Ed's 1978 touring rig.

[ROBIN L.]

I will question the alnico V vs alnico II magnet,alnico V or ceramic will do the job,im working with lindy fralin pickups(one of lindys techs im working with)to come up with a pickup that will end the story about alnico II magnets, and will achieve the van halen 1 sound,, we are working with alnico V and ceramic magnets,we are not even playing with alnico II magnets(waste of time for the van halen 1 sound, first album),ive been using the duncan 59 for a longtime and im very close to THAT sound using that pickup, but i feel we will(fralin pickups and myself)accomplish something amazing.STAY TUNE

It's already been done it's called the duncan custom (my fav for all things dutch)...

... or the Bareknuckle VH-II humbucker. or it's high output variante, the Steven Steven signature.

... This I believe is where all the power soaks and attenuaters etc. fail in the EVH setup.

I agree, there is a little miracle happening in that box because with everything I tried, that set-up is never "plug n' play". Everything always comes out over bright and impossible to control.

It's funny you mention the Bareknuckles, because these are the ones I use in my Les Pauls.
The BK VHII (bridge pu ) sounds like the pu Ed was using in 1978, at least to my ears. It's an alnico V and 9.2 ohms resistance.
My other Les Paul is loaded with the BK Steve Stevens pu set, and they sound awsome through a plexi.
Tim Mills at BK pu's is a great guy and excellent advice.

[T.J.Fuller]

I'm hope I'm not getting off topic with some personal VH tone discoveries of my own.
I really think that the whole echoplex in series with the univox makes a lot of sense.and is extremely over looked.
josse posted those clips way back of Ed noddling on 1984 demo tracks and if you listen to them there is such grind, such clarity BUT that other missing element ....
tape saturation.
I've been doing a bunch of home recording with my new home recording setup.
and using a Marshall, Ep-3, EP-PRE and a univox and in addition using some tape saturation plug ins and I'm getting soooooo close to those Josse posted clips.
remember Ed's early sound was analog not that thinned out Dokken sounding digital stuff.
God this info is great stuff on this thread!

[ROBIN L.]

I know what I want for Christmas 2009

A Rockstah Plexi with a twist

It'll be a 50watt plexi with a variac and internal load with an internal line out inside to a 2nd full 100 watt power section with a second set of controls like the 2nd amp had and another line out to feed my wet dry rig setup too

It'll be the biggest and heaviest head ever made.


And I don't care if its 3 Zillion lbs and three stories high

Can you get all that in one box Mark???? How about a crate? Or a 10 space rack mount with two plexi faceplates on the front as well as a variac knob and meter and line out level knobs
I bet I coud come up with the chassis for it

Back to bein serious though-Robin, do you remember how the echoplexes were set or what settings he used?? Did they cascade into each other?? These were in front of the main amp input or in between the 1st and 2nd slave head??

In front of the main plexi.
One was set for a short subtle slap back effect, and the other was set for a louder echo with feedback.

[ROBIN L.]

One of the Echoplexes was set for a short slapback echo and was on most of the time, while the other was set for a louder echo with feedback.

I always assumed the echo on the bootlegs was from the room/venues ... I will have to go listen again.

Robin, so from what you are saying there were two echoplexes AND two EC-80s in the signal chain at all times?

Only one Univox was in the signal chain. The other one was a backup and wasn't hooked up.

[45auto]

i'm not gonna even say what we're all thinking... i had a couple of the univox echoes way back, but surprisingly, never owned an echoplex. don't they have adjustable input/output? volumes? if it was like you say with a couple in series, he had some definite preamp potential going. is there anything else you can tell us about the effects board? i just remember Ed saying it was just a plywood plank & everybody laughed at it until they heard him cut loose through it. i was always inspired by stuff like that!

[IloveMyMarshall]

I know what I want for Christmas 2009

A Rockstah Plexi with a twist

It'll be a 50watt plexi with a variac and internal load with an internal line out inside to a 2nd full 100 watt power section with a second set of controls like the 2nd amp had and another line out to feed my wet dry rig setup too

It'll be the biggest and heaviest head ever made.


And I don't care if its 3 Zillion lbs and three stories high

Can you get all that in one box Mark???? How about a crate? Or a 10 space rack mount with two plexi faceplates on the front as well as a variac knob and meter and line out level knobs
I bet I coud come up with the chassis for it

Back to bein serious though-Robin, do you remember how the echoplexes were set or what settings he used?? Did they cascade into each other?? These were in front of the main amp input or in between the 1st and 2nd slave head??

In front of the main plexi.
One was set for a short subtle slap back effect, and the other was set for a louder echo with feedback.

So two delays set 110 ms and the other 300ms makes alot of sense and you def can hear it!

Guys stop the fighting I don't want to see this thread locked!

[harddriver]

So both echoplexes were carrying the guitar signal at all times with the echo bypassed except for the short slap back echo echoplex #1 that was on all the time and at the times where Ed wanted the longer echo from echoplex #2?

