Inside: EVH's touring EVHIII amp head pics I took yesterday

[nevusofota]

No way I could set either of my 5150 III's with those settings. It would be way to bright. Ear piercing. Both my amps have JJ power tubes in them not the Sovteks but one of them has Sovtek and EH preamp tubes and the other has all JJ preamp tubes. In the owners manual for the amp it has recommended settings. These are not even close to what I see in these pics. I still have the magazine with Ed's setting for the original 5150 and they're pretty damn close to the settings in the 5150 III owners manual. I'll try to scan both tomorrow and post.

Doubt he plays at bedroom volume.....

I think Victim means ear piercing by means of frequency, not volume.

 

[mentoneman]

can you see this picture?

Ya man, is that our very own Andy Wood in there lighting it up???

V.

yup and light it up he did.
so did PT...man his tone from that amp and the tele were golden.

 

[lolzgreg]

No way I could set either of my 5150 III's with those settings. It would be way to bright. Ear piercing. Both my amps have JJ power tubes in them not the Sovteks but one of them has Sovtek and EH preamp tubes and the other has all JJ preamp tubes. In the owners manual for the amp it has recommended settings. These are not even close to what I see in these pics. I still have the magazine with Ed's setting for the original 5150 and they're pretty damn close to the settings in the 5150 III owners manual. I'll try to scan both tomorrow and post.

I've recorded my 5150 III brighter than that on more than one occasion.

On that note, here's one of the recordings: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1569935/EXOTHRASH.wav

You want a thrashy tone, there it is.

You want bigger and more linear, listen to the Burials track on my soundclick player: https://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... dID=926935

 

[Bishop5150]

No way I could set either of my 5150 III's with those settings. It would be way to bright. Ear piercing. Both my amps have JJ power tubes in them not the Sovteks but one of them has Sovtek and EH preamp tubes and the other has all JJ preamp tubes. In the owners manual for the amp it has recommended settings. These are not even close to what I see in these pics. I still have the magazine with Ed's setting for the original 5150 and they're pretty damn close to the settings in the 5150 III owners manual. I'll try to scan both tomorrow and post.

Doubt he plays at bedroom volume.....

I don't play at bedroom volume either. Rehearsal and gigs I keep the Master Volumes around 11 oclock which is pretty loud. I mean very trebly ear piercing. At least that's the experience with the 2 that I have. Both amps the treble at noon and the presence at noon is borderline too bright.

 

[university81]

thanks for the pics,

agreed on the crazy bright settings, i'm thinking cabinet combination and well it's eddie =)

my treble is around 9-11 on most channels, presence around 11-12 , can't go higher else my ears will die

 

[XSSIVE]

I still have the magazine with Ed's setting for the original 5150 and they're pretty damn close to the settings in the 5150 III owners manual. I'll try to scan both tomorrow and post.

cool, if you have it and can scan it before OldskoolNJ gets back home to be able to scan his that would be great. i'm real curious to see how different they are from my personal 5150 settings.

 

[nitro]

Eds early sound(first album Van halen 1)is very bright,I set the tone controls on the amp that im using the same way,i have been for many years.

 

[Greazygeo]

No way I could set either of my 5150 III's with those settings. It would be way to bright. Ear piercing. Both my amps have JJ power tubes in them not the Sovteks but one of them has Sovtek and EH preamp tubes and the other has all JJ preamp tubes. In the owners manual for the amp it has recommended settings. These are not even close to what I see in these pics. I still have the magazine with Ed's setting for the original 5150 and they're pretty damn close to the settings in the 5150 III owners manual. I'll try to scan both tomorrow and post.

Doubt he plays at bedroom volume.....

I don't play at bedroom volume either. Rehearsal and gigs I keep the Master Volumes around 11 oclock which is pretty loud. I mean very trebly ear piercing. At least that's the experience with the 2 that I have. Both amps the treble at noon and the presence at noon is borderline too bright.

Try the amp on ten....it probably won't be near as bright. Once you start really hitting the power section the treble goes away in a hurry..on my 5150 with the volume cranked I had the pres/ mid / treb cranked and still could have used some more.

 

[Digital Jams]

No way I could set either of my 5150 III's with those settings. It would be way to bright. Ear piercing. Both my amps have JJ power tubes in them not the Sovteks but one of them has Sovtek and EH preamp tubes and the other has all JJ preamp tubes. In the owners manual for the amp it has recommended settings. These are not even close to what I see in these pics. I still have the magazine with Ed's setting for the original 5150 and they're pretty damn close to the settings in the 5150 III owners manual. I'll try to scan both tomorrow and post.

