The " attenuator-load " issue...

[vh junkie]

Thanks GG for helping with the timeline there... makes more sense now...

[ampSnob]

IMO…. While initially the variac was brought in to tame some volume, in the long run it's more about changing the touch sensitivity of the amp. I even run my 8 water el84 with the variac at 90 because I like the way it sounds. (Actually sounds more pronounced on that than it does a Marshall) Personally I think it's much more about lowering the filament voltage than lowering the B+. If you haven't tried this borrow a variac from somewhere and listen to the tonal differences. A variac on 90 is one of Edward's easy secrets to quickly verify and quickly replicate (IMO 90v on variac is _completely_ safe. Never messed anything up, if anything my tubes last longer)

People report using a 120/240 set up converter and then running a marshall on 240 (or 220 or whatever England is) sounding better than running it at 120. This should be comparing the exact same B+ after rectification and filtering but since there is a tone difference the extra iron does 'something' good to the tone that not just about lowering the B+

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to believe the 140v thing. I'm just too chicken to try it on a good amp. I wished I knew someone at a guitar center I could convince into trying this. (if anyone ever does do this, make some clips)

I can see the importance in Leadguys's reality checks. They keep us from going way to far off in some ridiculous impossible never happened direction in regards to what EVH actually did and then arguing in circles forever about it. Although in my opinion that shoudn't stop up from experimenting with everything. I've learned so much from trying all the various out-there ideas. The ****** mod probably never happened with EVH, doesn't mean it's not really freaking cool.


Loudness is important to the brown sound. There is nothing that simulates that speakers on the edge of death sound which an attenuator over used will take away. Ralle, you're tone is so amazing, I'd love to hear it really pushing a cab to the edge.

[vh junkie]

IMO…. While initially the variac was brought in to tame some volume, in the long run it's more about changing the touch sensitivity of the amp

The touch sensitivity thing is cool, and makes the amp more fun to play! I tend to notice the effect more by messing with the screen and bias voltages more than anything else. However, the more of this kind of touch response you get, the further you get away from the kind of raw grind you would here say on VHII...

that shoudn't stop up from experimenting with everything. I've learned so much from trying all the various out-there ideas.

Exactly!
The only thing that I have tried that is really cool is slaving, especially if you put a little echo or reverb between the two amps... it sound the nest with a plexi into a tube power amp. Everyone I have showed the slaving thing to, wants it!
But: that doesn't stop me from trying out the other ideas that are out there... ******... variac attentuator...

[Good Guest]

IMO…. While initially the variac was brought in to tame some volume, in the long run it's more about changing the touch sensitivity of the amp. I even run my 8 water el84 with the variac at 90 because I like the way it sounds. (Actually sounds more pronounced on that than it does a Marshall) Personally I think it's much more about lowering the filament voltage than lowering the B+. If you haven't tried this borrow a variac from somewhere and listen to the tonal differences. A variac on 90 is one of Edward's easy secrets to quickly verify and quickly replicate (IMO 90v on variac is _completely_ safe. Never messed anything up, if anything my tubes last longer)

People report using a 120/240 set up converter and then running a marshall on 240 (or 220 or whatever England is) sounding better than running it at 120. This should be comparing the exact same B+ after rectification and filtering but since there is a tone difference the extra iron does 'something' good to the tone that not just about lowering the B+

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to believe the 140v thing. I'm just too chicken to try it on a good amp. I wished I knew someone at a guitar center I could convince into trying this. (if anyone ever does do this, make some clips)

I can see the importance in Leadguys's reality checks. They keep us from going way to far off in some ridiculous impossible never happened direction in regards to what EVH actually did and then arguing in circles forever about it. Although in my opinion that shoudn't stop up from experimenting with everything. I've learned so much from trying all the various out-there ideas. The ****** mod probably never happened with EVH, doesn't mean it's not really freaking cool.


Loudness is important to the brown sound. There is nothing that simulates that speakers on the edge of death sound which an attenuator over used will take away. Ralle, you're tone is so amazing, I'd love to hear it really pushing a cab to the edge.

