Ed's 1978 touring rig.

[StuntDouble]

Here's something else. While this was probably long after those pictures above were taken, the OT seems to have been rotated 90 degrees



Thoughts? I don't know if it's the same OT as we can't see the width.

As far as I can tell, the only reason to rotate an O.T. 90 degrees like the 2" O.T.s in a Superbass is because they're wider from endbell to endbell than they are across their core; that it was rotated back in the original position would make me think that he went back to using a 1.5" O.T....interesting indeed.

[plexified]

thats the thing Ben , a few guys are still alive that know magnetics . I'm amidst a

long documentary on Ken Fischer of Trainwreck ,and that man knew magnetics .

Chris Merriment knows magnetics. Any standard JMP 100 of from 69 - 79 is spot on. Dagnall made them all per contract.

Rotation was probably for noise relief and dumb ass not knowing the of was splattering electrons on one side

Of the otx pair.

Simple things like geometry effect this beyond belief even before we get to grain orientation in the steel laminates!

[StuntDouble]

thats the thing Ben , a few guys are still alive that know magnetics . I'm amidst a

long documentary on Ken Fischer of Trainwreck ,and that man knew magnetics .

Chris Merriment knows magnetics. Any standard JMP 100 of from 69 - 79 is spot on. Dagnall made them all per contract.

Rotation was probably for noise relief and dumb ass not knowing the of was splattering electrons on one side

Of the otx pair.

Simple things like geometry effect this beyond belief even before we get to grain orientation in the steel laminates!

Dave,

Your knowledge of magnetics and amps in general is worlds beyond mine, so I'm going to take your word for it, and just try a couple of different things and see where it gets me. I'm going to try rotating the C1998 Dagnal clone I have 90 degrees and make comparisons to the amp's present tone, and then try the same thing with the 1202-132 Drake clone I ordered from Brian.

[dnatronic]

i still have to wonder if the "capacitors" & "sticks of dynamite" weren't his load resistors at some point. i had some wirewounds back then that looked like dynamite, i don't know if they made any one component big enough to hold a superlead though. i had like five in a vented box with an eleven way rotary switch.

No, he did use that mod before he was slaving, again in order to bring volume down.
The issue with those sticks of dynamite was blown OT's.
It was dumped early on.

This sounds like a conjunctive filter type power stage volume reduction a la Mr Twistyneck. He was told how to do this by c e r r e m who said it was the way to get the magic VH sound.

[erigm]

i still have to wonder if the "capacitors" & "sticks of dynamite" weren't his load resistors at some point. i had some wirewounds back then that looked like dynamite, i don't know if they made any one component big enough to hold a superlead though. i had like five in a vented box with an eleven way rotary switch.

No, he did use that mod before he was slaving, again in order to bring volume down.
The issue with those sticks of dynamite was blown OT's.
It was dumped early on.

This sounds like a conjunctive filter type power stage volume reduction a la Mr Twistyneck. He was told how to do this by c e r r e m who said it was the way to get the magic VH sound.

Using a large resistor across the primaries of an output transformer actually puts less stress on the output transformer, but more stress on the tubes. You can use the variac to decrease this stress on the tubes by lowering their operating voltage. C e r r e m said this was A way to get the VH sound, not necessarily THE way. That's my understanding anyway.

[Good Guest]

I think a lot of people would be surprised to find out that power tubes such as the 6ca7 can work at ridiculosly low voltages , 200vdc and as low as 80 vdc where placing a resistor across the plates like in the "you know who mod" is a totally harmless trick...and simple reamping more than compensates for the obvious power loss.

I find it surprising that know one yet has an evh super amp on the market that does this trick within the preamp....

[Tone Slinger]

Lets HEAR something fella's .

[erigm]

I find it surprising that know one yet has an evh super amp on the market that does this trick within the preamp....

Would you be willing to elaborate? James Peters eluded to this on another forum, but would not divulge any more than that.

[Good Guest]

I find it surprising that know one yet has an evh super amp on the market that does this trick within the preamp....