Is this correct?

[Good Guest]

If two echoplexs are in series..it wouldn't matter if he had one or two on...2 would always be in bypass mode at the bare min.....we all know that an echoplex in bypass still must pass thru the fet boost , color and phase section. Therefore if all this is correct..the guitar is going thru 2 fets....ie boosting the boost, coloring the color and phase shifting the phaseshifted. Not one as many believe.

Boy now were really talking asymetrical clipping and boosting the signal.

Well that info alone makes the thread a real gold mine ....what's that sound?..why it's good guest running to the lab breadboarding a couple fets in series..

info

[T.J.Fuller]

a really good example of that second echoplex being kicked is that riff -late in the demo of Voodoo Queen , the riff that sounds like it was inspired by Jeff Beck's Led Boots- that slap back effect Ed gets almost sounds like it does when you record with latency issues while monitoring - I'm convinced it can only be had with 2 echo units in series. So it all is making more sense, when you hear a first hand account of Ed's signal chain- we could guess forever but it sure is nice to know for sure, what was really going on in the signal path.

[Mr. Beasty]

if you listen to them there is such grind, such clarity BUT that other missing element .... tape saturation.

You think it is Tape Saturation? I'd would say it is the coloration from these pre-true bypass circuits. Two EPs and a EC-80 must "trash" your signal quite a bit.

[T.J.Fuller]

since I dont own a plexi , I would say a bright sounding plexi would be warmed up with this chain just the right ammount - hence a browner sound.
I use this chain (JCM800-ep-3 -minus the 2nd EP-3 but using ClinchFX pedal-univox) and without the treble up around 7-8 is sounds flat, less dynamic.
but, warm and pretty damn good with treble up.

[Mr. Beasty]

Boy now were really talking asymetrical clipping and boosting the signal.

Don't forget that sometimes there were GE-10s involved at that stage too ... this is very over the top IMO ... and possibly very noisy. You can't have this many pre-amps and long cables and not raise your noise floor.

since I dont own a plexi , I would say a bright sounding plexi would be warmed up with this chain just the right ammount - hence a browner sound.

I think we all accessed that the slaving into a second head makes for an very over bright sound that requires a lot of EQ-ing ... well, if you put two EPs and a EC-80 and long cables in between, that should take care of a lot of highs.

[harddriver]

a really good example of that second echoplex being kicked is that riff -late in the demo of Voodoo Queen , the riff that sounds like it was inspired by Jeff Beck's Led Boots- that slap back effect Ed gets almost sounds like it does when you record with latency issues while monitoring - I'm convinced it can only be had with 2 echo units in series. So it all is making more sense, when you hear a first hand account of Ed's signal chain- we could guess forever but it sure is nice to know for sure, what was really going on in the signal path.

The EP-3 preamp circuit is a high output impedance and with a long high capacitance cables will roll top end treble off.

TJ You were the first to theorize the two echoplexes in series, I remember you stating so with you EP-3 and EP-PRE.

I just tried my two EP-PRE's in series and there is more noticeable gain boost with two, and like Good Guest says the inherent phase shift of the two EP-PRE's which is quite unique.

I'm sure Ed found the extra boost by trial and error just by wanting two separate ms duration echoes.

[blfrd]

Thank you very much for posting this information.

What was the ohm load setting on the 1st amp and what was the ohm load setting on the 2nd amp?

I've heard he preferred the 8 ohm setting, even though a single cab would've been 16 ohms.

But as we all know, this type of mismatch is common (Eric Johnson does this).

[dirtycooter]

Cool about the echoplexes

I always have good luck with a real short 1 repeat at about 120-140 ms only.
Good fattening of the main sound here but very subtle.

Or then add something like a two tap with the first tap set 130ms and the second tap at about 300-350 ms for more echoey stuff and I guess this explains it. The two tap sorta acts like those two plexes in series then in a way. This gives that longer type of echoes I always hear but it gives a depth you cannot get with just one delay plus the first slap back sound is also in there too the whole time.

And I have found it is harder to get it going completely wet in the wet cabs and switch between the two sounds-slap only, then slap and longer-harder to set up levels going this rout then how Ed just did going all in series with 30% mix knob slap occassionally running into longer settings set at 50% or 1-1 ratio of mix for the second.
For wet dry rigs and 100% wet in that wet cab is tougher to cop when you think about it and one has to really use strategy to approximate this series set-up ED used.
So I find it intriguing this monster tone on VH1 was not the perfect wet dry "dry tone preserving rig" he later used and was really all mixed and pushed mono through one cab.
Its always hard to hear what is going on under all the reverb they added to VH1 exactly but it does give a tremendous spacious effect to the tone.

Yeah-the Ohm setting is a good question-so it was 8 ohm on the head into 16 ohm cabs????