M Soldano on EVH's plexi

[dirtycooter]

Ed stated it saved on his tubes. As in "presented a less strained" condition. That to me would be biasing relatively up high then dropping down to where ever is how I come away with it.
And it makes sense to want this when your dimed out. He did after all and still does have this amp and no reports of it really ever totally goin poof but had just gotten old by the sounds of it. I notice the amp runs cooler doin it this way. Seems you'd be back to heat city biased hot at 90v. As mentioned the volume goes back up. That doesn't save on speakers either
But I suppose its of debate here but that's where I see it working in all regards and aspects to its best benefit. Otherwise there is not much benefit that I can see the other way.

[Tazin]

To me it would make sense to have the bias on the cold side with the amp running at 90Vac this way the amp is less loud, runs cooler, and your able to use just one 4x12 cab with the head. I guess this leads to the question of how cold the bias should be? I think biasing the amp at wall voltage (i.e. 120Vac) and then turning down to 90Vac would leave the bias too cold resulting in a 'not so great' sound. Perhaps biasing the amp at say 110Vac and then turning down to 90Vac would/should sound better.
The other thing that popped into my head was how Ed used variac'd and non-variac'd heads together for the first tour. Lets say Ed's setup used three amps with one being variac'd and the other two running wall voltage; wouldn't you think the variac'd amp would be somewhat drowned out by the other two amps running at wall voltage? Also, how did Ed successfully run the non-variac'd heads night after night into a single 4x12 cab without destroying either the speakers or the amps?

[dirtycooter]

This is simple really-the first amp is the core production of the main tone. The rest are just spreading it around and probably not runnin but only half the volume on the knob if that.
And if he slaved and was reamping?? Still holds true and fits right in like a piece of cake.

[fivecoyote]

There's a huge amount of info and insight in this S98 quote:

90v is really not low enough to get any kind of significant effect if people have been following some of Rgalpins variac clips over the last couple years. Once you get down below 80v things start happening, but in order to get some wind back in the sails at these levels you have to start boosting the front end. This is where the 6-band comes in. Just bias really hot with the plates at or bellow 400v and just drop from there. It's not a pretty tone, but it is still a beautiful thing.

[vh junkie]

Keep thrashing about if you like... but for most of the songs on the first album this is the ticket! I hated the MXR 6 band because of the hiss it added... until I went really low the 6 band did not work... but then it makes all the diff! Be prepared for your preamp tubes to die quickly... but the sound is there! I hate bright caps, so the only diff I made otherwise was to drop the PI input cap below .01uf...

There's a huge amount of info and insight in this S98 quote:

90v is really not low enough to get any kind of significant effect if people have been following some of Rgalpins variac clips over the last couple years. Once you get down below 80v things start happening, but in order to get some wind back in the sails at these levels you have to start boosting the front end. This is where the 6-band comes in. Just bias really hot with the plates at or bellow 400v and just drop from there. It's not a pretty tone, but it is still a beautiful thing.

[dirtycooter]

Have you experienced this premature preamp tube death? Or just bad pre tube or two?
I am not sure since there were tons of pedals and preamps that never ran full correct voltage for tubes and those seemed to last quite some time. ADA MP1 bein the most famous undervoltaged and very popular.
I have discovered it falls apart below 80v tone wise myself for me.
Perhaps this is why VH1 was never revisited by Ed. Too much hiss from the 6 and it was work in the studio to hide it all. Maybe he switched to the quiter boss eq after this?