Old internet article on the recording of Eruption

[Megaro]

This information is NOT mine. I was clearing out some old files on my computer and I ran across the information reprinted below. I do not recall who posted it or even what website it was on. It looks like I downloaded this in 2006. I have no idea of the accuracy of this, just thought it was a neat find:

This was posted on another site regarding the first record recording.  I would just like to add that the album was recorded in August to Sept 1977 and not 78.  Apparently Ted Templeman slowed the final mix of Eruption down a hair because it sounded to fast(has anybody ells heard that story?).

So here is somebodies take on the first album:

The pedals were an MXR 6-band EQ set to boost midband before the amp - this is critical to his tone/gain sound. He also used an MXR Phase 90 before the amp, not after as stated before.

The amp was a Marshall "plexi" Super Lead 100W, run at reduced voltage with a Variac. Note that the amp was "stock" except that it had the power tubes biased so that - with the input Mains voltage dropped, the power tubes would still be "fed" normal amounts of voltage, rather than being run softer. This causes a different kind of sustain and ringing.

After the amp was the "power soak" type device - huge resistor, if you will - to drop the output of the amp down considerably. This low-level signal fed into his echoplexes, MXR flanger, and a Univox tape echo. Once processed (if processed) this signal was put into an H&H power amp (solid state UK design) and then into Marshall 4x12 cabinets. It is my belief that the cabinets did NOT have stock Celestions - they sound too bright, more like JBLs or something.

PART TWO: The album was Recorded at Sunset Sound, late August and early September 1978. Engineer Donn Landee used two SM57s on the cabinet - one on upper corner, one lower corner. One mic was positioned to a very bright trebly tone and sent to Track 11, the other set to a darker mid tone and sent to Track 12. Together, these two tracks make up that sound - either one on its own doesn't do it. The mics were compressed to tape; no one recalls what was used, but it was either: LA-2A, 1176, or Compex.

PART THREE:
The tracks were recorded on Scotch 250, 30 ips, non-Dolby, 24-track 2" tape.

The main effect other than Eddie's own is the stereo EMT plate - not mono panned right as some say; it's just his guitar that masks the left side. Listen to the end of "Running..." and you'll hear it. During the tapping part of the solo - stereo 1/4" tape delays are brought into the mix.

The console was custom built. I have some details on it somewhere, but not handy. As I recall it was a combination of API and Urei stuff with special modules.

PART FOUR: The "guitar solo" (what it was called at the time, until Eddie learned about publishing and gave it a name!) was recorded live, in one take. The only break in the middle is planned, and they fade it out for a second, only to cover up some accidental feedback there. No punch-in's, and you can hear the guitar and bass amps bleed on the drum tracks; they very much played live together, a hell of a performance."

[TWANGGG]

I just did a search and found the original source for that was posted back in March 06, 2006 on the ProSoundWeb forum:
http://repforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... #msg147837

It was written by one Brian Kehew and here's his wikipedia bio:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kehew

Brian started that post with this:

Seek ye information? I love that first album and have studied it in depth.

Unfortunately he doesn't give any details about the source of the info he gathered so who knows?

[mr.twistyneck]

Thank you.

Years ago - like 1989 ish, I worked at a music store in the Cincinnati area. An older salesman there learned of my infatuation with EVH (i would've been about 19 at the time), and i distinctly remember asking him if he remembered when VH1 came out?

Him: Yes. The coolest thing on it was this really aggressive version of The Kinks YRGM. My friends and I heard the song before we saw the band. When we saw what they looked like though, we were totally unimpressed.
Me: But that guitar tone...
Him: Yeah, it was cool - but all he was doing was just using an old Marshall as a distortion box into other amps.

I don't know if he had heard something through the grapevine. More likely he was just reading current Guitar Player type mags with descriptions of Eddies then-current dry/wet setup and load boxes etc, and was just assuming he'd done that from day one. But still...

