Mike Soldano talks about EVH's Marshall

[Greazygeo]

6L6s have NOTHING in common with 6CA7s...a 6CA7 is an American /heavy duty version of an EL34, and it was used purely because it was the only tube that would take the abuse he put his Marshalls through and still stay alive.

You have never used them then. I can tell you they sound nothing like an el34.

 

[JB6464]

6L6s have NOTHING in common with 6CA7s...a 6CA7 is an American /heavy duty version of an EL34, and it was used purely because it was the only tube that would take the abuse he put his Marshalls through and still stay alive.

But actually they are , they are both designed and use a "beam form" and both tubes are a tetrode powered tube design .
Which means they both share the same internal design , it's just that the 6CA7 is designed to be biased and used in a EL34 socket .
Therefor the original fat bottle 6CA7 ( not the modern slim bottle 6CA7/EL34 type ) and 6L6 are very similar indeed .

 

[nitro]

EL34s in the 70s were horrible for reliability just in general. Marshall switched to 6550 tubes for amps coming to the USA.6CA7s are the American version for the European EL34 with much better reliability and could hold up to Edwards demands.

 

[JackBootedThug]

damn-you guys really take this evh shit pretty serious huh? when you guys start talking beam form and tetrodes, that tells me shit is gettin real up in here.

 

[paulyc]

Ahhh, but I HAVE used them...a quad of NOS ones at that, which I paid a pretty penny for...don't sound like 6L6s to me...

 

[messenger]

I'd rather talk about his Balance tone. My favourite EVH tone BY FAR

 

[JB6464]

Ahhh, but I HAVE used them...a quad of NOS ones at that, which I paid a pretty penny for...don't sound like 6L6s to me...

If you actually used them , could you not hear the scooped midrange tones in them similar to the 6L6 ?
Not all fat bottle 6CA7 tubes sound the same , and how you biased them makes a big difference in tone .
I had had many quads of original 6CA7's in multiple Marshall SLP amps over decades of playing and I can clearly hear the similarity between them and a 6L6GC tube .
The thin bottle 6CA7/EL34's they push out is nothing more than a regular EL34 with the extra print on them.

 

[paulyc]

These are Sylvania 6CA7s...NOS...I don't hear any scooped midrange, and they were set up in a Marshall on a Variac at 90 volts with the bias cranked, I also tried pulling two tubes and running through an attenuator to lower the volume enough...didn't work.

 

[Mailman1971]

Get a 5150 and be done with it.


Wow...the splitting hairs. It boggles my little mind.

 

[Greazygeo]

Ahhh, but I HAVE used them...a quad of NOS ones at that, which I paid a pretty penny for...don't sound like 6L6s to me...

Well it's pretty obvious at this point you are arguing to just argue. Good luck in your search.....

 

[Rocksoff]

Because if you listen to other players (even one's as good as Ed, like Gary Moore before his blues life took over his playing), I don't hear ANYONE playing through a Marshall that sounds like that...without a distortion box...Hendrix, Malmsteen, Moore, Page, Clapton...NOBODY has a sound that dirty.

I've played some bone stock Marshall Plexi's that when cranked had the same amount of gain I hear in the isolated tracks that are on the web. There is no mystery.

There is no mystery now but for a long time there was. It's obvious one of his amps was modded, one of the pictures of the amp in the studio clearly shows what looks like a master volume on the back. It is also obvious that people have figured out how to take a stock NMV Marshall and recreate Eddie's tone. What gets lost in these discussions is just how secretive Eddy was about his rig and how it was set up. How it was set up is the key to that tone, more so than any mods that may or may not have been done to the amp. Many, many people were and still are blown away by his tone and his chops. Nobody before him played like that or got a Marshall amp to sound that way, that is why people continue to chase his tone.

There were players before EVH that were playing like that and EVH hooked onto them in the mid 70s.

One in particular was Bill Nelson of Bebop Deluxe, who were never big in the US and EVH got quite a bit from him and VH covered a Bebop Deluxe song in 1975 and EVH lifted the riff off Bebop Deluxe's Shine for Beautiful Girls/Bring On the Girls.

But it goes back even further to the early 70s and fusion pioneers Ollie Halsall and Alan Holdsworth, and Bill Nelson got quite a lot off Ollie Halsall and EVH got quite a lot off Bill Nelson and EVH also got quite a lot off of Allan Holdsworth in the mid 70s.

