Ed's 1978 touring rig.

[Good Guest]

Robin..Could this be Eddies lineout system in this pic?It looks like 3 amps are connected to there low inputs and then it all goes to a possible linrout with 3 volume controls.

Spot the 3 output loadbox.jpg

But explain why is the low inputs connected on the picture? According to Robin it should be the high input.

Who knows why?..Maybe that day Eddie wanted a DARKER tone...Maybe on other days depending on arena acoustics a brighter tone is desired. The fact remains it's a slave setup however you cut it.

[beaulieu]

To the best of my knowledge that picture is from the Japanese magazine Music Life, Aug. 1978 edition. I am surprised that article hasn't been translated yet.

The Japanese leg had 7 shows between June 17 and June 27. This was the half-way point for the tour. Boots are supposed to exist but I've never run across any. I'd like to compare it to the Nightmare boot. Call me crazy but I think his Nightmare rig is what he had in the studio with him for VH1.

That was translated. Its at the beg of The EVH section here.Pretty sure its in EVH detailed amp setup thread.

[beaulieu]

Robin..Could this be Eddies lineout system in this pic?It looks like 3 amps are connected to there low inputs and then it all goes to a possible linrout with 3 volume controls.

Spot the 3 output loadbox.jpg

But explain why is the low inputs connected on the picture? According to Robin it should be the high input.

Who knows why?..Maybe that day Eddie wanted a DARKER tone...Maybe on other days depending on arena acoustics a brighter tone is desired. The fact remains it's a slave setup however you cut it.

I would bet those cords plugged into the low input are not going in but being used as jumpers going out into something else.Then he would plug into the input right above. Then again without seeing exactly where those cables are going it's impossible to know.Then again maybe he WAS going into the low inputs Maybe they were there just for the pic? I have heard to fool people things like that were done. Who knows?

[leadguy]

How can anyone take this ROBIN L seriously and they have a sticky to boot.
There are so many holes in ROBIN L's "theories".

The fact remains it's a slave setup however you cut it.

Or a Daisy chained amp setup hooked up from a central point.

Ed said he was trying to do a Tommy Ionni wall of daisy chained amps deal.

Japan comes after Black Sabbath.

5/16/78Sheffield, UKSheffield City HallBlack Sabbath
5/17/78Southport, UKFloral Hall Black Sabbath
5/18/78Glasgow, SLApollo TheatreBlack Sabbath
5/19/78Aberdeen, ScotlandAberdeen CapitolBlack Sabbath
5/21/78New Castle, UKNew Castle City HallBlack Sabbath
5/22/78Manchester, UKManchester ApolloBlack Sabbath
5/23/78Hanley, UKVictoria HallBlack Sabbath
5/25/78Portsmouth, UKPortsmouth Guild HallBlack Sabbath
5/26/78Bristol, UKBristol HippooromeBlack Sabbath
5/27/78Lewisham, UKLewisham OdeonBlack Sabbath
5/28/78Ipswich, UKIpswich GaumontBlack Sabbath
5/30/78Coventry, UKCoventry TheatreBlack Sabbath
5/31/78Leicester, UKLeicester De Montfort HallBlack Sabbath
6/01/78London, UKHammersmith OdeonBlack Sabbath
6/02/78Oxford, UKOxford New TheatreBlack Sabbath
6/03/78Southampton, UKSouthampton GaumontBlack Sabbath
6/05/78Birmingham, UKBirmingham OdeonBlack Sabbath
6/06/78Birmingham, UKBirmingham OdeonBlack Sabbath
6/07/78Bradford, UKBradford St. George HallBlack Sabbath
6/08/78Preston, UKPreston Guild HallBlack Sabbath
6/10/78London, UKHammersmith OdeonBlack Sabbath
6/11/78London, UKHammersmith OdeonBlack Sabbath
6/12/78London, UKHammersmith OdeonBlack Sabbath
6/14/78Manchester, UKManchester ApolloBlack Sabbath
6/15/78Manchester, UKManchester ApolloBlack Sabbath
6/16/78Bridlington, UKBridlington SpaBlack Sabbath
6/17/78Tokyo, JPKosei Nenkin HallN/A
6/19/78Tokyo, JPKosei Nenkin HallN/A
6/21/78Tokyo, JPNakono Sun Plaza HallN/A
6/22/78Tokyo, JPNakono Sun Plaza HallN/A
6/24/78Nagoya, JPNagoya-Shi KokaidoN/A
6/25/78Osaka, JPFestival HallN/A
6/26/78Kyoto, JPKyoto Kaikan HallN/A
6/27/78Osaka, JPKosei Nenkin HallN/A

