Metropoulos Forum

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

Here is the youtube linkage for those of you who have not committed this to memory:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cmbA53i3Q[/youtube]

Was an awesome interview , I poped it to the current stuff , but you are on to something , what was he talking about ? I have played for days with a 'hidden' front pickup in my wanna be EVH guitar years ago and I have to say I was loving it and looking around for approval . I got no such love and went back into my hole . I did have some crazy sounds with that concept of the front pickup and believe it or not , I took our the entire cavity under the pick guard and made it like a hollow chamber . Shit you not it slayed and the front pickup was wicked . I was actually scared of the frankenstien thing going on and retreated to a stock set up and just freakin played . For hours at a time with numb legs and stuff . I had known I was on to something but was so young and this stuff was so new thinking about modding this and that I never revisited it. Even being a now master builder of acoustics and heavy hitter with electronics and design . Wow , how we can get so screwed up mentally and easily is sometimes a bit shocking , but this is one . I think Strat 78 did a test a while back and he even was talking about it yielding something too . I remember wanting to dig into the conversation , however , I was struggling with girls at the time . Yeah , fricken girls , they are fun , but they can kill , so back to important stuff , Strat 78 we need your insight here , I think this was a cool time and if we reel in the experiments we have a nice tone from a time that we can drool over . Rock on brothers

Megaro wrote: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

The one main thing that always made me wonder about a " hidden single" is that when eddie turned down the guitars volume knob he always had that "bell like strat single coil" clean tone?
I am not saying He did use a single in the guitar but i do wonder,
HOW DID HE GET IT TO SOUND LIKE A SINGLE COIL WHEN PLAYING CLEAN IF HE USED A FULL HUMBUCKER ONLY?
Even the old orIginal P.A.F's will not clean up as good as a single coil and more important is the tone signature
of a single vs humbucker. The P.A.F will never get that bell like chime a single coil does.
I use what is said to be exactly what he had in that homemade strat(duncan's 78 model) and when i compare it to my original
P.A.F's(a '59 and a '62 the only thing different in the tone is more mids(not as hollow as a real P.A.F,more output,and more sensitive harmonics) but it still does not clean up to get a strat single coil tone even if i split it.
You brought up something that has intrigued me for many years now and NO ONE has proved he did or did not use a single under the PG?
I used to think maybe eddie had the P.A.F wired for coil split but there is no coil split switch
unless he used a push pull volume knob?
Listen to the clean part of LUTS, that sound dead on single coil and it is not over dubbed so he did not just grab a strat for that part?
The beginning intro of Women in love is a strat with singles then he uses the homemade strat for the rest
but it still has a very unusual humbucker tone? It is not like any humbucker i have owned.
Sounds like a hybrid or something? both PAF and single coil strat together.

EJSLPlexi wrote:

Megaro wrote: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

The one main thing that always made me wonder about a " hidden single" is that when eddie turned down the guitars volume knob he always had that "bell like strat single coil" clean tone?
I am not saying He did use a single in the guitar but i do wonder,
HOW DID HE GET IT TO SOUND LIKE A SINGLE COIL WHEN PLAYING CLEAN IF HE USED A FULL HUMBUCKER ONLY?
Even the old orIginal P.A.F's will not clean up as good as a single coil and more important is the tone signature
of a single vs humbucker. The P.A.F will never get that bell like chime a single coil does.
I use what is said to be exactly what he had in that homemade strat(duncan's 78 model) and when i compare it to my original
P.A.F's(a '59 and a '62 the only thing different in the tone is more mids(not as hollow as a real P.A.F,more output,and more sensitive harmonics) but it still does not clean up to get a strat single coil tone even if i split it.
You brought up something that has intrigued me for many years now and NO ONE has proved he did or did not use a single under the PG?
I used to think maybe eddie had the P.A.F wired for coil split but there is no coil split switch
unless he used a push pull volume knob?
Listen to the clean part of LUTS, that sound dead on single coil and it is not over dubbed so he did not just grab a strat for that part?
The beginning intro of Women in love is a strat with singles then he uses the homemade strat for the rest
but it still has a very unusual humbucker tone? It is not like any humbucker i have owned.
Sounds like a hybrid or something? both PAF and single coil strat together.