Would you be willing to elaborate? James Peters eluded to this on another forum, but would not divulge any more than that.

I could never understand why an amp builder would shut out the evh option ...I remember his (JP's) posts well where he said ..basically piece of cake ...one trick pony ..it's all there so simple....

If he was eluding too a conjunctive filter or the unmentionable names mod he never made clear...I'm just saying there is no reason why that mod can't be done in the preamp with either low voltage feeding a pair of power tubes or better yet a single triode ....as the function of the mod has to do with tube distortion derived by shorting plates in a push pull circuit IE: crossover distortion and not transformer symmetry.

Hmmm kinda makes me think if there are any distortion devices on the market utilizing crossover distotion and the zvex machine comes to mind ..think I'll check out some you tubes and see how close or far that tone is...

[garbeaj]

This may be off topic, but I'm not sure how the TWO Univox EC-80 A echo chambers come into play. As far as I know, it has always been said that the second unit was a back-up, but I wonder if they might have been used together. I'm curious because I own one and I can do the dive at the end of "Eruption", but it is not exactly the same sound. I have also never heard anyone demonstrate the dive using their EC-80 A...

How were the units set? I know they were engaged with the footswitch, but I wonder if it is possible that they might have been used simultaneously? I know some answers to this question have been presented in this very thread, but can anyone make a convincing clip?

[Good Guest]

This may be off topic, but I'm not sure how the TWO Univox EC-80 A echo chambers come into play. As far as I know, it has always been said that the second unit was a back-up, but I wonder if they might have been used together. I'm curious because I own one and I can do the dive at the end of "Eruption", but it is not exactly the same sound. I have also never heard anyone demonstrate the dive using their EC-80 A...

How were the units set? I know they were engaged with the footswitch, but I wonder if it is possible that they might have been used simultaneously? I know some answers to this question have been presented in this very thread, but can anyone make a convincing clip?

He used 2 ep3 echo-plexi ..don't know if he used 2 univox echos simultaneously..There is too much speculation on the use of either anyways ...some things to keep in mind .. the univox may of had there motors replaced with differant ones that allowed for differant speeds ..the ep3's may of had compressor boards or a compressor board ...some say the univox was only used for 1 song and one song only and any pictures you see , say in vh2 are doctored to show them in use.

I can tell from my own experience that there are plenty of fuzz and distrortion tones available from the univox depending on where it is being used in a chain or even in slaving situations .....it can do plenty of things in it's bypass mode...that could be used to an advantage in vh tone. With it's 2 seperate inputs and outputs there are a multitude of possibillities in one, much less if he used 2 like in the vh2 pics that show him using virtually every single input and output...

To make matters even worse ..just like there were differant models of ep3 calling themselves ep-3 utilizing differant circuits ..the univox suffered from the same fate.....who knows which version evh had and how he used them, only he knows, but I'll give the Robin guy credit for one thing,,,,,they sound like shit before a mxr 6 band and sound really good placed after one , no matter how far down the chain they go.

[erigm]

I find it surprising that know one yet has an evh super amp on the market that does this trick within the preamp....

Would you be willing to elaborate? James Peters eluded to this on another forum, but would not divulge any more than that.

I could never understand why an amp builder would shut out the evh option ...I remember his (JP's) posts well where he said ..basically piece of cake ...one trick pony ..it's all there so simple....

If he was eluding too a conjunctive filter or the unmentionable names mod he never made clear...I'm just saying there is no reason why that mod can't be done in the preamp with either low voltage feeding a pair of power tubes or better yet a single triode ....as the function of the mod has to do with tube distortion derived by shorting plates in a push pull circuit IE: crossover distortion and not transformer symmetry.

Oh, I see ... you mean not like your typical preamp distortion, but a small slaved power amp with a load, and then into your power amp. Yeah, that makes sense.

You said, "better yet a single triode", but it would have to be a push-pull arrangement to have the two plates connected together "conjuctively" with small output transformer for it to work, wouldn't it? It would be interesting on an amp like the Guytron to try this in their small internal slaved poweramp, and see if it sounds more Van Halen-esque.