[leadguy]

"There's a great article in there (Guitar World 2007) where they interview Eddie Van Halen and ask him about his gear, past and present.

Ed admits that he used to lie about his gear to throw people off. Now that he is making it himself, he came clean about some things:

Marshall amp is bone stock, no mods done as has been rumored in the past. He said Jose had modified them to throw him a bone and get him some business.

All knobs on the amp were dimed. A single variac was used, set to about 89 volts, not two variacs like some people say (2nd variac was for a backup amp).

Mystery stomp boxes on his early effects board were nothing more than signal routers to route to backup amps.

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=24810" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MXR Flanger was NOT modified as previously stated. Settings stayed the same from song to song. Songs are timed to sweep of flanger, so timing of the flanger with the tempo of the song is key. You go from Unchained to Ain't Talkin Bout Love by kicking the flanger on and off at different times, not by backing the regen off as reported by some. This has also been tested and used by me for many months. This probably explains why you see tape over the knobs of the flanger, moving ANY knob as little as a 32nd of an inch will make it sound like crap.

Of interest to me was the ordering of FX that Ed discussed. He said his guitar went through an MXR flanger, then a MXR Phase 90, then an Echoplex EP-3, then straight into the Marshall.

Ed said he didn't start using the H&H power amp until the 1980s. The interview implied that Ed did not use the line out trick from his Marshall into a power amp, as everyone pretty much assumes to be the case. Ed said that his only amplification setup was a Marshall half stack.

This would certainly be in keeping with his less is more approach to pretty much everything. Still though, I can't count how many articles and eye witness accounts I have read about the Marshall amp line out from a homemade load box into his echoplexes into a solid state power amp. Ed says that is all bull. I will now be hitting the confusion button."


Box 1 on his 1978 pedalboard is a amp switcher like Ed says above and not ROBIN L's EQ loop on/off switcher.
Ed had 3 different amp setups and 2 were controlled by box 1 for the Eruption/YRGM Univox reverberations changeover and the box 1 amp switcher also could be used as a backup amp in case he needed it.

Ed's H&H slaving from the early 80s has been confused with him slaving early on.
There is no load box evidence from the early days.
Camerons so called Jose load box was supposedly discovered when?
Way after Ed started using H&H's.
Why would he use a Variac and slaving early on.
Slaving could have controlled the volume and Ed could have ditched the variac.
Ed says he didn't slave early on but admits to the H&H slaving.
After all these years why would Ed be trying to keep his so called early slaving a secret.
The speakers on VH1 are being maxed out with no slaving volume control and if anyone can't hear that then they have never played a 100 watt amp on 10.
Why would he slave with the slave amp on 10 maxing out the speakers.
With Ed's VH1 guitar tracks being reamped in a reverb chamber the so called slaving tone would be so unimportant compared to the reverb and all the other production tricks that it wouldn't matter.

Slaving doesn't give much if any more gain.
More gain will come from a cascade amp mod.
Slaving is just a tone combination of 2 amps and no big ROBIN L Ed tone secret.

Some of ROBIN L's stuff is quite funny to read like the Ibanez Destroyer which was Silver on 1976 being described as Korina for VH1 etc etc.
Oh and ROBIN L hardly touched Ed's guitars, now that's pretty funny as well and the non existent details of how VH1 was recorded like the reverb chamber etc.

