Metropoulos Forum

Hey All --- Dave, Ed, Al & Mike all speak about VH1 @ ...we know many of the stories but some new stuff - 30mins

http://www.inthestudio.net/redbeards-bl ... niversary/

also EVH stage left pic w/ 6 amps incl Music Man and block logo echoplex (thnx @ vh store)

cheers JL

cool pic!!

Notice that there's a cable running to the musicman head, a late 70's JMP and a logo-less plexi.... Nothing seems to be connected to the logo-less head though...

Hey, I saw a few MM heads like this on ebay for the cheap... now their prices are going up Seriously, what's up with those amps?

yeh really FHN --- i think i played an MM once a VERY long time ago. an A/B comparison would be cool to try ...if anyone has one on here.....?! then we'll find out most of those old bootlegs are w/ Ed usin the MM.... doh.

Yep great pic and Ed just looks too cool with that guitar-it use to have some mojo before he took the saw to it-He messed up a great guitar along with franky.....

...yuh true huh. guess it comes with the territory. chop things up, break them down, repaint, recreate, reinvent.... keep everyone guessin. ...i still remember first listen of Fwarning/MStreet intro. like, WTFuck has he done NOW?

sigh. i miss all that.

oh yeh ** pedalboard connection alert ** what do you reckon those two vertical 1/4 jacks are connected into??

---- debate/rant as necessary.


J.

Great interview, thanks for posting! The pic is amazing! This is all obviously right up my alley...my favorite era of the band.

Hey G --- yuh same here ---- and 81 tour. check the 'Texxas Jam Ed w/ hired gear?' post too.

cheers J.

The Music Man head in that pic is a HD-130, which is a hybrid design (solid state preamp & tube power amp/Sylvania 6ca7's). The ones from '74 to '78 had a 12ax7 tube for the PI. Those are more desired than the later ones. I have one. I think Aerosmith were using them back then. IMO though, there is NO WAY that Ed used these amps as a stand alone head. They are just too much headroom and plate voltage to get at that defined crunch of a Marshall. Running the Master volume up gets a very whooly, wobbily type sound. You can get a Hendrixy 'fuzz face' type thing (Eddie Hazel really liked the HD-130) but not a 'refined' cranked Marshall thing, UNLESS, you are playing in a very slow, Claptony type way (more like Aerosmith I'd say).

Maybe Ed 'blended' the MM in with the Marshalls to get more stage volume ? Maybe Ed reamped a Marshall into the Music Man ?

I'm guessing that the vertical connections on the pedalboard are for the EQ (MXR or Boss) connection to the switch box since he's using the Explorer. I think that's what the eq was used for on the pedaboard.

sounds like that would make sense TSlinger ---mixing & reamping. didnt know the MM heads were a such a different beast.
...is there a thread somewhere on the the cabs used? i.e. i believe (from info here) Ed used just the floor cabs - probably in two pairs; one main pair & one pair for back up. still trying to make sense of the japan pic w/ eight (?) heads into how many cabs? you know what i mean? maybe the extra bank of four heads is just all back up amps.......

yep prob matttornado -- into the tonebender switchbox... or summink like that.


J.

Cool picture, so much Ed's line of bullshit though huh? Ed, " oh I hacked up my destroyer and now it sounds like shit" right Ed, and that's why you continued too play it long after hacking it up .....

Exactly,I think Ed's departure from the Destroyer had more to do with his gradual acceptance of the Strats 25 1/2 scale length, than it did with his hacking of the Destroyer. He grew to prefer the strats scale length,tone and feel, and then all of a sudden, he noticed that his 24 3/4 scale Destroyer just didnt 'sound right' anymore .
You will either be a strat man or a Gibson man,ya know ?

Anyway's,Ed did continue to use 24 3/4 scale guitars in the studio, because,like anyone else, he LOVES guitars and probably wants/wanted to see 'how the other side lives' every ounce in a while. Ed seemed to pick a side (25 1/2 scale) by '79.

Tone Slinger wrote:Exactly,I think Ed's departure from the Destroyer had more to do with his gradual acceptance of the Strats 25 1/2 scale length, than it did with his hacking of the Destroyer. He grew to prefer the strats scale length,tone and feel, and then all of a sudden, he noticed that his 24 3/4 scale Destroyer just didnt 'sound right' anymore .
You will either be a strat man or a Gibson man,ya know ?

Anyway's,Ed did continue to use 24 3/4 scale guitars in the studio, because,like anyone else, he LOVES guitars and probably wants/wanted to see 'how the other side lives' every ounce in a while. Ed seemed to pick a side (25 1/2 scale) by '79.

We would have to compare the sound of the hacked "Shark" version of the Destroyer to the non-hacked original Ibanez condition...If we guesstimate that the hacked "Shark" Destroyer was indeed used for the main guitar track of "Women In Love", "Dance The Night Away" and the entirety of "Outta Love Again" (and we have no proof of this, but we can make an educated guess) and compare it to "You Really Got Me", "Running With The Devil", "On Fire" and the main guitar track of "Jamie's Crying" we might say that the Destroyer sounded better before it was "hacked". That is my opinion, but everyone is entitled to theirs.

I still contend that Eddie was being truthful when he said he no longer liked the tone of his Destroyer, especially in light of the fact that he borrowed the red-orange-salmon Destroyer from Chris Holmes for the recording of Women and Children First. He clearly still had access to the "Shark" and even posed with it on the cover of the WACF album, but the actual recording was done with the Chris Holmes Destroyer.

Ed played that guitar plenty before he hacked it. I think he'd be a pretty good judge of how it sounded and resonated after the butchery. I'll take him at his word that it sounded different - and thus, to his mind, it was "ruined." And he did seek out another to use for recording. This story jives.

Ed didn't have 23 guitars to take on the road initially. He had the Bee made during the VH1 tour. He had to get some cash in pocket before he started stocking up on quality axes and more custom builds.

Ed certainly noticed a difference in the Destroyer, but all I'm saying is that his decision to stop using it probably had more to do with the fact of its scale length (and very probably its 'balance' when standing, which is true of all Explorer or like designs). To me,it was plain to see the writing on the wall by the Warner Demo's , in that Ed was gravitating more towards Fender and getting away from Gibson. The tremelo and 25 1/2 scale had bitten him hard.

I agree that Ed noticed a difference, pre & post 'hack',(Chris Holes Destroyer on WACF proves Ed was 'curious' at least imo) but I'm sure he noticed the difference pre and post Floyd Rose on his Franky, yet, continued using it (liked the scale length,standing balance & tremelo obviously). You would think that Ed would have went back to a 6 screw tremelo on an album AFTER he modded the Franky (floyd Rose), but didnt. To me, that has alot to do with playing 'STYLE' taking precidence over 'TONE' . We see where that led him(TOO many '80's g string harmonic dive bombs and hi gain amps ).