I know when I tried the C e r r e m mod with my Traynor it instantly sounded more VH. It didn't convince me that Eddie must've used this mod though.

I've been wanting to build a poweramp based around a 12AU7 for a while now, but other projects keep taking priority. I have a PCB for the FireFly project, which is just that very thing. I just have to order all the components and then build the thing.

[garbeaj]

This may be off topic, but I'm not sure how the TWO Univox EC-80 A echo chambers come into play. As far as I know, it has always been said that the second unit was a back-up, but I wonder if they might have been used together. I'm curious because I own one and I can do the dive at the end of "Eruption", but it is not exactly the same sound. I have also never heard anyone demonstrate the dive using their EC-80 A...

How were the units set? I know they were engaged with the footswitch, but I wonder if it is possible that they might have been used simultaneously? I know some answers to this question have been presented in this very thread, but can anyone make a convincing clip?

He used 2 ep3 echo-plexi ..don't know if he used 2 univox echos simultaneously..There is too much speculation on the use of either anyways ...some things to keep in mind .. the univox may of had there motors replaced with differant ones that allowed for differant speeds ..the ep3's may of had compressor boards or a compressor board ...some say the univox was only used for 1 song and one song only and any pictures you see , say in vh2 are doctored to show them in use.

I can tell from my own experience that there are plenty of fuzz and distrortion tones available from the univox depending on where it is being used in a chain or even in slaving situations .....it can do plenty of things in it's bypass mode...that could be used to an advantage in vh tone. With it's 2 seperate inputs and outputs there are a multitude of possibillities in one, much less if he used 2 like in the vh2 pics that show him using virtually every single input and output...

To make matters even worse ..just like there were differant models of ep3 calling themselves ep-3 utilizing differant circuits ..the univox suffered from the same fate.....who knows which version evh had and how he used them, only he knows, but I'll give the Robin guy credit for one thing,,,,,they sound like shit before a mxr 6 band and sound really good placed after one , no matter how far down the chain they go.

I'm not really concerned about tone since I think all evidence points to the fact that Ed only used the Univox for only the last note of "Eruption", so I'm mainly concerned with hearing someone make a convincing clip of the dive at the end of "Eruption" and how to set the Univox, either as one unit or as a set, and how to trigger the unit(s) and perform the dive...

That motor talk is really jive in my opinion. Using a 500k pot on the Univox's "Echo Delay" knob is the only mod that helps get more range of the dive. Ed talked about putting a "different motor" so the unit would delay much slower, but this is clearly bullshit. He also said he broke many and bought new ones. I doubt he put this "new motor" in each one that he bought. it just doesn't add up...

I guess what I'm really trying to do is call out the members on this board that have working Univox EC-80 A units to make a convincing clip of the dive. Mine is kaput and I have spent $300 trying to fix it and I still can't get a tape to work right...

[mr.twistyneck]

The Guytron GT-100 was an interesting amp. It was a full ampflier, with a preamp section running into an EL84 power amp section. The EL84 power amp output was then dumped into an internal load, which then was amplfied by a full quad of EL34's running a straight power amp section. I bought a GT-100 about ten years ago as soon as I played through it at the California NAMM show, then proceeded to beat the tar out of it on the road. it sure was a cool amp, but eventually i could never get the same tone out of it day by day - it was truly organic, if you catch my "drift". eventually sold it on the bay. wouldn't mind having another, but i'm happy with my super lead.

i wish i could figure out a way to reproduce c e r r e m's mod using a somewhat lighter setup;the older and fatter I get, the less attractive it is lugging around a 60lb head (or however much a super lead weighs). I fantasized about performing the mod in some way on a zvex nano; now wouldn't that be something?

[Tone Slinger]

Speaking of the Univox unit, Eddie never duplicated the studio versions ending ever again. Only variations where he messed with the speed more. Same goes for most ALL of that tune (Eruption). Eddie just improvised, and for the most part, I dont blame him, but it would have been cool to have heard him 'try his best' to duplicate the studio version on that first tour, at least on a few occasions.