Like, the Ice Cream Man stretch arpeggios at the start of the Ice Cream Man solo come from a Allan Holdsworth Tempest song from 1974, and EVH's across the strings and the same frets licks (I'm The One and the end of the Jump solo etc etc) come from Bill Nelson from Bebop Deluxe.

EVH had his solo (Eruption) that he built around a lift of "Let Me Swim" by Cactus and then he got onto tapping around mid 1977 after seeing Harvey Mandel and all of that ended up as Eruption.

EVH had the commercial exposure through VH in the US and the others mentioned above didn't or just had a bit.

The white knob is pretty useless as a master volume because EVH used the variac as his master volume (see the variac clips I posted a few pages back).

EVH's other amps didn't have white knobs or any additional knobs, and EVH used those amps as well, especially for the 1978 World Tour.

I wasn't talking about playing style, I was referring to the tone, which is what this whole thing is about...I knew about the Holdsworth influence, but I didn't know about the other guys being influences on him (I know who Bill Nelson is, but not Ollie Halsall), and I know who Cactus was and Harvey Mandel, I was saying that no one had a ferocious Marshall tone on a record like VHI, unless they were using a dirt box (and even this would be MUCH later, there was NO ONE in '77 or '78)...I'M NOT saying EVH used such a box or didn't use one...I wasn't there, I don't know...I just floated some theories that sound plausible to me...if anyone doesn't agree, that's fine...

As to the white knob from the VHII photo outtakes...that isn't a knob per se, I would say it's a pot shaft that wasn't cut and didn't have a knob put on it for whatever reason (or it fell off), and if it was there and it was a Jose style master (diodes), it CERTAINLY would contribute quite a bit to the sound, with or without the Variac...

I'm also not talking about amps from the 78 tour, ONLY the one that he did VHI with...his live sound has never been as high gain as the first studio album, until the first 5150 was released anyway...Nobody has explained to me why he latched onto such high gain amps if he doesn't like/use that much gain...

The VH1 studio tone is not a great place to start IMO.

The place to start is the 1977 VH boots and EVH's live tone, which to me is not that exceptional, but it's pretty good.

The trouble with VH1 is that that sort of playing style was probably the first time a lot of people heard that sort of style and the playing style and licks are wrapped up in the context of Ted and Donn and Sunset Sound production, so it all gets intermingled, the playing and the production tone and the songs and DLR etc etc.

Personally I don't care about EVH's playing or tone that much and the first album is swamped in time based effects as far as I'm concerned and the reverb dominates and gets mixed in with EVH's own time based effects, and the reverb is EVH's live tone going through a Donn Landee mic setup and reamped via an Altec Lansing speaker into the Studio 1's Echo Chamber and then the Echo Chamber is miced once again by Donn Landee and then sent down to Ted Templeman at the board.

That is not a live tone at all.

The only VH1 ISO I've heard with no reverb is a short "Running With The Devil" clip straight from the master tapes and it shows that EVH's amp is isolated in a room and miced with 2 mics and EVH has his Echoplex on at a 300ms delay and the chorus riff is just a flat out driven Marshall tone with a kickback doubling effect from the Echoplex IMO.

The reverb that was added for the final release makes it more glossy and makes it have more depth, as Ted was trying to blow EVH's single guitar up to be as big as possible on VH1 and the reverb was one of the tools used and Ted didn't have great faith in DLR's vocals and EVH's guitar was the priority but that seemed to change for VHII.

The myths about when EVH got his main amp are all BS and there are early photos around of VH and EVH didn't have his main amp (I think he was using a Fender).

When EVH got what turned out to be his main amp, then the white knob might have just came with it and I would say that's the case because none of EVH's other amps have a white knob, so if this white knob is doing something great then why didn't he install a white knob on all of his Marshall's.

If the white knob was a master, then it was useless to EVH because EVH was using the variac for that.

If his main Marshall broke down in the clubs then he'd have to switch to one of his other amps and he had quite a few of them and one was a wooden Marshall and another was a 50 watt, and so he was able to play a VH date with the wooden Marshall and the wooden Marshall had no white knob or any visible signs of any mods and Dave Friedman has serviced the wooden amp and it's just stock.

EVH used the wooden Marshall as part of a 3 amp group for the 1978 World Tour as well.

 

[paulyc]

Ahhh, but I HAVE used them...a quad of NOS ones at that, which I paid a pretty penny for...don't sound like 6L6s to me...

Well it's pretty obvious at this point you are arguing to just argue. Good luck in your search.....

I'm really not...

 

[ejecta]

Ahhh, but I HAVE used them...a quad of NOS ones at that, which I paid a pretty penny for...don't sound like 6L6s to me...