I've recorded my 5150 III brighter than that on more than one occasion.

On that note, here's one of the recordings: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1569935/EXOTHRASH.wav

You want a thrashy tone, there it is.

You want bigger and more linear, listen to the Burials track on my soundclick player: https://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... dID=926935

Posting clips to back your part of the discussion?????

who would have thought.

 

[philb]

Cool pics!

 

[echodrive]

Eds early sound(first album Van halen 1)is very bright,I set the tone controls on the amp that im using the same way,i have been for many years.

Ed's early tone was a combination of two amplifiers - not a modded Marshall. Jose did remove the "mustard" caps and the stock transformers, but that was pretty much it. For his original tone, Ed played into a Vox AC15 pushed into power-tube distortion - into an attenuator - into a Marshall Plexi. He didn't use this rig on VH II, as he had a PPIMV installed into his Marshall. He didn't like that setup, so he went back to his Vox/Marshall rig... From there he used his Soldano SLO 100, then other configurations followed... The "Jose mod" circuit is complete BS!

You have to understand that us "old-timers" didn't have a ton of distortion pedals to plug into. To get good distortion, you had to turn the amp up as loud as you could. Some amps "broke-up" nicely - others not so nice. The Vox and Marshall amps were the best for power-tube distortion. If you want this tone without the hassles of a multi-amp rig, find a Cornford "Hellcat" amplifier. It's basically a "balls-to-the-wall" hot-rodded AC30! The early issue models seem to sound better than the later models? The Guytron "GT100" was designed with Ed's early rig in mind... It's basically a Vox AC15 into an attenuator circuit, and then into a 100 watt EL34 back-end amp. The later FV models seem to "cut-through" better than the early issue models. More voicing options for sure.

The Peavey 5150 is a basically copy of the SLO 100 circuit (as so many amps are...). Peavey used 100 ohm screen resistors, and made some other minor changes. The 5150 III is in the same category.

Here's Ed playing through his VH I rig:

 

[Lord Toneking]

Eds early sound(first album Van halen 1)is very bright,I set the tone controls on the amp that im using the same way,i have been for many years.

Ed's early tone was a combination of two amplifiers - not a modded Marshall. Jose did remove the "mustard" caps and the stock transformers, but that was pretty much it. For his original tone, Ed played into a Vox AC15 pushed into power-tube distortion - into an attenuator - into a Marshall Plexi. He didn't use this rig on VH II, as he had a PPIMV installed into his Marshall. He didn't like that setup, so he went back to his Vox/Marshall rig... From there he used his Soldano SLO 100, then other configurations followed... The "Jose mod" circuit is complete BS!

You have to understand that us "old-timers" didn't have a ton of distortion pedals to plug into. To get good distortion, you had to turn the amp up as loud as you could. Some amps "broke-up" nicely - others not so nice. The Vox and Marshall amps were the best for power-tube distortion. If you want this tone without the hassles of a multi-amp rig, find a Cornford "Hellcat" amplifier. It's basically a "balls-to-the-wall" hot-rodded AC30! The early issue models seem to sound better than the later models? The Guytron "GT100" was designed with Ed's early rig in mind... It's basically a Vox AC15 into an attenuator circuit, and then into a 100 watt EL34 back-end amp. The later FV models seem to "cut-through" better than the early issue models. More voicing options for sure.

The Peavey 5150 is a basically copy of the SLO 100 circuit (as so many amps are...). Peavey used 100 ohm screen resistors, and made some other minor changes. The 5150 III is in the same category.

Here's Ed playing through his VH I rig:

Great post! Im gonna like having you around here

 

[charveldan]

Platform shoes FTW.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Great post.. this has been covered in great detail on the metro forum as well. People who were supposedly around at the time of the VH1 recordings stated that the secret was simply cascading one amp into another. Vox aside (pic clearly shows it) , I have heard many convincing VH1 sounds coming from plexi or marshall type amps being pumped through the preamp of another circuit. Allows you to squeeze more gain out of stock circuit. Then you add high output pickups to a plexi and you get other convincing sounds... VH2 def. has less gain.

 

[Mark Day]

Cool story and pic. I had never heard about the Vox into an attenuator then into the Plexi. It makes total sense. Did he use the vox as a preamp for the Plexi on the first recording?
The tones on VH1 sound way too complex to be just a loud Plexi..to me anyway.

Mark

 

[Ventura]

Eds early sound(first album Van halen 1)is very bright,I set the tone controls on the amp that im using the same way,i have been for many years.

