of screw wear possibily to add terminal tag strips for extra components and not another extra tube tube. Dave even said there is one thing on the power section i prefer keep for myself. Probably the result of NDA...

N°6 Bob bradshaws drawing of eddie's rig in the 80's :

a84649ddf2173beb1c26164c1e7faddb.jpg


There you can see that there was written Marshall Seriously modded amp... another hint but nda seem to strike hard when you work with eddie.

n°7 Ed's pot in the back was there in 1978 and 1979 :
knob (1).jpg

whatever this is this is probably done by josé. Perhaps a master volume with zener or transistors or an extra gain stage/circuit allowing to increase the drive of the amp not the gain. José master volumes are quite different from the usual master volume because they increase compression and add a resonnance like tone to the amp even without diodes or zeners.

N°8 eddie used josé head amps in the early days here you can clearly see a super lead modded with the inputs of the first channel with gain pots.

orange head.jpg


this is similar to this amp :

images (2).jpeg


N°9 the early days special thanks top 3 always went to josé arredondo when van halen was getting famous. If josé had nothing to do with ed's tone why was he always in the top 3 of the special thanks when the band exploded ? In those special thanks there are funny names because those are nicknames people used to give to people in the past :

123135171.jpg


Dave friedman accepts the possibility that the amp was modded in this tone talk. Even if he doesn't objectively know if it was or not he doesn't dismiss the possibility for van halen 1. Just watch the entire thing :



people tend to forget that between when mike soldano saw the amp and between the album there was a 12 year gap. Ruddy Leiren could have brought the main amp to stock. Anyways eddie always had a backup of everything. If his main marshall was modded then he probably had a backup with the same mods. Why would he get his main amp back to stock ? Well do you know the story when the van halen crew reamped one album with his old rig ? He said not that shit again : i'm done with this tone... So eddie probably wanted to get rid of that old tone that's probably why the amp was unmodded and brought back to stock values at some point with random components josé or rudy had in their shop.

to backup this theory dave friedman even says that eddie told him personnaly that he hated the VH1 tone.
 
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jabps said:
Hmm...I saw classic VH multiple times, I saw Van Hagar multiple times and the best live tone I ever heard the guy have was on the VH3 tour. Bad, hardly as it was not only the best tone I had heard with EVH but pretty much the best live tone I've ever heard period, in the well over 350+ concerts I have seen.
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Yep, I agree, jabps.

The tone on the VHIII tour was absolutely phenomenal.

I’ve seen VH in 1981, 1984, 1986, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2004, 2007 and 2012…

The Peavey 5150II’s were cooking and it was the best live tone I’ve ever heard from Eddie.

1984 tour was darn good live tone too though!! 😉
 
SFW said:
So he provides what you asked for and then you say "that doesn't count"...? lol

Here he is using the Stealth.... and it still sounds like good old Edward. If you can't make it speak, you can't make it speak. The gear only gets you so far.
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I think that sounds better than the Marshalls.
 
harddriver said:
Here's a vid from Ossie Ahsen from 8 years ago with a 67 plexi.

@ossieahsen6732

7 years ago

Hi Larry, Thanks for the kind words! Heres my take on gettin the tone, Ed never lied and neither did Ted. The amp was stock. Pushed a bit, but stock. The most important thing i did to get this sound was to use chained 1176 compressors after the mic pre. The 1176 when used this way, one overdriving the other, provides sustain and clipping . Templeman was known to use this (little feat slide tracks). Thats about it... oh- and adding a bit of direct to the mic'd tone before the compressors. Hope that helps :)Ossie
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Have you heard the drum kit overheads picking up Eddie tracking eruption? The tone is there IMO.
 
SQUAREHEAD said:
Yep, I agree, jabps.

The tone on the VHIII tour was absolutely phenomenal.

I’ve seen VH in 1981, 1984, 1986, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2004, 2007 and 2012…

The Peavey 5150II’s were cooking and it was the best live tone I’ve ever heard from Eddie.

1984 tour was darn good live tone too though!! 😉
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I also agree that the live tone was way different from the recording tone.

However if my memory is right I read that in the studio the recorded sound was attenuated : the plexi was cranked but the volumes were not crazy. You could hear yourself while playing.

what happened there with the 2 amps that were used that day ? who knows...
 
Amp_chaser said:
I also agree that the live tone was way different from the recording tone.

However if my memory is right I read that in the studio the recorded sound was attenuated : the plexi was cranked but the volumes were not crazy. You could hear yourself while playing.

what happened there with the 2 amps that were used that day ? who knows...
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Dude,
I LOVED Eddie,
Every note he ever played.

But man, You’re relentless…

Yikes.
 
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