[beaulieu]

Everything you just posted in the last post I have read here a million times.None of it is new. Just wondering why you re-posted it?Also Ed was ALWAYs trying differnt things so just because he now say something in an interview I wouldnt think he didn't do alot of this other stuff.I think Robin L made alot of good statements and although maybe he might not be right about EVERYTHING he said dosen't mean he isnt telling the truth!Also something I just thought of...You know haw when someone Lies you NEVER EVER believe them again?? I don't think anyone will ever figure this old VH stuff out anymore than it already is.Theres always going to be a grey area somewhere. I still can't figure out why people spend as much time as they do trying to figure this stuff out?Theres a few guys that play the old EVH stuff excellent and alot of the others shoudnt even bother.This includes me for I can play alot of the stuff but it just dosent sound like how Ralle make it sound.I play it right but.. I evan ask myself why. To play VH songs??

[Mats A]

"There's a great article in there (Guitar World 2007) where they interview Eddie Van Halen and ask him about his gear, past and present.

Ed admits that he used to lie about his gear to throw people off. Now that he is making it himself, he came clean about some things:

Marshall amp is bone stock, no mods done as has been rumored in the past. He said Jose had modified them to throw him a bone and get him some business.

All knobs on the amp were dimed. A single variac was used, set to about 89 volts, not two variacs like some people say (2nd variac was for a backup amp).

Mystery stomp boxes on his early effects board were nothing more than signal routers to route to backup amps.

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=24810" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MXR Flanger was NOT modified as previously stated. Settings stayed the same from song to song. Songs are timed to sweep of flanger, so timing of the flanger with the tempo of the song is key. You go from Unchained to Ain't Talkin Bout Love by kicking the flanger on and off at different times, not by backing the regen off as reported by some. This has also been tested and used by me for many months. This probably explains why you see tape over the knobs of the flanger, moving ANY knob as little as a 32nd of an inch will make it sound like crap.

Of interest to me was the ordering of FX that Ed discussed. He said his guitar went through an MXR flanger, then a MXR Phase 90, then an Echoplex EP-3, then straight into the Marshall.

Ed said he didn't start using the H&H power amp until the 1980s. The interview implied that Ed did not use the line out trick from his Marshall into a power amp, as everyone pretty much assumes to be the case. Ed said that his only amplification setup was a Marshall half stack.

This would certainly be in keeping with his less is more approach to pretty much everything. Still though, I can't count how many articles and eye witness accounts I have read about the Marshall amp line out from a homemade load box into his echoplexes into a solid state power amp. Ed says that is all bull. I will now be hitting the confusion button."


Box 1 on his 1978 pedalboard is a amp switcher like Ed says above and not ROBIN L's EQ loop on/off switcher.
Ed had 3 different amp setups and 2 were controlled by box 1 for the Eruption/YRGM Univox reverberations changeover and the box 1 amp switcher also could be used as a backup amp in case he needed it.

Ed's H&H slaving from the early 80s has been confused with him slaving early on.
There is no load box evidence from the early days.
Camerons so called Jose load box was supposedly discovered when?
Way after Ed started using H&H's.
Why would he use a Variac and slaving early on.
Slaving could have controlled the volume and Ed could have ditched the variac.
Ed says he didn't slave early on but admits to the H&H slaving.
After all these years why would Ed be trying to keep his so called early slaving a secret.
The speakers on VH1 are being maxed out with no slaving volume control and if anyone can't hear that then they have never played a 100 watt amp on 10.
Why would he slave with the slave amp on 10 maxing out the speakers.
With Ed's VH1 guitar tracks being reamped in a reverb chamber the so called slaving tone would be so unimportant compared to the reverb and all the other production tricks that it wouldn't matter.

Slaving doesn't give much if any more gain.
More gain will come from a cascade amp mod.
Slaving is just a tone combination of 2 amps and no big ROBIN L Ed tone secret.

Some of ROBIN L's stuff is quite funny to read like the Ibanez Destroyer which was Silver on 1976 being described as Korina for VH1 etc etc.
Oh and ROBIN L hardly touched Ed's guitars, now that's pretty funny as well and the non existent details of how VH1 was recorded like the reverb chamber etc.

I don´t think it´s possible to get the VH1 tone just out of a dimed Marshall half stack and these effects. I think by listening to people that has tested the reamping that this and the MXR EQ made that tone possible. VHII sounds more like a dimed Marshall half stack

[leadguy]

Everyone can have theories coming out of their whatever.

