van halen

dazzlindino · Post by **dazzlindino** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 7:53 pm

would like to hear everyones imput on each aspect of the guitar/s of van halen, like
1 brass nut frankie/ bone - plastic Ibanez
2 maple cap fretboard
3 true steel block year? fender tremolo
4 or brass mighty mite bridge
5 pickup? did he ever really use the pickup that sd made him?
6 body wood ( swamp ash / for sure? ) and what year was the boogie body modeled after ...etc.
and what aftermarket pickups were avail. in 1977/78 when they were recording the first album, along with what distortion, or overdrives etc.
could he have recorded the whole album with the destroyer and just punched in the dives?
Thanks

Tone Slinger · Post by **Tone Slinger** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 11:13 am

Welcome dazlindino ! I'll give my opinions to your questions:

1) The nut does affect the 'total' of a guitars sound, not just open notes. An example as to why would be to fret a note, then push down on the string thats being played, BEHIND the nut. It will raise the pitch. Basically a bit of brightness or dullness can be imparted to a given guitar due to the nut material. From duller to brighter, graphite,plasic,bone, brass and steel(Floyd Rose) being brightest.

2) Eddie has prefered maple necks/fretboards since first putting his Franky togather. I feel that a one piece, slab or vaneered maple board neck all sound the same. The truss rod is more responsible to tone, as long as everything else is the same,material wise (all maple construction). A big, efficient Warmoth style rod is brighter and more sustaining than a single acting Fender style (which Ed had to have used back then)rod, which is warmer and fuller sounding. Companies like Musikraft, have far more options than Warmoth concerning this, though I dont know if they can match Warmoths consistancy.

3) Ed used a Fender bridge on Franky until sometime in '80, when he finally had a Floyd installed. Eddie did,however, have a floyd on the black and yellow strat, as well as the danelectro necked 'flying star' guitar as far back as '79. He didnt record with those guitars though. Ed didnt record with a floyd till the 'Fair Warning' album, which really shows off the 'whammy' abilities of the bridge.

I really do not feel that the block on the floyd really affects tone too much, since the string doesnt go through the block, like on a Fender. More mass to the block on a floyd probably adds a bit more volume or sustain, but may make the unit even more 'tinky' sounding.

4) I think a brass bridge wouldnt sound as good as the steel, since the steel is harder, and would add more attack as well as be more durable than the softer brass. I think the photo on the first album cover of the 'brass' bridge was taken AFTER the recordings. Ed probably was experimenting ,and didnt have time to take it back off after discovering he didnt like it as much as the Fender bridge.

5) I do think Ed used a few pick ups that Seymour made him back then, as well as Dimarzio's. He had a creme Dimarzio (probably a Super Distortion) in the destroyer, as well as in the Franky (photo's from most of the '80 tour show this). Depending on your amp and playing style, many pu's do EVH well, like a JB or a custom custom, though lower k variety's like the '59 seem to be most used. I personally like alnico 5 magnets for EVH.

6) Ed obviously got the great treble bite associated with single coil/strat type tones (ala Blackmore, Hendrix) along with the drive and lower midrange push of a humbucker. Alot of this was his pick attack, along with his amps obviously. Ed used a hard ash strat (Franky) along with an ash destroyer. Japanese 'sen' ash, I think its called. Regardless. all varieties of ash have a brighter tone with lots of attack, as compared to say, mahogany or alder. Add to this a brass nut and you can see that Ed was at NO loss of brightness.

I can hear an immediate difference in tone between the Franky and the destroyer. The Franky is brighter with more attack. Alot of this has to do with it having the 'Fender' scale length of 25 1/2, which just simply gives an instrument more vibrating attack than the destroyers scale length of 24 3/4, which is a Gibson length.

dazzlindino · Post by **dazzlindino** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 11:21 pm

Thanks for the indepth reply.
Most people do not share your view that brass effects fingerd note tone, only open strings, im thinking it does and will test a guitar this week with the stock plastic verses the brass and see what effect it does have on the same guitar through the same amp.
Also if it does only effect open notes Ed used a bunch of them on the first album.Most dives were with open notes and then of course the liberal use of harmonics, as well as the riff using open A on Im the one, along with the intros flurry of open and fretted notes as well as in eruption.Im thinking thats why it seems to have much more musical movement in those passages.All these seem to have a different quality about them that maybe the brass nut intensifys.
Thanks

Tone Slinger · Post by **Tone Slinger** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 6:21 pm

I agree with you. I think your exactly right.

