Van halen 1 choke wasn't a c1999 choke

DanTravis62 said:
You're right, your fizzy cascaded gain stage one sounds so much better omg
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My recordings don’t sound better but surel closer than yours compared to the original in terms of tonality. Sry but there is no cascade. It’s just a sl68 with a Jose mod and master volume + the cerrem mod. Many already told me that I got pretty close. But I believe to cascade the stages would provide way better. Now that I know that it was perhaps a 5h choke. I will try it.
 
jasonP said:
What is the cerrem mod?
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The cerrem mod was a mod leaked by engeneer Chris Merren which was one of the very few to have seen inside eddies amp during its glory days. It’s a big resistor put between primaries of your OT transformer on pin 3 of both power tubes. It adds lot of distortion and some feedback while adding a bassy stereo like layer over the tone.

The issue when you use this mod is that your tubes will glow hotter they will eventually die pretty quickly and will take your OT transformer with it. To make the tubes last longer Eddie used the Variac to reduce b+ voltages and used 6ca7 because they were more heat resistant and stress resistant.
 
I’m a big fan of his early tone. I’ve tried a number of things to get there but nothing really did. Turns out, my ‘69 ‘Ed Spec’ Superlead has gotten me as close as my hands will get me. Not just sound but feel too. And the tone is there just plugging straight in. Variac’d down yes but no boost or EQ needed but sure you can massage it if you want.

I used to think it had to have something more, a mod or a boost, but after building that amp it changed my mind. I’ve built other Marshall clones and owned a few real Marshalls and they never got ‘there’. This one is somehow different.

So I think yeah, a magic Marshall Super Lead can get close even with me playing it. And any decent Marshall could get ‘close enough’ if Ed was playing it.

FWIW, it has the fat OT. You can’t even mount it like it’s ‘supposed’ to be mounted because the end bell would be super close to the power tubes. It has to be like the ‘68 plexi with laydown PT.
 
SpiderWars said:
I’m a big fan of his early tone. I’ve tried a number of things to get there but nothing really did. Turns out, my ‘69 ‘Ed Spec’ Superlead has gotten me as close as my hands will get me. Not just sound but feel too. And the tone is there just plugging straight in. Variac’d down yes but no boost or EQ needed but sure you can massage it if you want.

I used to think it had to have something more, a mod or a boost, but after building that amp it changed my mind. I’ve built other Marshall clones and owned a few real Marshalls and they never got ‘there’. This one is somehow different.

So I think yeah, a magic Marshall Super Lead can get close even with me playing it. And any decent Marshall could get ‘close enough’ if Ed was playing it.

FWIW, it has the fat OT. You can’t even mount it like it’s ‘supposed’ to be mounted because the end bell would be super close to the power tubes. It has to be like the ‘68 plexi with laydown PT.
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Nice! I also have a ‘69 Plexi and agree 💯
 
SpiderWars said:
I’m a big fan of his early tone. I’ve tried a number of things to get there but nothing really did. Turns out, my ‘69 ‘Ed Spec’ Superlead has gotten me as close as my hands will get me. Not just sound but feel too. And the tone is there just plugging straight in. Variac’d down yes but no boost or EQ needed but sure you can massage it if you want.

I used to think it had to have something more, a mod or a boost, but after building that amp it changed my mind. I’ve built other Marshall clones and owned a few real Marshalls and they never got ‘there’. This one is somehow different.

So I think yeah, a magic Marshall Super Lead can get close even with me playing it. And any decent Marshall could get ‘close enough’ if Ed was playing it.

FWIW, it has the fat OT. You can’t even mount it like it’s ‘supposed’ to be mounted because the end bell would be super close to the power tubes. It has to be like the ‘68 plexi with laydown PT.
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With the 6 band eq in front of a plexi you get pretty close. I think you can get easy Van Halen tones with a stock plexi but for Van Halen 1 it’s much more difficult.
 
Amp_chaser said:
With the 6 band eq in front of a plexi you get pretty close. I think you can get easy Van Halen tones with a stock plexi but for Van Halen 1 it’s much more difficult.
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Mr. Amp chaser......While some of us admire your tenacity about the minutia of Ed tones everything you present has already been discussed, researched and trialed over at the Metro EVH forum from 2005-2012 and what a fun time was had by all, I'm sorry you missed that time but you are not posting new revelations. Maybe you are over at Metro scouring through the EVH posts learning and doing the work which is commendable, but most here on RT do not want to get into the minutia and I fully understand that, as it's been a settled science for quite some time for many. There are a few members here that were on Metro during that time Mentoneman, SpiderWars and others.