Well it's pretty obvious at this point you are arguing to just argue. Good luck in your search.....

Snookie likes drama.

 

[paulyc]

Nice... real mature of you.

 

[Rdodson]

Because if you listen to other players (even one's as good as Ed, like Gary Moore before his blues life took over his playing), I don't hear ANYONE playing through a Marshall that sounds like that...without a distortion box...Hendrix, Malmsteen, Moore, Page, Clapton...NOBODY has a sound that dirty.

I've played some bone stock Marshall Plexi's that when cranked had the same amount of gain I hear in the isolated tracks that are on the web. There is no mystery.

There is no mystery now but for a long time there was. It's obvious one of his amps was modded, one of the pictures of the amp in the studio clearly shows what looks like a master volume on the back. It is also obvious that people have figured out how to take a stock NMV Marshall and recreate Eddie's tone. What gets lost in these discussions is just how secretive Eddy was about his rig and how it was set up. How it was set up is the key to that tone, more so than any mods that may or may not have been done to the amp. Many, many people were and still are blown away by his tone and his chops. Nobody before him played like that or got a Marshall amp to sound that way, that is why people continue to chase his tone.

There were players before EVH that were playing like that and EVH hooked onto them in the mid 70s.

One in particular was Bill Nelson of Bebop Deluxe, who were never big in the US and EVH got quite a bit from him and VH covered a Bebop Deluxe song in 1975 and EVH lifted the riff off Bebop Deluxe's Shine for Beautiful Girls/Bring On the Girls.

But it goes back even further to the early 70s and fusion pioneers Ollie Halsall and Alan Holdsworth, and Bill Nelson got quite a lot off Ollie Halsall and EVH got quite a lot off Bill Nelson and EVH also got quite a lot off of Allan Holdsworth in the mid 70s.

Like, the Ice Cream Man stretch arpeggios at the start of the Ice Cream Man solo come from a Allan Holdsworth Tempest song from 1974, and EVH's across the strings and the same frets licks (I'm The One and the end of the Jump solo etc etc) come from Bill Nelson from Bebop Deluxe.

EVH had his solo (Eruption) that he built around a lift of "Let Me Swim" by Cactus and then he got onto tapping around mid 1977 after seeing Harvey Mandel and all of that ended up as Eruption.

EVH had the commercial exposure through VH in the US and the others mentioned above didn't or just had a bit.

The white knob is pretty useless as a master volume because EVH used the variac as his master volume (see the variac clips I posted a few pages back).

EVH's other amps didn't have white knobs or any additional knobs, and EVH used those amps as well, especially for the 1978 World Tour.

I wasn't talking about playing style, I was referring to the tone, which is what this whole thing is about...I knew about the Holdsworth influence, but I didn't know about the other guys being influences on him (I know who Bill Nelson is, but not Ollie Halsall), and I know who Cactus was and Harvey Mandel, I was saying that no one had a ferocious Marshall tone on a record like VHI, unless they were using a dirt box (and even this would be MUCH later, there was NO ONE in '77 or '78)...I'M NOT saying EVH used such a box or didn't use one...I wasn't there, I don't know...I just floated some theories that sound plausible to me...if anyone doesn't agree, that's fine...

As to the white knob from the VHII photo outtakes...that isn't a knob per se, I would say it's a pot shaft that wasn't cut and didn't have a knob put on it for whatever reason (or it fell off), and if it was there and it was a Jose style master (diodes), it CERTAINLY would contribute quite a bit to the sound, with or without the Variac...

I'm also not talking about amps from the 78 tour, ONLY the one that he did VHI with...his live sound has never been as high gain as the first studio album, until the first 5150 was released anyway...Nobody has explained to me why he latched onto such high gain amps if he doesn't like/use that much gain...

The VH1 studio tone is not a great place to start IMO.

The place to start is the 1977 VH boots and EVH's live tone, which to me is not that exceptional, but it's pretty good.

The trouble with VH1 is that that sort of playing style was probably the first time a lot of people heard that sort of style and the playing style and licks are wrapped up in the context of Ted and Donn and Sunset Sound production, so it all gets intermingled, the playing and the production tone and the songs and DLR etc etc.

Personally I don't care about EVH's playing or tone that much and the first album is swamped in time based effects as far as I'm concerned and the reverb dominates and gets mixed in with EVH's own time based effects, and the reverb is EVH's live tone going through a Donn Landee mic setup and reamped via an Altec Lansing speaker into the Studio 1's Echo Chamber and then the Echo Chamber is miced once again by Donn Landee and then sent down to Ted Templeman at the board.