Dave F is a real fan of the lowering filmant voltage and it's affect on tone..I have yet to experiment with that one but he maintains it does affect the tone...so yeah you are now the second guitarist to notice this...there could something there.

Yeah it's good to have leadguys reality checks but I gotta admit sometimes he drives me with'em. In a good way ,that is

[leadguy]

Apparently, Ed and Rudy and Dave can lie or twist things to their agenda but ROBIN L. and others can't and don't

ROBIN L. took rumours that were flying around on here, the Plexi Palace, and other forums and packaged it all up with a bit of his/her own thing and then proceeded to present it in a quasi authoritative way.

Talk about preaching to the converted.

Dave Friedman knows Rudy from what I've read.

The Jose load box was apparently found around 2000, yes around 2000.

To connect it to Ed, a lot of assuming has to be done.

It could have been made for anybody that asked Jose for a load box, just like the Jose mods were.

ROBIN L. came after Cameron and said pretty much the same things, guess why.

Ed wasn't using this so called Jose load anyway, he was using a load made by Bob Bradshaw which Bradshaw says he made for Ed and then tried to get rid of because a speaker sounded better than the load to him.

Anyway, I'm not going through all this slaving stuff again, it's been done over and over.

There is nothing wrong with slaving, it's just that there is really no evidence Ed did it before Bob Bradshaw and rumours are not facts.

[Ralle]

No, roumers aren't fact... it's more like a guideline to what might've accured... and since no one has the evidence, all we can go for is the roumers, pics, sound from the boots and albums, and our ears... The roumers plus ears are the best leads we have, if we choose to dissbelive what some people have stated they've seen... I, for one, chooses the statements and my ears, as long as they make any sence... and they do... Plus what I can get out of my setup... trying to make it as alike as possible...
What about this ohmite resistor Ed had? How did he use that one... I'm not so much interetsed in the missmatching thing as I am in this fixed IMPEDANCE issue, cause If Ed did have a load of some kind ( ohmite or loadbox or what ever ), he must have had a fixed IMPEDANCE as well... If running that into a seccond amp ( two or three ), between that seccond amp and tha cab setup, would be good regarding the impedance, since there's no fixed impedance there, but a flexible impedance, making the speakers work proparly... But the first amp sees the fixed impedance, effecting the sound from that amp... do you see where I'm going with this?

[leadguy]

Yeah, I know what you mean.

The trouble is that something like the ohmite resistor is not really fact.

Ed has only brought the "stick of dynamite" up in 1979 interviews when he was talking about the live rig he was using at that time which was a new switching amp system.

The other "stick of dynamite" stuff we have is from C e r r e m and supposedly some picture of a load sticking out the back of the amp.

The C e r r e m "stick of dynamite" is C e r r e m's own work from his imagination.

The picture of a load sticking out the back of Ed's amp seems to have vanished from the net but I remember seeing it probably at Plexi Palace and I can tell everyone who is interested that the so called load sticking out the back is really just some twisted leads or that's what it looked like to me.

This load would have been around the back of the Japan 1978 photos but it's not there and not only that, the way the amps are daisy chained in Japan 1978 is not how the amps would be setup for a slaved load rig and the amps are hooked up in the same way that Ed describes in 1978 interviews, daisy chained in groups of 3.

So we have one comment by Ed about his 1979 live rig which was basically interpreted in different ways by some other people and these ways are not verified but make a good trick story to try out.

Like. whoa Ed mentions a "stick of dynamite" where would I put that inside the amp, imagination sets sail, remembers conjunctive filter from old tube books, ala that's it, a resistor in parallel with the primary.

Like, whoa Ed mentions a "stick of dynamite" let's look for one in bad image detail old photos where leads and a load could not be distinguished, ala that's it.

