Steve Stevens on EVH direct post.

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phil b
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I really miss HRI. This post was from Steve himself in 2012. Such cool stuff!

Sat Feb 4th 2012.....

"Hey Guys,
Let’s see what i can answer here. So long ago and many braincells have been burned since then, ha ha. So when i started the Vince Neil tour, i was using my 100 watt plexy. The main amp was a 1968 super lead. It was really not suited for the road and quite finicky. ED Van Halen saw me struggling with it one day at sound check and suggested i play through his rig at sound check the following day, which i did….much to Alex’s dismay, ha ha. He just wanted to get on with the VH sound check and drink his garlic shakes. I express to Eddie that it seemed much more road worthy to use the Peavey stuff. I also really liked his WDW setup. 2 days later a truck shows up at the gig and i was a kid at Christmas time. 6 cabs & 3 heads. Ed also placed an order of 2 Music Man EVH gee tars. I told him that i loved the solid black one i had played of his. He pulled it off his guitar rack, handed it to me and said, “oh you mean your guitar” That’s Ed for you. I had already owned one Music Man EVH prior. It was trans pink and i had recorded much of the Vince Neil Exposed record with that. For the 1984 Billy Idol Rebel Yell stuff, i played through 2 JCM 800’s. I could never get them clean enough for Flesh, so i had a switch that would route my guitar to a Rockman set on super clean/compressed. That was sent to the sound man DI. It was then routed to my monitors. Up until i hooked up with Dave Friedman, i used a Jose Arredondo load box to send a line level signal off the Marshall to the H&H power amps. All of my systems at that time were done by the pioneer and guy that paved the way for us all…Bob Bradshaw. BTW, i think the photos of gear i stated that were not mine are of Dave Marshall’s gear, he was the 2nd guitarist in the Vince Neil band."

Pretty cool right from the man himself.
 
phil b said:
I really miss HRI. This post was from Steve himself in 2012. Such cool stuff!

Sat Feb 4th 2012.....

"Hey Guys,
Let’s see what i can answer here. So long ago and many braincells have been burned since then, ha ha. So when i started the Vince Neil tour, i was using my 100 watt plexy. The main amp was a 1968 super lead. It was really not suited for the road and quite finicky. ED Van Halen saw me struggling with it one day at sound check and suggested i play through his rig at sound check the following day, which i did….much to Alex’s dismay, ha ha. He just wanted to get on with the VH sound check and drink his garlic shakes. I express to Eddie that it seemed much more road worthy to use the Peavey stuff. I also really liked his WDW setup. 2 days later a truck shows up at the gig and i was a kid at Christmas time. 6 cabs & 3 heads. Ed also placed an order of 2 Music Man EVH gee tars. I told him that i loved the solid black one i had played of his. He pulled it off his guitar rack, handed it to me and said, “oh you mean your guitar” That’s Ed for you. I had already owned one Music Man EVH prior. It was trans pink and i had recorded much of the Vince Neil Exposed record with that. For the 1984 Billy Idol Rebel Yell stuff, i played through 2 JCM 800’s. I could never get them clean enough for Flesh, so i had a switch that would route my guitar to a Rockman set on super clean/compressed. That was sent to the sound man DI. It was then routed to my monitors. Up until i hooked up with Dave Friedman, i used a Jose Arredondo load box to send a line level signal off the Marshall to the H&H power amps. All of my systems at that time were done by the pioneer and guy that paved the way for us all…Bob Bradshaw. BTW, i think the photos of gear i stated that were not mine are of Dave Marshall’s gear, he was the 2nd guitarist in the Vince Neil band."

Pretty cool right from the man himself.
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I still use my 1984 X-100 for most rehearsals w/o having to worry about bothering folks as i get up super early.
I know there are all kinds of gizmos now but this Rockman is all i need.
 
saxxamafone said:
HRI back in the day was amazing. Had guys like Steve, Friedman etc. interacting on the board with regular folks like us. I remember various session players were there who were touring with big names too.
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Yea, if you ever had an issue hooking something up or something just wasnt working out right you could have it solved usually within a day or two. That place really had a great vibe to it. I remember Eds tech Lonnie posting there all the time and was super helpful. So many heavy hitters joining in. I wonder how much $$$ I would have saved if I wasnt part of that place. LOL Never a regret though, but I do think a lot of us were spoiled with how easy it was to get help with whatever off the wall issue you had.
 
phil b said:
Yea, if you ever had an issue hooking something up or something just wasnt working out right you could have it solved usually within a day or two. That place really had a great vibe to it. I remember Eds tech Lonnie posting there all the time and was super helpful. So many heavy hitters joining in. I wonder how much $$$ I would have saved if I wasnt part of that place. LOL Never a regret though, but I do think a lot of us were spoiled with how easy it was to get help with whatever off the wall issue you had.
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ah yes I remember Lonnie!
 
Awesome post! I've lurked there over the years, when you could still do that....