That is not a live tone at all.

The only VH1 ISO I've heard with no reverb is a short "Running With The Devil" clip straight from the master tapes and it shows that EVH's amp is isolated in a room and miced with 2 mics and EVH has his Echoplex on at a 300ms delay and the chorus riff is just a flat out driven Marshall tone with a kickback doubling effect from the Echoplex IMO.

The reverb that was added for the final release makes it more glossy and makes it have more depth, as Ted was trying to blow EVH's single guitar up to be as big as possible on VH1 and the reverb was one of the tools used and Ted didn't have great faith in DLR's vocals and EVH's guitar was the priority but that seemed to change for VHII.

The myths about when EVH got his main amp are all BS and there are early photos around of VH and EVH didn't have his main amp (I think he was using a Fender).

When EVH got what turned out to be his main amp, then the white knob might have just came with it and I would say that's the case because none of EVH's other amps have a white knob, so if this white knob is doing something great then why didn't he install a white knob on all of his Marshall's.

If the white knob was a master, then it was useless to EVH because EVH was using the variac for that.

If his main Marshall broke down in the clubs then he'd have to switch to one of his other amps and he had quite a few of them and one was a wooden Marshall and another was a 50 watt, and so he was able to play a VH date with the wooden Marshall and the wooden Marshall had no white knob or any visible signs of any mods and Dave Friedman has serviced the wooden amp and it's just stock.

EVH used the wooden Marshall as part of a 3 amp group for the 1978 World Tour as well.

Good stuff here, especially about Ted and Landee. The echo chamber amp/mic setup and how that was in the mix was a huge part of the sound and never duplicated. The later plate sound is cool, but very different. Eddie even said that on VH1 Ted and Donn made it "more than it was".

 

[paulyc]

Because if you listen to other players (even one's as good as Ed, like Gary Moore before his blues life took over his playing), I don't hear ANYONE playing through a Marshall that sounds like that...without a distortion box...Hendrix, Malmsteen, Moore, Page, Clapton...NOBODY has a sound that dirty.

I've played some bone stock Marshall Plexi's that when cranked had the same amount of gain I hear in the isolated tracks that are on the web. There is no mystery.

There is no mystery now but for a long time there was. It's obvious one of his amps was modded, one of the pictures of the amp in the studio clearly shows what looks like a master volume on the back. It is also obvious that people have figured out how to take a stock NMV Marshall and recreate Eddie's tone. What gets lost in these discussions is just how secretive Eddy was about his rig and how it was set up. How it was set up is the key to that tone, more so than any mods that may or may not have been done to the amp. Many, many people were and still are blown away by his tone and his chops. Nobody before him played like that or got a Marshall amp to sound that way, that is why people continue to chase his tone.

There were players before EVH that were playing like that and EVH hooked onto them in the mid 70s.

One in particular was Bill Nelson of Bebop Deluxe, who were never big in the US and EVH got quite a bit from him and VH covered a Bebop Deluxe song in 1975 and EVH lifted the riff off Bebop Deluxe's Shine for Beautiful Girls/Bring On the Girls.

But it goes back even further to the early 70s and fusion pioneers Ollie Halsall and Alan Holdsworth, and Bill Nelson got quite a lot off Ollie Halsall and EVH got quite a lot off Bill Nelson and EVH also got quite a lot off of Allan Holdsworth in the mid 70s.

Like, the Ice Cream Man stretch arpeggios at the start of the Ice Cream Man solo come from a Allan Holdsworth Tempest song from 1974, and EVH's across the strings and the same frets licks (I'm The One and the end of the Jump solo etc etc) come from Bill Nelson from Bebop Deluxe.

EVH had his solo (Eruption) that he built around a lift of "Let Me Swim" by Cactus and then he got onto tapping around mid 1977 after seeing Harvey Mandel and all of that ended up as Eruption.

EVH had the commercial exposure through VH in the US and the others mentioned above didn't or just had a bit.

The white knob is pretty useless as a master volume because EVH used the variac as his master volume (see the variac clips I posted a few pages back).

EVH's other amps didn't have white knobs or any additional knobs, and EVH used those amps as well, especially for the 1978 World Tour.