So you are either from Switzerland or you are an old member of Metro posting old information as new here which appear new because alot of people on here didn't post there or were too young to post on the Metro EVH forum or they are not interested in the subject.

Maybe you should join what's left of the Metro forum and maybe you can revive that site but most people have moved on, the mystique has waned.

Your last thread post your proclaimed the amp was a Jose cascaded amp and that was it.....and shouted down any contrarian thoughts. Now you are apparently using a stock 50 watt 68 spec amp with the Cerrem mod so you are progressing through your experimental phase, have some fun with it. But insisting your tones is the tone won't get you far here with other accomplished players.

If want to risk the life of your output transformer because you feel the Cerrem mod works great so be it have fun, and share but none of your revelations are new. Yes... we all know about the purported thing hanging from the back of Ed's amp that looked like a stick of dynamite........yet there are no pictures from the 78 tour showing that, not one.

The Cerrem mod is nothing new, the Jose mods are nothing new, the Bandmaster is nothing new, larger 2" lamination stack output transformer investigated by Ralle( From Sweden) is nothing new.... you get my point. Mr. Twistyneck implemented the Cerrem mod well over 16 years ago(2008) and there is no record of Chris Merren only revealing this secret information only to Mark Abrahamian(Rockstah) unless some how you knew Mark from over there in Switzerland and were privy to Marks private conversation with Chris. Some of us were there posting along with Mark and know what was said. As Mark wouldn't tell anyone anything after he came up with the Mod 5 he deleted all his posts because he thought he was going to make millions of dollars selling his mod and quit sharing his research, which by that time didn't matter. All the Merren stuff is out there on the archives of Metro already.
Mr. Twistyneck 2008

Superlead variaced to 60 Volts 9 years ago


Chris Merren shared a few things on Metro and some of his ideas were indeed interesting and worth checking out if you want to try them, have fun, some of us tried them all. Maybe next you will find out about what the two variacs were used for according to Chris Merren. I still recommend the OX box for your desire for album tones if the live tones don't interest you.
 
Last edited:
harddriver said:
Mr. Amp chaser......While some of us admire your tenacity about the minutia of Ed tones everything you present has already been discussed, researched and trialed over at the Metro EVH forum from 2005-2012 and what a fun time was had by all, I'm sorry you missed that time but you are not posting new revelations. Maybe you are over at Metro scouring through the EVH posts learning and doing the work which is commendable, but most here on RT do not want to get into the minutia and I fully understand that, as it's been a settled science for quite some time for many. There are a few members here that were on Metro during that time Mentoneman, SpiderWars and others.

So you are either from Switzerland or you are an old member of Metro posting old information as new here which appear new because alot of people on here didn't post there or were too young to post on the Metro EVH forum or they are not interested in the subject.

Maybe you should join what's left of the Metro forum and maybe you can revive that site but most people have moved on, the mystique has waned.

Your last thread post your proclaimed the amp was a Jose cascaded amp and the was it.....and shouted down any contrarian thoughts. Now you are apparently using a strock 50 watt 68 spec amp with the Cerrem mod so you are progressing through your experimental phase, have some fun with it. But insisting your tones is the tone won't get you far here with other accomplished players.

If want to risk the life of your output transformer because you feel the Cerrem mod works great so be it have fun, and share but none of your revelations are new. Yes... we all know about the purported thing hanging from the back of Ed's amp that looked like a stick of dynamite........yet there are no pictures from the 78 tour showing that, not one.

The Cerrem mod is nothing new, the Jose mods are nothing new, the Bandmaster is nothing new, larger 2" lamination stack output transformer investigated by Ralle( From Sweden) is nothing new.... you get my point. Mr. Twistyneck implemented the Cerrem mod well over 16 years ago(2008) and there is no record of Chris Merren only revealing this secret information only to Mark Abrahamian(Rockstah) unless some how you knew Mark from over there in Switzerland and were privy to Marks private conversation with Chris. Some of us were there posting along with Mark and know what was said. As Mark wouldn't tell anyone anything after he came up with the Mod 5 he deleted all his posts because he thought he was going to make millions of dollars selling his mod and quit sharing his research, which by that time didn't matter. All the Merren stuff is out there on the archives of Metro already.
Mr. Twistyneck 2008


Chris Merren shared a few things on Metro and some of his ideas were indeed interesting and worth checking out if you want to try them, have fun, some of us tried them all. Maybe next you will find out about what the two variacs were used for according to Chris Merren. I still recommend the OX box for your desire for album tones if the live tones don't interest you.
Click to expand...

I wish I could write that well, extremely well written, very polite.