What was forgotten is that Ed was only talking about his 1979 live rig in relation to the "stick of dynamite" as it was a new amp switching design and Ed said the "stick of dynamite" sucks off 10 volts or so near the fuse holders which sounds like a inbuilt variac for some of his live amps and it's a well known voltage dropping circuit, a large high wattage resistor or high wattage resistor/capacitor pair.

I'm not saying this is 100% but it does describe what Ed was trying to say in the 1979 interview about the "stick of dynamite" and what it does, ie sucks off 10 volts near the fuse holder.

A load resistor does not suck off 10 volts near the fuse holder and the C e r r e m resistor does not suck off 10 volts near the fuse holder, the only real thing that sucks off 10 volts near the fuse holder is a high wattage resistor/capacitor acting as a voltage dropping variac.

But we get the C e r r e m resistor and the load resistor becoming a part of what Ed actually did and there is no evidence for them, just rumours on forums.

[Ralle]

Ok, I hear you...
What about Robin L's statemets about the load box? That was in -78...

[leadguy]

Well it's not in the Japan 1978 back of the amps photos and no one has ever seen it.

The way the amps are set up in Japan 1978 follows what Ed said in interviews at the time.

3 sets of 3 amp heads daisy chained (or patched) together. Well actually 2 sets of 3 amp heads daisy chained together for the show with another optional 3 heads that were not really hooked up used for emergency backup.

Daisy chaining is a parallel amp setup for more volume. Slaving is a series amp setup. A combination parallel/series amp setup is possible but it was not what Ed was doing.

[Good Guest]

No where does Ed say "DAISY CHAINED" ..that is just leadguys interpretation..

Eddy quote from 78 ...chapter 2 verse3 blah blah blah.....

"I have lots (of amps), but they're mostly Marshalls. Tube amps. They've been CUSTOMIZED and have voltage generators hooked up to them."

"The cabinets are also by Marshall, and I use 6 of them. They're grouped in threes, and one set is for a spare. Of the three stacks, the bottom three are the ones I use, and the 3 top halves are the backup. If you wanna know why I use the bottoms, it's so my ears aren't destroyed. Of course I use earplugs."


But if you look at the pics you see exactly what Robin L described ..you see not Daisy chained amps but amps being fed from a 3 output device ..there is another pic of a what looks, seems, could be ,possibly like a daisy chained setup with the eq between...there is no mention anywhere of daisy chaining.

It is interesting to note that in that interview Ed says he uses a custom fuzzbox.. .so there is more proof he uses that than there is in daisy chaining...which can be just a simple way to bypass the first group of 3 amps and manually connect the other group...

Ha... he actually says he has "voltage generators hooked up to them" I wonder what that means ..he uses a variac to low voltage his system or high voltage his system?

I mean really this selective re writing of history to back up theory's based on half truths is a problem. .just look at the facts...which is what Eddie said.

Ralle you keep on experimenting with the rumours as they seem to based on facts/ears and not BS history rewrites .

[spaceace76]

If you ask bob bradshaw he says he didn't make anything slave related for Ed until 1984. In fact he says that Ed didn't like how it sounded! Perhaps leadguy has that interview, I know it's out there but I'm about to leave to work for Mr. Dennis Kager

I do find it strange that almost everything Ed says matches up with this forum's experiments. The few things that don't add up are the custom fuzzbox, and his admitted Jose MXR pedal mods. He never mentions these again, and he later states he hates the typical fuzz sound. At the same time, i find it strange that everyone knows how straightforward of a guy Ed is but they try all sorts of weird things to get his tone. I think frequency analysis and experimentation of late are much more interesting ventures, let's keep the debate scientific and use our ears SECOND, sacrilegious as that might seem to say on a guitar tone forum.

personally, the only reason I could see to slave would not really be for tone reasons but for tour reasons. the whole idea is to take an existing signal and make it louder and easier to project around a large venue. if it's coloring the tone or changing the response, why use it? all the mods and parts selection at the plexi level just to send it through a load and totally reshape it? doesn't make sense to me, and it's probably why Ed didn't like it to begin with.

