The actual effects chain is quite important to nail it as close as possible, but my point was is if you run your Marshall's the way Ed did and have his chops and skills it will be Ed's core tone. Even if you don't have all of Ed's chops the core tone is achievable with all the information that is now out there on the internet if you dig.
After trying every so called Ed mod, cascade circuits, stock plexi, stock superlead and all the load resistor/slaving to power amps I find they all can produce a great VH1 tone really. I am completely content with the conclusions my experimentations have shown me over the years that a stock 68 plexi or superlead variaced down and either ran into a load box then reamped by either more Superleads/Bandmasters/Musicmans probably was the formula for VH1 and the VH1 78 tour and probably VHII and 79. Can a mod 5 sound pretty good, sure it does, side by side with a 68 plexi the plexi is more correct sounding and feeling every time IMHO. I do believe those videos showing Musicman HD130's and 65 prove Ed was slaving and using them as power amps because if you have played a Musicman HD130 you will know it doesn't sound like a varaiced Marshall. It's all cool and alot of fun and one can reach any conclusion they wish as I am quite content that I have a tone that I enjoy and that's what counts.
Here are pictures that are supposedly Ed's 12301 amp after being rebuilt by Van Wheelden so who knows what it looked like in 1978. The last pic is fromt he 5150 tour in 1986, Ed was slaving but to H&H power amps.
The actual effects chain is quite important to nail it as close as possible, but my point was is if you run your Marshall's the way Ed did and have his chops and skills it will be Ed's core tone. Even if you don't have all of Ed's chops the core tone is achievable with all the information that is now out there on the internet if you dig.
After trying every so called Ed mod, cascade circuits, stock plexi, stock superlead and all the load resistor/slaving to power amps I find they all can produce a great VH1 tone really. I am completely content with the conclusions my experimentations have shown me over the years that a stock 68 plexi or superlead variaced down and either ran into a load box then reamped by either more Superleads/Bandmasters/Musicmans probably was the formula for VH1 and the VH1 78 tour and probably VHII and 79. Can a mod 5 sound pretty good, sure it does, side by side with a 68 plexi the plexi is more correct sounding and feeling every time IMHO. I do believe those videos showing Musicman HD130's and 65 prove Ed was slaving and using them as power amps because if you have played a Musicman HD130 you will know it doesn't sound like a varaiced Marshall. It's all cool and alot of fun and one can reach any conclusion they wish as I am quite content that I have a tone that I enjoy and that's what counts.
Here are pictures that are supposedly Ed's 12301 amp after being rebuilt by Van Wheelden so who knows what it looked like in 1978. The last pic is fromt he 5150 tour in 1986, Ed was slaving but to H&H power amps.
With the big amount of people who have seen its guts. it's incredible that very few pictures of his amp have leaked i would be curious to see the entire board state. Notably the power section of the amp to see if rudy did lie or not.
However these pictures prove 2 things that the stock marshal mustard caps were removed at some point. And that at some point someone put back the amp back to stock and used cherry drops and wima caps instead of real mustards. There is a guy who used a lot of cherry drops for his mods and his name is josé arredondo. Why did he removed the mustards ? NO idea.
Look josé and the cherry drops are everywhere in the extra gain stages he then transitionned into orange drops. He also used a lot of plessey caps :
however it's true that you can achieve good brown sounds with a stock 68 or a mod 5 and even a josé. The remaining question is was there any mod that was removed after vh2.
the extra tube slot has a lot of wear this means it was screwed and unscewed a lot. This means there was a lot of repairs or experimentation in this area. Perhaps to add a terminal strip. Then the non stock components are stock values but it proves that at some point the stock components were removed and it was put back to stock without stock components.
what's interesting it's that around 1979 after VH2 josé was diagnosed with cancer. Perhaps that's what made things change ? Who knows...
Eddie's board seems to contradict the fact that every tech say it was stock, i mean it was proibably stock when they saw it but they failed to mention values are stock but not the components and that's not the same thing. but none of those techs saw it around 78 and 79.
but for me what makes it more suspicious that the amp was perhaps really modded it's this testimony of josé arredondo when he was in his last days (he had no reason to lie) :
this is taken from the book eddie van halen from musician journalist Neil Zlozlower who interviewed josé.
I believe there is a reason Dave Friedman is going threw a lot of those vintage josé amps. He perhaps wants to find clues of what could have perhaps be done to ed's amp. The josé DLR Vai amp specially has a very brown sound tonality i would like to hear it under variac at 70v with a power amp.
Mark Cameron probably had almost a hearth attack when he learnt his boss was putting back to stock all those josé amps from the arcco shop... it's unfortunate that no one probably worked with josé during his early years of modding to give us some hints and testimonies about his work.
I know josé introduced slaving amps and load resistors to eddie (he did load boxes and power amps). but according to his testimony he seems to have done more than that.