When i was running my 71 SL at 65v, and into a hotplate set at load, and then taking the line out into the front end of my 70 ST, really, that's been my favorite tone discovery since Ye Olde Sekrit Pedal, and TWANGGG's post EQ massaging. I didn't think of segregating the eq/phase before the amp and time based after. but to do that AND use a variac AND use a resistive load AND re-amping too, well golly gee.

i love this forum LOL

[mr.twistyneck]

To me, it's a set of tonal Legos. You can pretty much occupy yourself for years just reassembling them different ways. LOL!

[mr.twistyneck]

I think what i did the last time i used it live (2007 / 2008) was a 100 ohm resistor. put a hotplate in there too, but no load - only to get the line out, which went into a solid state power amp i had sitting around and into a 4x12. the 4x12 was loaded with 8 ohm speakers, wired in stereo at 16ohms, so i had a load for the head (greenbacks), and then for the power amp a 16ohm load that went to a pair of 200w EVLs or EVs that came out of an 80's Mesa Boogie cabinet.

http://www.twistyneck.net/cm.html hard to believe i wrote this back in 2003. Still has my old united.net email address from way back then LOL

[Xplorer]

Even Jimi Hendrix did this reamping stuff with a guild amp, visible in the Hendrix section.

i certainly don't know as much as you guys about Eddie, but i love what i read here.

The amp was a Marshall "plexi" Super Lead 100W, run at reduced voltage with a Variac. Note that the amp was "stock" except that it had the power tubes biased so that - with the input Mains voltage dropped, the power tubes would still be "fed" normal amounts of voltage, rather than being run softer. This causes a different kind of sustain and ringing.

After the amp was the "power soak" type device - huge resistor, if you will - to drop the output of the amp down considerably. This low-level signal fed into his echoplexes, MXR flanger, and a Univox tape echo. Once processed (if processed) this signal was put into an H&H power amp (solid state UK design) and then into Marshall 4x12 cabinets.

WOW !! what a setup !!!

[jnew]

Lots of cool stuff here. Regardless of the overall setup, I think the core tone of the amp comes down to a stock plexi based amp with voltages (variac) and bias adjusted to properly influence the behaviors (sag, compression, etc.) Having all the other correct gear is a big part of it too (EQ's, echoplex, PU, etc.) With this stuff, I think the sound can be had, re-amping or not.

[garbeaj]

This "article" is bullshit. This is just another forum post.

[BrianK]

Interesting how people call BS without knowing what THEY are talking about. Maybe some people have done more serious research into this than some guy with a laptop!

[jnew]

I've done much research myself. But, more important than all the research (none of which can really be quantified anyway) is personal builds and experimentinting. Loads, re-amps, master volumes, voltages, etc. can all produce great results but none closer than the latest arrangement. Which is a stock based, 68 plexi spec head.

[TWANGGG]

Welcome to the Metroamp forum Brian, good to have you here. For the record I think the "bullshit" comment was uncalled for and it's unfortunate that's the way you've been greeted here thus far.

Hope you don't mind a question or two. You talk about being able to hear the bleed in the raw VH1 studio tracks in your old post being discussed here. Will you please tell us more about that, such as how you wound up getting the opportunity to hear those, was it the raw tracks from every song on VH1, etc.?

The first raw studio cuts I came across were the two short excerpts from RWTD posted on this forum back in 2008. If you're interested I posted some thoughts on those clips here: http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php ... 44#p388892

[chrisom]

Welcome to the Metroamp forum Brian, good to have you here.

Ditto. Don't take anything personally and keep thick skin. We can be guilty occasionally of displaying that 'rock-guitarist-I-know-it-all' mentality (myself included) but it's usually not intended to be taken in a bad way. We're happy to have you here to share your knowledge and opinions. Peace

[garbeaj]

Sorry I used the term "bullshit", but I don't know what else to call all these unfounded suppositions about what was done on the recording of the first album.

The original post that Megaro mentioned is just a forum post of pure speculation as far as I can tell. I'll be the first to apologize if someone can point out the place where Ted Templeman or Donn Landee or Eddie or anyone else directly involved in the recording of Van Halen has corroborated or made these statements. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm the asshole. Please, someone help me understand.

I don't doubt Brian Kehew's CV...it is well known. But I'm just not seeing where this information came from and I'm not seeing where it has been verified by anyone involved in the recording.

