The Pickup Seymour Wound For Van halen

[Rocksoff]

The EVH78 has no connection to what Seymour was doing in the late 1970s.

The EVH pickup in the late 1970s was the Custom.

The EVH78 is who knows what and suddenly appeared in the 1990s or whatever and maybe Seymour thought he might be able to sell a few of them to all of the EVH PAF believers out there.

Actually the "duncan EVH 78" never showed up until january 1st ,2001 !!!
making it even less credible to be "THE PICKUP"
http://www.legendarytones.com/edward-van-halen-pickup/
I can believe the custom was used on the early stuff.

Yeah, so Seymour keeps this mysterious "EVH 78" under wraps from 1979 to 2001.

btw, if anyone wants to buy the Golden Gate Bridge I know someone that is selling it.

 

[paulyc]

Ed also talked about taking a ceramic magnet out of a DiMarzio SD and putting it into a rewound PAF type pickup and saying it got "close" to what he wanted, so he went to see Seymour Butts...which, I believe, resulted in the Custom. A PAF type with a ceramic magnet...

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Not that I even care or think it matters at this point but I will tell you what I hear:

A plexi wide open and variac'd + a super distortion type (mighty mite) or a plexi wide open + PAF type (a custom SH-5 if you want) + an EQ (GE10 or 6 band)

The SH-5 is tight and bright in my experience. That would fit the profile. The super distortion has the gain, that would also work.

The JB seems to be the least likely to my ears but hey, anything is possible. Production has a huge part to do with everything.

Final point.. who cares! None of you guys are ever going to write those tunes and most of us will never have those chops... get close enough and play a cool guitar with stripies on it.

 

[Stradazone]

Not that I even care or think it matters at this point but I will tell you what I hear:

A plexi wide open and variac'd + a super distortion type (mighty mite) or a plexi wide open + PAF type (a custom SH-5 if you want) + an EQ (GE10 or 6 band)

.

The '78 with the GE10 works for me!

 

[Rocksoff]

Getting back to the original post, EVH did seem to use a JB but that was later on and way past the early albums.

When Seymour says EVH used a JB from what he can remember, then it doesn't automatically mean Seymour is talking about 1977, 1978, 1979, and is more likely talking about the 1980s.

EVH was going to Seymour whenever he wanted to, including the 1980s.

"It was the Van Halen time,” he said. “I was doing a lot of oddball things for Eddie [Van Halen]. He wouldn’t tell anybody what he had in his guitars, and he was telling people that he was winding his own pickups. But he wasn’t.” If Duncan remembers correctly, Van Halen opted for the JB model pickup, the one he first made for Beck way back when."

 

[Racerxrated]

Well, why isn't the EVH 78 the "EVH pickup" in the Seymour Duncan Ad from 1979.

Also, it looks like EVH probably wasn't using a Marshall for the VH1 recordings because of a reason that's not that obvious.

Ted Templeman knows what the amp was on VH1 btw.

You're too late bro. We all know it was a Peavey Bandit.

 

[Mr. Willy]

Guys, EVH used a Bare Knuckles VHII on the first album. Everybody knows that!

 

[Stramm8]

I would say the EVH 78 gets you pretty close; overwound PAF tone. I like it. The EVH Frankenstein pickup is one of if not my all time favorite pick up but doesn't necessarily give up EVH tones to me. It does shine in a floyded guitar and sounds like hell in a les paul. I've got an EVH Wolfgang pick up in my Frankenstein and it sounds killer and gets some convincing EVH tones through the 5150 III.


that said, the closest I got to an early EVH tone was with an SG with 57 classics through a warmed up plexi. IMHO Early VH is a stock or slightly tweaked PAF.

 

[Rocksoff]

Another thing is, was there a EVH 78 pickup in the Franky?

No there wasn't, it's some sort of 14K A2 job.

The Floyd might cause a pickup swap, but dudes/dudettes put PAF like pickups in Floyd equipped guitars and they can work ok.

The EVH 78 is basically a PAF with some more winds and even some stock original Gibson PAF's are wound higher that the "EVH 78" with some stock original Gibson PAF's hitting the 10K region.

As Seymour said, he was doing a lot of odd jobs for EVH and one of those jobs might have been rewinding a PAF to the "EVH 78" specs, but that pickup could have been for any of EVH's guitars.

Maybe this "EVH 78" pickup is just a generic bit hotter PAF, aimed at PAF EVH believers which were a market demographic to target in 2001 when the pickup was released, it was even called "Evenly Voiced Harmonics" or some BS like that obviously to try to avoid EVH's legal team, and EVH did nothing and couldn't have given a fxxk about the "EVH 78", but if EVH wanted to then he might have had a case about Seymour using his "EVH" name again, but EVH didn't give a sxxt about the "EVH 78".

There was a 13K/14K ceramic Mighty Mite in the Destroyer for VHII, and not a "EVH 78".