I wasn't talking about playing style, I was referring to the tone, which is what this whole thing is about...I knew about the Holdsworth influence, but I didn't know about the other guys being influences on him (I know who Bill Nelson is, but not Ollie Halsall), and I know who Cactus was and Harvey Mandel, I was saying that no one had a ferocious Marshall tone on a record like VHI, unless they were using a dirt box (and even this would be MUCH later, there was NO ONE in '77 or '78)...I'M NOT saying EVH used such a box or didn't use one...I wasn't there, I don't know...I just floated some theories that sound plausible to me...if anyone doesn't agree, that's fine...

As to the white knob from the VHII photo outtakes...that isn't a knob per se, I would say it's a pot shaft that wasn't cut and didn't have a knob put on it for whatever reason (or it fell off), and if it was there and it was a Jose style master (diodes), it CERTAINLY would contribute quite a bit to the sound, with or without the Variac...

I'm also not talking about amps from the 78 tour, ONLY the one that he did VHI with...his live sound has never been as high gain as the first studio album, until the first 5150 was released anyway...Nobody has explained to me why he latched onto such high gain amps if he doesn't like/use that much gain...

The VH1 studio tone is not a great place to start IMO.

The place to start is the 1977 VH boots and EVH's live tone, which to me is not that exceptional, but it's pretty good.

The trouble with VH1 is that that sort of playing style was probably the first time a lot of people heard that sort of style and the playing style and licks are wrapped up in the context of Ted and Donn and Sunset Sound production, so it all gets intermingled, the playing and the production tone and the songs and DLR etc etc.

Personally I don't care about EVH's playing or tone that much and the first album is swamped in time based effects as far as I'm concerned and the reverb dominates and gets mixed in with EVH's own time based effects, and the reverb is EVH's live tone going through a Donn Landee mic setup and reamped via an Altec Lansing speaker into the Studio 1's Echo Chamber and then the Echo Chamber is miced once again by Donn Landee and then sent down to Ted Templeman at the board.

That is not a live tone at all.

The only VH1 ISO I've heard with no reverb is a short "Running With The Devil" clip straight from the master tapes and it shows that EVH's amp is isolated in a room and miced with 2 mics and EVH has his Echoplex on at a 300ms delay and the chorus riff is just a flat out driven Marshall tone with a kickback doubling effect from the Echoplex IMO.

The reverb that was added for the final release makes it more glossy and makes it have more depth, as Ted was trying to blow EVH's single guitar up to be as big as possible on VH1 and the reverb was one of the tools used and Ted didn't have great faith in DLR's vocals and EVH's guitar was the priority but that seemed to change for VHII.

The myths about when EVH got his main amp are all BS and there are early photos around of VH and EVH didn't have his main amp (I think he was using a Fender).

When EVH got what turned out to be his main amp, then the white knob might have just came with it and I would say that's the case because none of EVH's other amps have a white knob, so if this white knob is doing something great then why didn't he install a white knob on all of his Marshall's.

If the white knob was a master, then it was useless to EVH because EVH was using the variac for that.

If his main Marshall broke down in the clubs then he'd have to switch to one of his other amps and he had quite a few of them and one was a wooden Marshall and another was a 50 watt, and so he was able to play a VH date with the wooden Marshall and the wooden Marshall had no white knob or any visible signs of any mods and Dave Friedman has serviced the wooden amp and it's just stock.

EVH used the wooden Marshall as part of a 3 amp group for the 1978 World Tour as well.

Good stuff here, especially about Ted and Landee. The echo chamber amp/mic setup and how that was in the mix was a huge part of the sound and never duplicated. The later plate sound is cool, but very different. Eddie even said that on VH1 Ted and Donn made it "more than it was".

I'm not doubting the information presented here, but I would like to know how you came to know it...was it through reading interviews or were you in some way involved with the band ? I had read VHI was plate reverb (from Ed, Don, and Ted) in various interviews at different times...like I said, I'm not doubting you, I'd just like a little background if you don't mind...

 

[Rdodson]

I worked for the band for awhile. No big deal, but I talked to all these guys. And that's really all I want to say about that. It wasn't a paid deal or anything - and I'm a hedge fund manager but I used to have one foot in the door of that business.

 

[Loudness250]

6ca7's have the same glassy type sound as a 6L6 because of the beam design. 6ca7's are to a 6550 what an el34 is to a kt88. 6ca7's do break up some but it's alot different break up than a el34.

 

[ejecta]

6ca7's have the same glassy type sound as a 6L6 because of the beam design. 6ca7's are to a 6550 what an el34 is to a kt88. 6ca7's do break up some but it's alot different break up than a el34.

I'm not so sure.... Snookie settled this a few posts back.

 

[paulyc]

Thanks Ron. rocksoff, care to tell us your story ?