I used to be convinced that red neck single coil in Franky was hooked up. Especially after seeing the Us Fest. Sure sounds like a single coil when he turns the volume down there. Then you hear the broken pickup story. I own a relic'd Franky pickup. It's not the same but I can hear it's close. Turn down and it gets single coil-ish. Maybe his amps helped too.

Yes. This.

67 Melody Maker wrote:

EJSLPlexi wrote:HOW DID HE GET IT TO SOUND LIKE A SINGLE COIL WHEN PLAYING CLEAN IF HE USED A FULL HUMBUCKER ONLY?

Sounds like a hybrid or something? both PAF and single coil strat together.

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 think your talking about VHII because VHI dose not clean up in the same way. I think Ed's humbucker had a dead bobbin by the second album.

67 Melody Maker wrote:
To my ears, something got worse on II

I always thought that too!

VHII being "worse" implies that VHI was already on a sucky trajectory. So what are we talking about then.

From bad to worse!

Put it this way, he didn't outdo the vh1 tone imo. Vh2 is a good tone, but not killer as vh1. Again, my opinion.

I think the eq pedal was put away for vh2 or what studio trickery was done to make that tone so special. I actually do not like what an eq pedal does to my guitar sound (the way eddie used his, mid boost, in front of amp). But for some reason, if he actually used an eq pedal for vh1 and for early live shows, it worked really really well...

Well , if we just take the concept of first Ed loved an ES-335 and he ripped on it. And yes he gets a good tone on the neck and on the bridge. The hollow body gets a physical feedback being excited with volume and added feedback . So , in my experience think of the Black pickgaurd hiding a single coil tele pickup hidden under the guard. I think he pulled the pickgaurd and exposed an obvious thing hiding underneath. Its like him thinking or getting a reaction of it being so bizzare that it got overlooked. I hooked up the bridge pick up with a coil split tap and put a five position selector in the middle slot and hooked up the tele neck. It was stunning . So I cut out the rest of the wood to hollow out the 'under the pickgaurd' hidden area. It was amazing . I had the slanted hummer and the switch in the middle position and the tele pickup in the neck screwed to the body UNDER the pickgaurd. It was more picking up body resonance and neck nuance tone. I had so much stuff going on with this experiment , even a plixiglass spacer in between the neck and body and stuff. AND it was all tone enhancing stuff. So I just put that guitar down and went back to playing. I had been rocking the P-90 Les Paul Junior at the same tone searching and just decided to play without a bar and worse case scenario situations. Preparing for playing others guitars live or just having no crutches. So it got put on the back burner. But it has merit to follow up with.
Sometimes I thought it was such a piece of junk I was kind of embaressed just thinking of what it actually was , but sounded so good. If that makes sense. Too much to get into what was going on in this situation that I thought Strat78 was hitting on it at the time. But , he doesn't pick in the neck area , so its not a 'get it out of the way ' thing.
I just think it was yet another out in the open thing with the pickgaurd off and he just said that it was to fill a hole with a rats nest. Too coincidental that it actually had mad tone.

Eddie is definitely a shoot from the hip kinda guy. Definitely no guitar/amp technician by any stretch.

I always thought the outro solo on ice cream man sounded a lot like the VH2 tone. That solo didn't sound like the rest of the record...

echoplexi1974 wrote:Eddie is definitely a shoot from the hip kinda guy. Definitely no guitar/amp technician by any stretch.

I always thought the outro solo on ice cream man sounded a lot like the VH2 tone. That solo didn't sound like the rest of the record...

Yeah, agreed, if you're talking about the punched in solo fills over the last chorus. Thinner, more upfront with harder edge at the front of the note, not squishy like the rest of the record. Reminds me of "Bottums Up!" tone.

Some theorize that the Harmonizer was first used on the ending overdubbed solos of "Ice Cream Man". The "Bottoms Up" final solo definitely had Harmonizer going...maybe that could account for the similarity you are hearing?

garbeaj wrote:Some theorize that the Harmonizer was first used on the ending overdubbed solos of "Ice Cream Man". The "Bottoms Up" final solo definitely had Harmonizer going...maybe that could account for the similarity you are hearing?

Could be it.

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!