[jnew]

Sorry I used the term "bullshit", but I don't know what else to call all these unfounded suppositions about what was done on the recording of the first album.

The original post that Megaro mentioned is just a forum post of pure speculation as far as I can tell. I'll be the first to apologize if someone can point out the place where Ted Templeman or Donn Landee or Eddie or anyone else directly involved in the recording of Van Halen has corroborated or made these statements. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm the asshole. Please, someone help me understand.

I don't doubt Brian Kehew's CV...it is well known. But I'm just not seeing where this information came from and I'm not seeing where it has been verified by anyone involved in the recording.

WOW So first off, you're calling it Bullshit because you accuse it of being unfounded. If it's unfounded, then it is possible that there is truth to it. Therefore you have no foundation at all, calling it bullshit.

Secondly, do you really expect Templeman, Landee or Ed to corroborate or chime in? If they don't, it must be bullshit? Is this really your basis, or foundation for argument? WTF man. Or kindly share with us what makes you so knowledgeable, that you can make such statements. Oh wait, let me guess. Your FUCKING tech?

[BrianK]

OK so let's let the terms and attitudes go away.... poof!

I worked on the old master tapes from the demos to the last record with Roth, everything else is at Eddie's 5150: although all bands are technically supposed to hand in their master tapes to the label at the end of an album, the 5150 tapes have never left there. The band has clout and control most don't.

With the old tapes it was easier to find some things I and others had not known, one easy one being everyone saying the reverb on the guitar was in the right channel. It's not, it's the same stereo reverb used on the vocals etc in the mix. At the end of Running w the Devil you can hear this clearly; the last chord has a balanced stereo echo when it dies out. The misconception came from hearing the loud guitar on the hard left mask the left side of the reverb, so the right side reverb is all most people hear. I took a reverb unit at the time and used the dry master tape to try to emulate the exact sound of the original record, so we could use "the same reverb" when doing mixes of the unreleased tracks. (Which were submitted to the band and rejected as they didn't want old {I think DLR-era} tapes coming out then.)

I looked up the old post about what I'd found (from tapes and from asking assistant engineers on the sessions (Donn L has been MIA for many years...). They were the ones who said the 1176 was used, as were SM57s on the upper and lower corners. However I see I failed to mention the two channels recorded; one being VERY bright and thin (NOT the known sound) and the other being dark and wooly (NOT the known sound either); together combined, that made up the known sound of the first few records. I am told one cabinet (and see in photos) had the silver-dome JBL speakers, the other had standard Marshall Celestions (no one knew what kind as they didn't open them). So one of these was the upper mic'ing corner, and the other was the lower corner of its cabinet for the woof.

I learned about the biasing trick from Fred Taccone, who runs Divided By 13 amps now: back in the 70s he played on gigs with Ed a lot, and being an amp guy, he asked about the "Jose modded" amp; this was all there was to it. Lowered voltage to the amp, but with a bias boost inside to get the tubes to function more normally at that state. I had him do it to my own '66 Marshall, but it was rather squashy and compressed - I was not after an EVH sound other than to see what it did, so we undid the "mod" and I like it stock.

I remember hearing about an H&H Power amp being used on the line out to drive the speaker cabinets, but I don't recall who said it. Those are English amps - mainly known for guitar heads that Bauhaus and Marc Bolan used, and they made a weird Echoplex tape unit that is cool. The H&H power amps are very unusual here, don't know where Ed would have found one, but it's a solid-state unit like a Crown amp, darker and meaty-sounding, with a beautiful blue front that lights up when it's on.

The rest of it with pedals etc seems fairly well-documented by photos and people. I hear some great results people have gotten here. Listening to the "room mics" on the sessions, it seems the actual guitar amp didn't sound SO exciting on its own, the brightness of the 1176 added some zing, and the EQ was a factor, etc. as were the two cabinets mic'ed up. Like taking a photo, it can look a lot "like" a person, but be enhanced in some ways. I'm sure the recording lost a bit of the power and girth, while bringing up some clarity and bite.

PS = I do suspect all memories "guilty" until proven innocent, but it's all we get to go on, short of any evidence.