Very valuable information, props Hardriver
 
harddriver said:
Mr. Amp chaser......While some of us admire your tenacity about the minutia of Ed tones everything you present has already been discussed, researched and trialed over at the Metro EVH forum from 2005-2012 and what a fun time was had by all, I'm sorry you missed that time but you are not posting new revelations. Maybe you are over at Metro scouring through the EVH posts learning and doing the work which is commendable, but most here on RT do not want to get into the minutia and I fully understand that, as it's been a settled science for quite some time for many. There are a few members here that were on Metro during that time Mentoneman, SpiderWars and others.

So you are either from Switzerland or you are an old member of Metro posting old information as new here which appear new because alot of people on here didn't post there or were too young to post on the Metro EVH forum or they are not interested in the subject.

Maybe you should join what's left of the Metro forum and maybe you can revive that site but most people have moved on, the mystique has waned.

Your last thread post your proclaimed the amp was a Jose cascaded amp and that was it.....and shouted down any contrarian thoughts. Now you are apparently using a stock 50 watt 68 spec amp with the Cerrem mod so you are progressing through your experimental phase, have some fun with it. But insisting your tones is the tone won't get you far here with other accomplished players.

If want to risk the life of your output transformer because you feel the Cerrem mod works great so be it have fun, and share but none of your revelations are new. Yes... we all know about the purported thing hanging from the back of Ed's amp that looked like a stick of dynamite........yet there are no pictures from the 78 tour showing that, not one.

The Cerrem mod is nothing new, the Jose mods are nothing new, the Bandmaster is nothing new, larger 2" lamination stack output transformer investigated by Ralle( From Sweden) is nothing new.... you get my point. Mr. Twistyneck implemented the Cerrem mod well over 16 years ago(2008) and there is no record of Chris Merren only revealing this secret information only to Mark Abrahamian(Rockstah) unless some how you knew Mark from over there in Switzerland and were privy to Marks private conversation with Chris. Some of us were there posting along with Mark and know what was said. As Mark wouldn't tell anyone anything after he came up with the Mod 5 he deleted all his posts because he thought he was going to make millions of dollars selling his mod and quit sharing his research, which by that time didn't matter. All the Merren stuff is out there on the archives of Metro already.
Mr. Twistyneck 2008

Superlead variaced to 60 Volts 9 years ago


Chris Merren shared a few things on Metro and some of his ideas were indeed interesting and worth checking out if you want to try them, have fun, some of us tried them all. Maybe next you will find out about what the two variacs were used for according to Chris Merren. I still recommend the OX box for your desire for album tones if the live tones don't interest you.
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Yes I totally agree but I saw that in the metro forums you had access to poor quality of those pictures that’s why I scanned them for the Japanese reprint that was made some years ago. If I remember correctly and I went threw many topics they did indeed discover that the choke in vh2 was a c1999 and talked about the OT transformer but no one mentioned that the choke before the c1999 or that in Japan it was a completely different choke looking like a 5h Marshall choke. It’s thank to the high quality of the pictures that you can see it. The Japanese reprint is really worth it for small details.

For Van Halen I believed at the beginning that it was Jose mod and a few tricks. Now after testing almost every pedal I’m more into a stock plexi but perhaps with cascaded gain stages. I didn’t try it. And I never saw anyone combining the cerem the cascaded gain stages and the Jose master volume together. By the way the Jose master volume works pretty well with the cerrem mod. There is an interaction were you can adjust the drive with the volume level.
 
harddriver said:
Mr. Amp chaser......While some of us admire your tenacity about the minutia of Ed tones everything you present has already been discussed, researched and trialed over at the Metro EVH forum from 2005-2012 and what a fun time was had by all, I'm sorry you missed that time but you are not posting new revelations. Maybe you are over at Metro scouring through the EVH posts learning and doing the work which is commendable, but most here on RT do not want to get into the minutia and I fully understand that, as it's been a settled science for quite some time for many. There are a few members here that were on Metro during that time Mentoneman, SpiderWars and others.

So you are either from Switzerland or you are an old member of Metro posting old information as new here which appear new because alot of people on here didn't post there or were too young to post on the Metro EVH forum or they are not interested in the subject.

Maybe you should join what's left of the Metro forum and maybe you can revive that site but most people have moved on, the mystique has waned.

Your last thread post your proclaimed the amp was a Jose cascaded amp and that was it.....and shouted down any contrarian thoughts. Now you are apparently using a stock 50 watt 68 spec amp with the Cerrem mod so you are progressing through your experimental phase, have some fun with it. But insisting your tones is the tone won't get you far here with other accomplished players.