Side note, he mentions Dave Marshall...he's from Eau Claire, where I've lived the last 30 yrs. Dave's half brother Scott was a bartender at one of our haunts..we were playing Water St every month, and he told me his brother Dave was coming home for Xmas, and he was a GP in LA. Cool...met him and indeed he was super cool, and about to go on tour with SS and Vince Neil. We got him up to play a few covers, and I got to see what real vibrato was about haha. He did scratch the shit outta my finish on my new at the time Hamer USA Centaura...I was bummed when I realized it...years later I thought it was cool. He used one of those metal picks. Lol
 
Team Shirtless!

Lonnie was somethin’ else, man. Some GREAT stories and he pulled no punches, whether that was over EVH, Bradshaw or anyone else that most people put on some kind of pedestal. I had a good PM conversation going with that guy for a while, Lonnie had some tin hats well before tin hats were fashionable! :LOL:
 
HRI had regulars that were pretty amazing, manufacturers, Artists, techs like Lonnie(to this day I still won't grind my rack ears and ground the rail even though he said that was the way to go lol, guy was a wealth of knowledge) was a member there since the early 2000s(John01W), Mario from Axess, I was pretty bummed when it shut down.....I wish the archive was more complete....saw marsa post over at TGP Rack forum recently, got nostalgic and went through old pics of all my rig iterations in and since those days...what a journey it's been. Wish I had kept my modded 3+SE.....and again...never got into the shirtless shit lol....most of the HRI crew are all on the FB rack group.....was a while back but saw Bruno(3+ doctor!) on there was like damn, blast from the past! If you were a HRI member post one of your old racks!! One of many of my rack configs from back then!

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Purpleibby said:
HRI had regulars that were pretty amazing, manufacturers, Artists, techs like Lonnie(to this day I still won't grind my rack ears and ground the rail even though he said that was the way to go lol, guy was a wealth of knowledge) was a member there since the early 2000s(John01W), Mario from Axess, I was pretty bummed when it shut down.....I wish the archive was more complete....saw Gluke post over at TGP Rack forum recently, got nostalgic and went through old pics of all my rig iterations in and since those days...what a journey it's been. Wish I had kept my modded 3+SE.....and again...never got into the shirtless shit lol....most of the HRI crew are all on the FB rack group.....was a while back but saw Bruno(3+ doctor!) on there was like damn, blast from the past! If you were a HRI member post one of your old racks!! One of many of my rack configs from back then!

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What was or is HRI ?Harmony Central there was a geek site that posted peoples racks and gear cant rememember the name was Kool.
 
napalmdeath said:
rack gear days that kinda dissolved..
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You wouldn't know it if you were on Huge Rack on FB....pretty high traffic but I haven't checked in for a while. The rigs were as big as ever, It's forums that have dissolved and moved to FB groups. HRI went down with the groomed noodler stuff lol.....Many of us still racking as much as ever, don't think I'll ever leave the rack, just sounds too damn good.....pretty cool seeing Soldano and Egnater preamps going back into production as we speak!
 
You can find a majority of the goofier HRI guys at the FB group Shizzer. There’s not a lot of gear talk there these days, it’s mostly just jokes about doing dirty things to Chuck (MBalmer). There IS a Huge Guitar Racks FB group that has a few HRI guys in it, not a ton of activity, though. I think there’s maybe 2-3 guys that are still going hard on the rack stuff and it’s mostly them posting stuff.
 
RevDrucifer said:
You can find a majority of the goofier HRI guys at the FB group Shizzer. There’s not a lot of gear talk there these days, it’s mostly just jokes about doing dirty things to Chuck (MBalmer). There IS a Huge Guitar Racks FB group that has a few HRI guys in it, not a ton of activity, though. I think there’s maybe 2-3 guys that are still going hard on the rack stuff and it’s mostly them posting stuff.
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I haven't been on there in a while, but I saw a lot of familiar folks when I did, lots of people posting their racks and gear hounding as always. David Phillips(LA Sound Design) posting his rig builds like the old days.......very cool. I still have my CAA with scumbacks 4x12 cab I bought from Shoncae on HRI back then, it's a keeper!
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I was a member at HRI for a while but rarely posted anything. The knowledge base there was great. But I'm utterly convinced that a significant percentage of those guys were into such gear purely for the airplane cockpit appearance and blinking lights aesthetic display of the racks, instead of tone and functionality.
 
thegame said:
I was a member at HRI for a while but rarely posted anything. The knowledge base there was great. But I'm utterly convinced that a significant percentage of those guys were into such gear purely for the airplane cockpit appearance and blinking lights aesthetic display of the racks, instead of tone and functionality.
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From my perspective, tone and functionality is what it was/is all about, down the minutia...tone chasing was IT ,....hunger for the knowledge inspired by tones you're chasing and learning to do it yourself built that base with fine contributions from amazing people and a great vibe.....yeah there was some definite excess at obscene leves, and I fuckin' love it😅
For me It would be more accurate to say it was about tone/the height of functionality/ultimate flexibility/no compromising AND the aesthetic is pretty nice too😉. Changing it all with one switch! If you love tinkering, good tone, chasing tone, killer rack gear/amps, great playing/players, it was a great place....to this day I still wire my shit proper, it's not Racksystems or LA Sound Design but I'm happy with it:
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Some old HRI vibes here from Vinny Burns(Dare, Burns Blue) who was another regular and fellow 3+SE user! HRI definitely had some awesome people posting there! I definitely miss HRI :
 
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