# For all the Van Halen fan who ever seaked his brown sound..:)



## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

Well....Ed finaly comes clean after all this time.. 

Eddie Van Halen Reveals He Straight Up Lied About His Early Amps |*Guitar Squid


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

I read that a few days ago but I knew he was a liar anyway...I mean, I didn't know right away but by about 1987 I knew he was a liar. 

Anybody who experimented instead of waiting for that quick and easy 'use what he had' could get pretty close anyway. I always found that a medium output to medium slightly overwound humbucker and a cranked Marshall did it quite well. 

Strange thing is that he had that great tone to start with for 4 records and then moved away from it - not that his sound was terrible but it wasn't the same yet everyone was still trying to get close to his early sound while he moved away from it.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I was pretty amused by that, actually. Some people are going ape-shit, but I think it's just funny.

What's gonna happen to all those EVH-in-a-box pedal builders???


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## al3d (Oct 3, 2007)

Smorgdonkey..Ed's ALWAYS BEEN in it for the money..when peavey approached him with a big Check...he basically said fuck it....


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

I'm not technical...does this variac do the same things as pulling a couple tubes/using an attenuator? Or is it the opposite?
when he says his amp was stock, what amp, jcm800?


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

*I found this...it might help to clarify the concept of using a Variac

Amplifiers*
There are many misconceptions about Edward Van Halen’s primary amplifier used for recording. Rumors have abounded about the amplifier being heavily modified and some of these rumors were in fact generated by Mr. Van Halen himself (he admitted telling these stories to help generate business for tech friend Jose Arrendo’s shop). However, in truth according to our best knowledge, his amplifier of choice for recording, a mid-60’s 100 watt Marshall Super Lead, was primarily stock (Note: see studio diagram description for more info on this). Edward was adamant about getting his tone through the power tubes and consequently set all volume and tone controls on the Marshall to 10. He controlled the overall volume output in two ways.
_*First, he used an Ohmite Variac, a variable transformer that could lower or raise the voltage going into the amplifier (see photo for what a typical Variac looks like). Edward set the variac to approximately 90 volts, thereby reducing the amount of input voltage going to the amplifier (see the Marshall Super Lead article for more information about variacs and attenuators) and allowing the amp to run more reliably.*_ _*A key element often not considered today when running vintage Marshall amplifiers is that many that were made for export to the U.S. were designed to run at 110 volts and current U.S. outlets run at 120 volts. As a result, while there has been much talk about the dangers of using a variac, in many applications, it obviously serves a benefit.*_
_*According to Gerald Weber of Kendrick Amplifiers, Inc., in the October 2000 issue of Vintage Guitar, he states, "You cannot harm your Marshall (or any other amp) by running it at lower-than-normal voltage. The opinions you've heard concern running the *__*variac at higher than normal levels."*__*







*_
The second way Edward controlled his overall output volume was that he would use a dummy load box after the Marshall head, in effect making the Marshall a preamp for the entire system. The output of the load box would then run through his effects which would then be sent to the input stage of a power amplifier (most often an H & H V800 MOS-FET model according to the September 1986 issue of Guitar World). The speaker output of his Marshall was set at 8 ohms and the dummy load box resistance was set to 20 ohms to help ease the strain of the amplifier being run at full volume.
The benefit of the dummy load configuration was not simply to control the volume levels (Edward liked things loud!), but also to enable his time-based effects to work and sound well within the signal chain. Anyone who has tried to run a flanger or a delay in front of a fully cranked Marshall will realize that the effects just don’t work well. In the case of the flanger, this is because the power tube distortion will compress and distort the flanger’s sweep and dynamics will be eliminated. For a delay run in this fashion, the repeats of a delay will be amplified and compressed also and not sound like a true echo. When Edward ran the Echoplex in between the Marshall and the H & H power amp, it also made the Echoplex much less noisy in addition to simply producing a better tone.
Various cabinet configurations were used (all Marshall however), but Edward was cited to either using cabinets loaded with Celestion vintage 30’s as well as 75’s for stage work. For studio recording, Edward typically used a sixties-era basket-weave bottom cabinet with his main Marshall plexi Super Lead (see photo). The year of his SuperLead model is speculated to be either a 1966 or 1967 model, according to one of Edward’s former guitar techs, Matt Bruck, in a 1991 Guitar World Axology report. In a 1985 interview with another former tech, Robin Leiren, he stated that the Marshall runs on Sylvania 6CA7 (a slightly heavier-duty version of an EL34 and long out of production) tubes.
In the studio for the debut Van Halen album, Edward ran the Marshall Super Lead through the dummy load setup into two older basket-weave Marshall bottom cabinets. One cabinet was loaded with 25 watt Greenback Celestion speakers, the other with JBLs. For Van Halen II, a standard configuration was used with just the Marshall Super Lead and a single cabinet played loud without the dummy load, but still employing a variac. Later recordings reverted back to the dummy load configuration.
In the studio, he would often record the amplifier using one or two Shure SM-57 microphones. In the two-microphone setup, one microphone would be aligned straight in the front and center of a speaker, the other would be setup at an angle parallel with the cone itself (from the March 1995 issue of Guitar. Note: though this technique was used for later recordings, it is mentioned here because the technique is certainly helpful for recording guitarists). In this way, he could adjust his recorded tone because of the different phase sounds created from the angles of the two microphones. The basic idea of the angled microphone was to provide more bass.

Cheers

Dave


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