Ed comment re: fusing front PUP

[EJSLPlexi]

I love the VH2 tone. Sounds more "organic" or "woody" to me. I can't pick one or the other though...but I can pick the FW tone!

I like all of his tones, some more than others obviously,
Like VH I is the meanest, most aggressive sounding and VH II is the warmest and i guess you could say FW is the "brownest" ?
WACF is hard to rate because he used a borrowed guitar for a lot of it,but it seems the tracks where he used the strat and his main marshall were very different sounding from both VH I and VH II?
did it have a floyd on it by this time?

[EJSLPlexi]

This is just my humble experience on that, but I believe I can answer that one.

An asymmetric wind humbucker, high 8K to low 9K, A2 magnet. (Your mileage may vary)

Make sure the coil closest to the bridge is the hotter coil. Why? the string energy is less closest to the bridge (and nut).

You balance that out somewhat by doing this.

Check with Jeff at HighOrder. He's got this pup nailed.

I would like to try that pickup. not to copy eddies tone but i could really get into a pu that has both strat and full humbucker qualities to it. the closest i found so far is the dimarzio FRED.

[garbeaj]

I love the VH2 tone. Sounds more "organic" or "woody" to me. I can't pick one or the other though...but I can pick the FW tone!

I like all of his tones, some more than others obviously,
Like VH I is the meanest, most aggressive sounding and VH II is the warmest and i guess you could say FW is the "brownest" ?
WACF is hard to rate because he used a borrowed guitar for a lot of it,but it seems the tracks where he used the strat and his main marshall were very different sounding from both VH I and VH II?
did it have a floyd on it by this time?

The Frankenstein did not have the Floyd Rose installed yet during the recording of Women and Children First, but that album does feature the first use of the Floyd Rose on a Van Halen record. The unfinished Boogie Bodies guitar and the yellow and black Charvel both had a prototype, non-fine tuner Floyd Rose tremolo system installed and were both present for the recording sessions. Any tremolo work that you hear on WACF is likely one or both of those guitars.

The majority of the record was probably the Chris Holmes Destroyer, but the sunburst Les Paul may have been available at the time of the sessions (at least it was in the Zlozower studio pictures). The "And The Cradle Will Rock" solo was the Gibson "335" (although it could have been a different hollow bodied Gibson guitar) and the Rickenbacker electric 12 string from Studio Instrument Rental was used for the overdubs on "In A Simple Rhyme". And of course there was the mystery acoustic that Ed used on the slide parts of "Could This Be Magic?"...God knows what acoustic Dave was playing?!

Interestingly, Women And Children First might have been the only Roth era Van Halen album that did NOT feature the Frankenstein guitar at all! Who knows...

[Megaro]

You have all probably seen this photo, but it shows the guitars that garbeaj describes:

[rgorke]

From the Steven Rosen interview of 12-78:
Around 11:30 into the interview Ed sounds like he is executing some simple hammer-ons up the fretboard. He says if you fuse the front PUP, you get a lot of space to fool around with. What is he talking about ? Is it a tonal thing, or more space for him to negotiate the pick ? He also gets some pretty righteous blues-inspired licks right after that. Sounds a bit like that cool phrase from Eruption / Somebody Get Me a Doctor / 5150, but it could be just some simple hammer-ons with a glissando up to the 10th fret ? Thoughts

In my humble opinion he says, "If you lose the front pickup, you've got all this space to play around with."

Then he demonstrates the licks where it sounds like he executing a trill while mashing down on the string, perhaps in the "space to play around with" he's talking about here.

Early days when he ran his main guitar with only the bridge pup.

He says, " If you USE the front pickup....then if you USE the middle pickup." He is referring to the space between the active (selected) pickup and the bridge.