Ed's early tone was a combination of two amplifiers - not a modded Marshall. Jose did remove the "mustard" caps and the stock transformers, but that was pretty much it. For his original tone, Ed played into a Vox AC15 pushed into power-tube distortion - into an attenuator - into a Marshall Plexi. He didn't use this rig on VH II, as he had a PPIMV installed into his Marshall. He didn't like that setup, so he went back to his Vox/Marshall rig... From there he used his Soldano SLO 100, then other configurations followed... The "Jose mod" circuit is complete BS!

You have to understand that us "old-timers" didn't have a ton of distortion pedals to plug into. To get good distortion, you had to turn the amp up as loud as you could. Some amps "broke-up" nicely - others not so nice. The Vox and Marshall amps were the best for power-tube distortion. If you want this tone without the hassles of a multi-amp rig, find a Cornford "Hellcat" amplifier. It's basically a "balls-to-the-wall" hot-rodded AC30! The early issue models seem to sound better than the later models? The Guytron "GT100" was designed with Ed's early rig in mind... It's basically a Vox AC15 into an attenuator circuit, and then into a 100 watt EL34 back-end amp. The later FV models seem to "cut-through" better than the early issue models. More voicing options for sure.

The Peavey 5150 is a basically copy of the SLO 100 circuit (as so many amps are...). Peavey used 100 ohm screen resistors, and made some other minor changes. The 5150 III is in the same category.

Here's Ed playing through his VH I rig:

Great post! Im gonna like having you around here

Yep, mega +1

More fact, less conjecture, nicely done


V.

 

[Anonymous]

To say that the "early sound" was a Vox into a Marshall slave deal is a major oversimplification and that picture is from before the band was signed. Ed used Marshalls, Music Man, etc. - whatever he could get his hands on. There is no Vox to be found anywhere in his rig once they got signed and were touring behind VH1. There is no question that slaving was a factor, but it was only to reduce volume. Of course it had an effect on the tone, but there are so many easier and cheaper ways to achieve this now that there would be no reason to do this like Ed did back in the day.

That early sound is a nice cranked Plexi with boosts from GE-10 and/or MXR blue box 6 band EQ (frown) and low output PAF pickups. Add some echoplex, MXR Flange, MXR Phase and reverb and you are there if you can play the material with that heavy pick attack and swing. Early on he got the volume usable by slaving, but we have the choice of attenuators, PPMIVs, slaving into power amps designed for this purpose, etc.

This tone comes out of my strat w/EVH Humbucker, Badgerplex, El Capistan, Metropoulos 12000 Series Marshall clone (w/PPIMV) and G12H30 equipped 4x12 all day long... no need for slaving...

How he got that tone does not mean that is the only (or for sure the most practical) way to get it...

Steve

 

[gbsmusic]

Very cool.

 

[echodrive]

Cool story and pic. I had never heard about the Vox into an attenuator then into the Plexi. It makes total sense. Did he use the vox as a preamp for the Plexi on the first recording?
The tones on VH1 sound way too complex to be just a loud Plexi..to me anyway.

Mark

Yes, he used the Vox/Marshall rig on VH I and VH WACF for sure. He also would run other configurations through H/H power amps. How exactly he placed his effects, I don't know? Ed would experiment with anything he could get his hands on - so I don't think there's one "EVH tone formula". I think 80% of your "tone" comes from the heart. Take you for example: You have an uncanny ability to make everything you play sound fantastic! I've heard your clips, and they are impressive to say the least. Keep those clips coming bro!

Guy Hedrick (formerly of Guitar Oasis) was the tech who did the "post-Jose" rebuild on Ed's famed Plexi. Guy rebuilt Ed's amp form the ground up! He couldn't get ahold of any stock Marshall transformers, so he made a custom-wound set. He also did a couple of other little things to it... Cap size changes... plate voltage tweak... Guy documented everything the Jose had done to Ed's amp, and none of it included mods that would increase the "gain" of the amp. If you contact Guy, he could tell you more. He's the only designer I know of that owns a patent to a complete tube-amp design! Most all tube-amp designs have long been public domain.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you play out of IMO. Gary Moore could make you run out and buy a "Gorilla" amp if you heard him play through one... Just no substitute for "time on strings".

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

That early sound is a nice cranked Plexi with boosts from GE-10 and/or MXR blue box 6 band EQ (frown) and low output PAF pickups

Maybe but still don't buy the "stock" amp theory alone or "stock" pickup alone. A super hot pickup and cranked plexi also gets similar tone to an EQ + the amp. Either way, stock plexi doesn't get you those lead lines unless you boost it, slave it, or use a hotass PU.