Strat78 · Post by **Strat78** » Sun Nov 18, 2007 9:52 pm

My thoughts on this subject:
The first album is a stock Destroyer (super 70 pup with nickel cover, bone nut, 8's), and the strat :Franky body with some after market rosewood strat neck with bone nut, some sort of dimarzio or mighty mite humbucker. The strat as seen on the first album cover was thrown together for the first album cover shoot and tour well after the first recordings were in the can. The Destroyer was hacked up before the first tour as well. The Destroyers tone changed because Edward swapped in the brass nut, higher gain pup (brighter) and replaced the pot with new stock. The chunk of wood missing from the shark was not entirely the cause of weekend tone. The second album sounds like the black and white strat with the maple neck and brass nut. Listen to "light up the sky" that sounds nothing like any tones from the first album: It sounds like a "broken" pickup, hard ash body and maple on maple neck!

dazzlindino · Post by **dazzlindino** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 7:18 pm

switched back and forth between the stock strat nut and a brass nut several times and brass brings out the low e and a strings much better,which usually seemed to be too clean sounding compared to other strings. The behind the string rake much louder and pronounced , as on runnin' with the devil. The whole tone seemed to become more musical in character and not even one shade brighter.
One of the most interesting atributes was tapped harmonics, they simply have an awesome chime and volume now.
And this was using a humbucker only super strat.mapla/maple neck/alder body.
The whole guitar just sounds more substantial.
Thanks

Strat78 · Post by **Strat78** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 4:33 pm

Are the stock strat nuts plastic or bone? If plastic, there is no question the brass will sound better. Nickel nuts sound pretty damn good too. I've used brass nuts and the same mighty mite brass bridge for 29 years. I adore the tone, but it is not for everybody. Yes, the low E tone is pretty much the benchmark for a good early VH tone. Get that right first and then the rest fallows more easily. It hast to sound more like a chain saw verses a Lincoln Log.

dazzlindino · Post by **dazzlindino** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 5:17 pm

The nut on this 92? ( think that is when I bought it new ) strat
is plastic, cant seem to ever find out if infact earlier fenders were bone or not.
Thanks

dazzlindino · Post by **dazzlindino** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 6:53 pm

well trying different necks with different nuts showed these results..and of course different necks would be slightly different but I think this gets the point. Used same settings on amp for this. Changed each neck out in 15 min or so.
Maple/Maple unfinnished neck softer spongier tone, but too soft of a tone, but it also makes the distortion more 3 dimensional.
Maple/Skunk finneshed neck hard sharp almost brittle tone, too tight of a tone
Rosewood/Maple seems to be the ticket very strong mids and lows and yet the highs not too bright, the tone has more caracter.
Plastic vs Brass nut? Brass gives all necks slightly more overtone.
Didnt Ed have and play in the early days a 62 strat with a rosewood neck with a humbucker in it?
Thanks

Tone Slinger · Post by **Tone Slinger** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 6:53 pm

Yes Ed used a rosewood board Fender strat with a humbucker along with his Destroyer (It was white at that time) up into '76, as photo's show. Ed had the franky,as it was on the first album, up and going at some point in '76 (same neck and paint job, bridge could have been the Fender or the brass one,not sure) He also painted the destroyer at around this time as well.

I do agree that the destroyer, for my tastes, sounded better than the franky. The actual intro to "Feel Your Love Tonight",which is the destroyer, has about the best distorted tone that Ed ever got. The franky just had that extra treble 'sizzle' and the bar of course, which was a very piercing combination,with lots of clarity,which,at the same time,lost a little mids and warmth,as compared to the destroyer.

dazzlindino · Post by **dazzlindino** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:36 pm

the guitar with the most van halen like tone out of this little run through,using the same pickup and amp and effect settings.....
1 maple/maple neck, brass nut, vintage trem, swamp ash body

2 maple / rosewood neck, brass nut, vintage trem, alder, similer but a harder edge

3 maple / skunk stripe neck / alder /vintage / ouch ..sharp bright

Thanks

ericopp · Post by **ericopp** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:55 am

Do we have any specifics regarding the actual PU used in the Destroyer?

I think I've heard a lot of different views: Dimarzio, custom wound, stock Ibanez...
That awsome tone on FYLT or YRGM is coming from that one HB - what is it?

pfrischmann · Post by **pfrischmann** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 4:18 pm

The body on both Ed's main guitar and his Ibanez exporer were Northern ash.

StuntDouble · Post by **StuntDouble** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:40 pm

What about the pots he used on his guitar; weren't they either 1meg or didn't he sometimes wire the pup straight to the jack? I would think that a 1meg pot wired in parallel to the output jack...like Fillmore described in an earlier thread...in conjunction with the EQ that he used to roll off the high end and boost the mids would have a much bigger impact on his tone than the nut on his neck...which would really only effect open notes... or even whether or not he was using a strat or a destroyer. I'm not sure on this and I've got a 10 band on it's way to put this to the test... b/c like a dummy I sold mine a while back, but I'm really wondering if a big part of his sound was due to the signal coming from his guitar. From the little tinkering I've done, it seems that the more resistance you add with pots, the more of what is heard in the hands and even the nature of the pup itself is lost somewhat. I think this is one of the reasons why you can hear his fingertone so clearly and also why he was so finiky about his pups...and also one of the reasons his tone was so aggressive. Even if you have something b/w the guitar and amp to boost the signal or lower the impedance...which may also have been a possibility, but something seems to be lost in translation w/ higher resistance pots. I think this was the reason for that frown curve setting on his eq's; b/c I've tried it a while back w/ 500Kohm pots and it just made the sound muddy, even with the treble dimed on my amp; and he has a very clear, very distinct sounding treble in his tone.