[Ralle]

To me it has been a way to cut the volume DOWN... making it possble to crank the first head...
Again, Robin L said ( no facts, just what I've read ) that the volume on the seccond amps was at 9 a clock... to me that is around 2... slightly above... and when using the wooden head, the setting were different due to the darker sound from that amp.
Having multiple outputs on the load lineout... that is more like being able to cover bigger venus... plus adapt the stage volume...
Can anyone clear this up for me, please?
I'm going nuts here

[Good Guest]

From all the stuff posted in the past it pretty well spelled ......Eddy didn't like the bradshaw system and would go back to his original line out resistor gizmo....and even when offered differant loads always went back to the same one he preferred.

Regarding custom fuzztones etc ..everyone knows that in the 80's and late 70's metal oriented guitarists liked the boost effect rather than the fuzz effect anyways from these boxs ..they were losing there flavour so to speak as ic's became the norm and the old xistor boxs went to the heap...ic's were the holy grail. So Ed probably did use one as a boost but not for the fuzz effect...well actually he said he used a "customized fuzzbox" so take it from there. At least it's something he actually said...

The whole idea to slave I thought was to place time effects between the lineout and the second amp while still giving you the cranked amp tone , distortion without time effects mangling the tone and the ability to control overall volume......the 3 output loadbox makes total sense as he would be able to run 3 effects in paralell if need be, coming of his first amp and mix them in very unique ways. He does in interviews say that one main amp that controls all the others was dubbed "The Brain"...and that is probably why he says "his tube amps (marshall) are customized".

Robin L went a lot furthur and actually mentioned, what he would place between the brain and the other amps..answer univox echo and he used it as a master volume also....this toatlly conflicts with second hand stories of Rudy and leadguys interpretation of things but isn't it strange that Robin L mentioned stuff that was already known or repeated, except for this one thing that he comes out with and is instantly shot down. They should have witch burning at the stake icon...

Funny thing is if you do things that way Robin L described it is true that it can be used as a master volume control between 2 amps and sounds great it adds a nice sparkle and brightness that seems to be lost when you load ams down. Provided like Robin L said you don't place a mxr 6 band after it...and he is right on the mark there too. I think people under estimate the importance of the univox in pre vh1 and vh1 and 2 tone....

[spaceace76]

if his marshalls are customized and Ed has Jose at his disposal then why would the wood head need to be set differently? he could easily have Jose clone his prized plexi for other units. if both amps are running the same specs then the only differences are the transformers, component tolerances, and tubes, which are slightly different for every amp anyway, so how different could this amp sound that it would need to use unique settings?

the thing about Robin L is that he is no one and someone at the same time. we have no idea if his info is accurate, but on some things he hits the mark where others have failed. we also have no idea that he didn't get all the slaving info from someone else, or even pure experimentation. there are tons of techs in the world, one of them must already know a good slaving method. and as far as using slaving for volume purposes, it doesn't make sense there either. Ed didn't always run into the PA, he clearly hauled around his cabs in the early days. why run a 100 watter on 2-3 at a decent sized venue when you have drums, bass, vocals and screaming fans to deal with? just crank it! Ed expressed concern about volume even in the early days and now he doesn't have much above 10k, according to him. He used loud amps and it wrecked his hearing. doesn't seem like slaving was present at these ear shattering early concerts.

for all we know, Robin L just knew a thing or two about slaving and because he claimed he knew something about Ed's rig, everyone listened. how closely do we pick apart each other's posts on a normal basis? how closely do we pick apart what Ed said on a normal basis? Robin L? Robin L could be anyone or no one. it's safe to say though that we probably shouldn't take someone's word for it if they can't even bother to ID themselves. we have just as many good ideas and experiments, not to mention evidence. why should we take something on faith when we can look at it for ourselves? doesn't seem like good sense to me

[vh junkie]

How many of you have actually done the power amp conversion on a plexi, and slaved in to it. I'm not talking about imagining what it sounds like. Try it!

Why are we willing to believe that early on Ed hooked a speaker out from one old amp into another amp, yet you don't believe he did this.