If want to risk the life of your output transformer because you feel the Cerrem mod works great so be it have fun, and share but none of your revelations are new. Yes... we all know about the purported thing hanging from the back of Ed's amp that looked like a stick of dynamite........yet there are no pictures from the 78 tour showing that, not one.

The Cerrem mod is nothing new, the Jose mods are nothing new, the Bandmaster is nothing new, larger 2" lamination stack output transformer investigated by Ralle( From Sweden) is nothing new.... you get my point. Mr. Twistyneck implemented the Cerrem mod well over 16 years ago(2008) and there is no record of Chris Merren only revealing this secret information only to Mark Abrahamian(Rockstah) unless some how you knew Mark from over there in Switzerland and were privy to Marks private conversation with Chris. Some of us were there posting along with Mark and know what was said. As Mark wouldn't tell anyone anything after he came up with the Mod 5 he deleted all his posts because he thought he was going to make millions of dollars selling his mod and quit sharing his research, which by that time didn't matter. All the Merren stuff is out there on the archives of Metro already.
Mr. Twistyneck 2008

Superlead variaced to 60 Volts 9 years ago


Chris Merren shared a few things on Metro and some of his ideas were indeed interesting and worth checking out if you want to try them, have fun, some of us tried them all. Maybe next you will find out about what the two variacs were used for according to Chris Merren. I still recommend the OX box for your desire for album tones if the live tones don't interest you.
Click to expand...


Very well spoken, H-D 👍🙏
 
harddriver said:
Mr. Amp chaser......While some of us admire your tenacity about the minutia of Ed tones everything you present has already been discussed, researched and trialed over at the Metro EVH forum from 2005-2012 and what a fun time was had by all, I'm sorry you missed that time but you are not posting new revelations. Maybe you are over at Metro scouring through the EVH posts learning and doing the work which is commendable, but most here on RT do not want to get into the minutia and I fully understand that, as it's been a settled science for quite some time for many. There are a few members here that were on Metro during that time Mentoneman, SpiderWars and others.

So you are either from Switzerland or you are an old member of Metro posting old information as new here which appear new because alot of people on here didn't post there or were too young to post on the Metro EVH forum or they are not interested in the subject.

Maybe you should join what's left of the Metro forum and maybe you can revive that site but most people have moved on, the mystique has waned.

Your last thread post your proclaimed the amp was a Jose cascaded amp and that was it.....and shouted down any contrarian thoughts. Now you are apparently using a stock 50 watt 68 spec amp with the Cerrem mod so you are progressing through your experimental phase, have some fun with it. But insisting your tones is the tone won't get you far here with other accomplished players.

If want to risk the life of your output transformer because you feel the Cerrem mod works great so be it have fun, and share but none of your revelations are new. Yes... we all know about the purported thing hanging from the back of Ed's amp that looked like a stick of dynamite........yet there are no pictures from the 78 tour showing that, not one.

The Cerrem mod is nothing new, the Jose mods are nothing new, the Bandmaster is nothing new, larger 2" lamination stack output transformer investigated by Ralle( From Sweden) is nothing new.... you get my point. Mr. Twistyneck implemented the Cerrem mod well over 16 years ago(2008) and there is no record of Chris Merren only revealing this secret information only to Mark Abrahamian(Rockstah) unless some how you knew Mark from over there in Switzerland and were privy to Marks private conversation with Chris. Some of us were there posting along with Mark and know what was said. As Mark wouldn't tell anyone anything after he came up with the Mod 5 he deleted all his posts because he thought he was going to make millions of dollars selling his mod and quit sharing his research, which by that time didn't matter. All the Merren stuff is out there on the archives of Metro already.
Mr. Twistyneck 2008

Superlead variaced to 60 Volts 9 years ago


Chris Merren shared a few things on Metro and some of his ideas were indeed interesting and worth checking out if you want to try them, have fun, some of us tried them all. Maybe next you will find out about what the two variacs were used for according to Chris Merren. I still recommend the OX box for your desire for album tones if the live tones don't interest you.
Click to expand...


Well said.

Just about everyone has gone down this rabbit hole at some point, and I totally understand obsessing over a tone, just like all of us here.

but

so many of these issues about EVH's early rig have been debated, labored over, and cross-examined to death

To the point that a bunch of "us" ( gear forum veterans?) are just completely sick of talking about it, except as far as "put up or shut up" clips (which are always welcome, because cool tones)

because literally EVERYTHING else.... as in: pictures, detective work, magazine articles and interviews, etc, anything that can be defined as "information" or "Evidence" - has been not only unearthed and posted, but gone through with a fine tooth comb multiple times on multiple forums by hundreds of people.

