"I use a combo of two diff amps"

[Tone Slinger]

1 type is 'core' tone, the other is for volume, not tone. Thats what I'm thinking.

[MrBeasty]

When was this interview (can't remember)?

I always thought he was describing his slaving set-up, which came about (I think) midway into the VH1 tour, after the BlackSabbath dates. Ed's six Marshall set-up was inspired by Iommi's set-up, which the band complained about as being too loud.
Ed reported his guitar not going through the PA during that time (for being loud enough) and for his sound to be inconsistent across the stage; six amps = six different guitar sounds across the stage.

[MrBeasty]

I believe the H|H came around the time of Diver Down, before that it was Marshall slaved into other Marshalls.

[MrBeasty]

This might be Fair Warning or earlier.

[mr.twistyneck]

i used to run a mesa studio preamp into the power amp input of dual Ampeg V4's (retubed to EL34 due to scarcity of 7027s). each head powered a 4x12 with EV's - one had EVLs (M's?) and the other had EV SRO's(?).

so, and take this with an extremely large grain of salt, and this is all conjecture (and i'm probably repeating what somebody else has already said, but am too lazy to search) but what if:

1. he takes his head, applies sauce (variac, "mods of dubious nature", pedals, etc), gets tone, then takes line out of primary head and runs it into front of 2nd Marshall head. daisy chain to other marshall inputs. works - but hard to manage tone due to redundant preamp sections. or,
2. he has a power amp input installed in secondary heads, and runs line out of first head to the power amp inputs of 2nd head - and daisy chains the power amp inputs. wall of marshalls - one gets the tone, the others are good lookin' slaves with preamps that sit unused.

?

[MrBeasty]

He slaved into three heads during the late '78 tour, each feeding a single 4x12 1960B cab.
The load-box Jose Arredondo built him had three line-outs for that purpose.

GFTPM in November of 1988. The interviewer was John Stix.

JS: What is your amp setup?

EVH: Believe it or not, now I only use one amp. I'm back to doing what I used to do in the clubs. I use one Marshall head into these H&H power amps. I use five cabinets behind me, but they all sound identical. I take the speaker output and the whole amp out to power amps. But I still only use one amp that I like the sound of. It's kind of interesting that it's back to the way it used to be. I remember opening for Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi, who is a great guy, great player, would have eight Laney amp heads through one cabinet each. It was so overwhelmingly loud. It was great. I thought that's the way you're supposed to do it. So I did the same thing. I had six Marshall heads and packed them all in together and put each head into a separate cabinet. It was so loud I'd be totally numb by the end of the show, which back then was 40 minutes. I never understood how they did it. No wonder Ozzy never went in front of him. No wonder Dave stayed away from me, too, when I was playing that loud. It was pretty silly. We used to play so loud we would actually be louder than the PA. My guitar would barely ever come through the PA, because I would be so loud off the stage. The sound guys would be uptight saying, 'Nobody does this?' Bull. Everybody does it, or so I thought. The sound guy had no control whatsoever. I'm now in the process of building an amp with Jose Arredondo.

[Tone Slinger]

Yeah, he (Ed) basically said he used one head back in the club days. Makes sense, because he was basically dimed through a cuple of cabs (along with the variac).

Live in '78 he had 3 sets of 2 (or was it 3 ?) tops and two cabs (2 stacks). One main, one after 'Eruption' and a third for back-up, I believe. There was no reamping until possibly WACF I believe ?

I thought Ed had the 'boosted' top (I take that as dimed with a variac, and possibly using the 'stick' as a load on one of the speaker outputs, into one cab ?) augmented with a regular loud Marshall mixed for more volume. One top very distorted, but less headroom, the other just a top turned to that same volume (as the first) to blend in more sound and headroom. This could be done in pairs too.

[Good Guest]

[quote="MrBeasty"]He slaved into three heads during the late '78 tour, each feeding a single 4x12 1960B cab.
The load-box Jose Arredondo built him had three line-outs for that purpose.
[quote]

Yeah it sure looks like it in this pic...

Spot the 3 output loadbox.jpg (56.42 KiB) Viewed 1184 times

[MrBeasty]

When was this interview (can't remember)?

I always thought he was describing his slaving set-up, which came about (I think) during the VH1 tour, after the BlackSabbath dates.

12/29/79 (Jas O)

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=37776

OK. That was the interview done just after or during the recording of W&CF. So Ed is talking about his rig as it stood during the VH2 tour area and probably has it worked for the W&CF tour(s). Based on accounts, by the end of the VH2 tour he had up to six Marshall on at once but it would still be the main three slaves with a second Marshall daisy-chained each (1 Master into 3x2). They would set these amps volume as they needed (six amps ) all the sound was coming from the main slaved amp, presumably the "wood" Plexi.