EVH had a whole collection of Mighty Mites and one of them (single coil) ended up in the Franky because EVH had a whole array of Mighty Mite pickups.

Then in 1979 Seymour tries selling a EVH pickup (using "EVH" without telling EVH) and Seymour had been doing rewinds for EVH as far back as 1978 and also probably 1977, and so Seymour would of known what EVH walked out of the shop with, and Seymour's EVH pickup was the Custom, and EVH got his legal team on it straight away.

 

[stanbog]

I can't wrap my head around the fact how a massive amount of guitarplayers are chasing for a tone somebody recorded almost 40 years ago. I don't mean it in a negative way. It's just some kind of a phenomenon.

 

[bmf5150]

Not that I even care or think it matters at this point but I will tell you what I hear:

A plexi wide open and variac'd + a super distortion type (mighty mite) or a plexi wide open + PAF type (a custom SH-5 if you want) + an EQ (GE10 or 6 band)

.

The '78 with the GE10 works for me!

Me to,but with an echoplex and vintage greenbacks

 

[Rocksoff]

I can't wrap my head around the fact how a massive amount of guitarplayers are chasing for a tone somebody recorded almost 40 years ago. I don't mean it in a negative way. It's just some kind of a phenomenon.

Yeah well some seem to be fascinated by the VH1 tone.

I agree with EVH that it's a unique sort of tone and EVH was expecting something heavier than what it turned out to be.

Some are still chasing Hendrix tones.

"Alex and Donn got a lot closer on 1984 as well. “Drop Dead Legs” and “I’ll Wait” were more towards Al’s liking, as opposed to the first record.

I remember when Al and I went to Warner Bros. to pick up the cassettes of the very first 25-song demo tape we did for them in 1977.

We popped it into the player in my van and expected to hear Led Zeppelin coming out, but we were kind of appalled by what we heard. It just didn’t sound the way we wanted it to sound.

The first album sounds a little better, but it still wasn’t the way we imagined it should sound. It’s very unique sounding. I wouldn’t even know how to duplicate it, to tell you the truth."

 

[charvelstrat81]

Of all the pu's i have tried(78,dimarzio super d,duncan custom,various PAF's,JB,custom-custom,evh frankenstein,and more) the Mighty mite;s get the closest VH I tone
and i agree duncan was talking about the 80's when eddie may have used a JB
cause the "hair metal" scene was not around until then.

 

[paulyc]

I always read that his later pick up choice was a Duncan '59 for the 5150 and 1984 Kramers...

 

[Rocksoff]

Apparently EVH had a JB in his backup Kramer http://www.vhlinks.com/vbforums/threads ... ckup/page2

I've seen EVH playing a Maple body (Kramer I think) in Brazil and that must have weighed a ton.

EVH uses what he likes at a particular time, as does anyone, except dudes trying to copy another players gear/technique to the nth degree seem to want definite rules about what they should be using, but who cares unless you are in a tribute band and even then it doesn't matter much.

 

[Rocksoff]

As I already said, there is a good chance that a Marshall wasn't even used for VH1 because they were trying to get a certain sound for VH1 and Ted Templeman was involved with some of the gear choices, so EVH heads could be chasing the wrong gear for a start.

The Warner Brothers Demos from 1977 are probably the Marshall but there is a good chance that VH1 wasn't.

EVH and Alex thought the Warner Brothers demos sucked, so VH1 was trying to improve on the Warner Brothers demos and probably trying a different amp.

It looks like EVH used the Marshall for VHII though, because they had given up on the VH1 sound approach by then and as EVH says above, they didn't particularly like how VH1 came out in the end.

Also there is Sunset Sound Echo chamber on VH1 and Plate reverb on VHII, and that makes a difference as well.

Just because EVH used the Marshall live, it doesn't mean that he was chained to the Fxxking thing in the studio.

 

[paulyc]

So what is this unknown miracle amp if not a Marshall ???

 

[nitro]

It was talked about before that a fender bandmaster which Edward owned a blonde bandmaster and loved the sound of that amp,he also owned a Vox AC 30 amp which was visable on some of the old photos of van halen during the 1977 club days.

 

[Rocksoff]

I don't know for sure but Ted Templeman does.

It's not EVH's Bandmaster that was just a head btw.

VH were chasing the Montrose sound and they told Ted that.

The quote from Ted Templeman is

"In fact Van Halen took everything from that first album. They even wanted me to use Ronnie’s amp,” the iconic producer laughs."

So if that's right then Ted probably borrowed Ronnie's 3x10 Bandmaster for VH1, and Ted knew Ronnie and I don't think Ronnie was doing much at the end of August 1977 or he could have been recording a bit of stuff in LA at the "group iv" studio (mainly a Jazz studio) for his solo album that came out in 1978.

 

[nitro]

I know Eds blonde bandmaster was a head.Ronnie Montrose also used a fender champ in the studio for the Montrose album