This is one of the reasons why some of us have asked for an EVH specific subforum - because it's like watching the same TV infomercial for EVH Bingo over and over again late at night. "Aftermarket choke" "Symmetrical scale" "swing" "variac" "6CA7" "Jose mod/no jose"
 
DanTravis62 said:
Just about everyone has gone down this rabbit hole at some point, and I totally understand obsessing over a tone, just like all of us here.

but

so many of these issues about EVH's early rig have been debated, labored over, and cross-examined to death

To the point that a bunch of "us" ( gear forum veterans?) are just completely sick of talking about it, except as far as "put up or shut up" clips (which are always welcome, because cool tones)

because literally EVERYTHING else.... as in: pictures, detective work, magazine articles and interviews, etc, anything that can be defined as "information" or "Evidence" - has been not only unearthed and posted, but gone through with a fine tooth comb multiple times on multiple forums by hundreds of people.

This is one of the reasons why some of us have asked for an EVH specific subforum - because it's like watching the same TV infomercial for EVH Bingo over and over again late at night. "Aftermarket choke" "Symmetrical scale" "swing" "variac" "6CA7" "Jose mod/no jose"
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I'm totally in favor of an EVH forum section if people do wish to post more in depth without cluttering the main forum.:2thumbsup:
 
harddriver said:
And with that clip, it appears as if you have fully made your point....well done sir.................(y)
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I'm not even a VH guy, and that isn't some specific VH tone either

It's literally a profile of my buddys (admittedly very clean and very good sounding) vintage plexi, everything on 10, and a 25w greenback cabinet, miced with a 57

nothing special

Just some judicious slapback and verb and a cranked plexi, and youre like 80% there
 
harddriver said:
Mr. Amp chaser......While some of us admire your tenacity about the minutia of Ed tones everything you present has already been discussed, researched and trialed over at the Metro EVH forum from 2005-2012 and what a fun time was had by all, I'm sorry you missed that time but you are not posting new revelations. Maybe you are over at Metro scouring through the EVH posts learning and doing the work which is commendable, but most here on RT do not want to get into the minutia and I fully understand that, as it's been a settled science for quite some time for many. There are a few members here that were on Metro during that time Mentoneman, SpiderWars and others.

So you are either from Switzerland or you are an old member of Metro posting old information as new here which appear new because alot of people on here didn't post there or were too young to post on the Metro EVH forum or they are not interested in the subject.

Maybe you should join what's left of the Metro forum and maybe you can revive that site but most people have moved on, the mystique has waned.

Your last thread post your proclaimed the amp was a Jose cascaded amp and that was it.....and shouted down any contrarian thoughts. Now you are apparently using a stock 50 watt 68 spec amp with the Cerrem mod so you are progressing through your experimental phase, have some fun with it. But insisting your tones is the tone won't get you far here with other accomplished players.

If want to risk the life of your output transformer because you feel the Cerrem mod works great so be it have fun, and share but none of your revelations are new. Yes... we all know about the purported thing hanging from the back of Ed's amp that looked like a stick of dynamite........yet there are no pictures from the 78 tour showing that, not one.

The Cerrem mod is nothing new, the Jose mods are nothing new, the Bandmaster is nothing new, larger 2" lamination stack output transformer investigated by Ralle( From Sweden) is nothing new.... you get my point. Mr. Twistyneck implemented the Cerrem mod well over 16 years ago(2008) and there is no record of Chris Merren only revealing this secret information only to Mark Abrahamian(Rockstah) unless some how you knew Mark from over there in Switzerland and were privy to Marks private conversation with Chris. Some of us were there posting along with Mark and know what was said. As Mark wouldn't tell anyone anything after he came up with the Mod 5 he deleted all his posts because he thought he was going to make millions of dollars selling his mod and quit sharing his research, which by that time didn't matter. All the Merren stuff is out there on the archives of Metro already.
Mr. Twistyneck 2008

Superlead variaced to 60 Volts 9 years ago


Chris Merren shared a few things on Metro and some of his ideas were indeed interesting and worth checking out if you want to try them, have fun, some of us tried them all. Maybe next you will find out about what the two variacs were used for according to Chris Merren. I still recommend the OX box for your desire for album tones if the live tones don't interest you.
Click to expand...


there is this info which released in 2021 and that no on cared about and i think it's huge :
IMG_6942.jpg


this proves that for vh1 josé was involved. Moreover it coroborates with the interview of josé by Neil Zlowzlower for his book about eddie. Neil was the main photograph for the band van halen :

neil.jpg


The amp was modded and was brought back to stock probably by josé around 1979 when he was diagnosed with cancer or when eddie decided to change his tone.
 
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