The things that are known are that Ed's guitar tracks are a mixture of JBL and Celestion speakers and Ed's guitar tracks were re-amped into the Sunset Sound reverb room/chamber plus all the other stuff Ted and Donn did.

VHII has no JBL's and the reverb might have been done a different way.

According to the sunset sound site, VH1 was done in Studio 1 that also has the reverb room and VHII was done in Studio2.

Here is what the Doors Engineer Bruce Botnick says about the Sunset Sounds Studio 1.


MG: Can you give us some idea of what Sunset Sound was like in terms of the room and the equipment?

BB: Well, we had one room, which was Studio One, which still exists today, although the control room has been heavily modified over the years. It was a compression room...the back wall was all brick, the floor was asphalt tile, the right wall looking out to the studio was shelving with sliding doors. That\'s where we put the tapes, because we didn\'t have a tape vault. Then there was the glass window, and there were three Altec Lansing 604e loudspeakers hanging above that. The left was a block wall covered with acoustical tile, and then there was a big door, which held the famous Sunset Sound echo chamber, and then there was the entrance into the control room.

The console was a custom tube console with 14 inputs that Alan Emig built for Sunset Sound. He also built Elektra studios, and was one of the original mixers at Columbia Records when they had their studios here in Hollywood. Alan recorded Dave Brubeck\'s “Take Five,” the famous Stravinsky recordings at the American Legion Hall, things like that. A multi-talented man. He was also one of the design engineers who originated the design of the tube amplifiers that United Recorders used. He designed a lot of those consoles, and then brought that technology over to Sunset Sound.

The whole control room was all brick, and it had individual panels of acoustical tile to deaden it down. Basically it was a very live room. The console sat on a platform, which was about six or eight inches off the floor. The tape machine sat behind us; we had an old Ampex 200 three-track, which had separate record and playback electronics so that you could select separate record or playback curves. They had a thing back then called A.M.E., which was Ampex Master Equalization, and then they had N.A.B., so if you recorded A.M.E. and played it back N.A.B., it would come out brighter. It\'s like recording with Dolby and not decoding. We also had an Ampex 300, I believe, three-track, which I converted over to a four-track with sel-sync (the ability to perform overdubs).

MG: Half-inch?

BB: Yes, everything was done half-inch, especially in the case of The Doors and Love, until we got to the second Doors album, where we had eight-track.

MG: Was the room itself changed during those years?

BB: No, the room stayed the same from the day I walked in the door, which was about 1963 to 1968. When I came back to do some mixing in 1970 it was still the same, except that they changed the console to solid-state.

[Grosh_Guitars]

Why would anyone believe what Ed is saying now since he always lied? and do you think he really remembers? I don't. I don't believe him when he says he just dimed a 100 watt plexi into one 4x12 and set a variac at 89 volts. You try it and see how long those 20 watt celestions last not to mention your hearing. I believe he did this but slaved into another 100 watt marshall or that AC50, the volume is more controlable at that level and sounds more like his sound when doing this. and of course we know he used the H&H's in the 80's. If you look on you tube especially later in the years you still see that little box with the bif volume knob on top of his amps no matter what amp he is using. This appears to be the same box Robin talked about, and makes perfect sense. There is a Farm Aid video and he has two 4x12's painted white probably from diver down tour, his 68 plexi sitting on top and that little rectangle shaped box with one big knob on it. probably slaving into another power amp at that point.

[leadguy]

Ed used to throw in false info in the early days but from what I've read he's been more truthful since the mid 80s.

There is no evidence that the Vox in that photo is slaved or for any strange load boxes, that's just another theory.
Here is another theory, The Echoplex is going into Channel 2 on the Plexi which isn't dimed and the Echoplex is also taken to the Vox set mostly clean and the flanger and phase are going into Channel 1 on the Plexi. which is dimed.
This would give a cleanish stereo Echoplex tone plus the dimed Plexi tone boosted by the phase and with the Echoplex bypassed, a smaller cleanish edge mixed in with the dimed Plexi tone boosted by the phase.

The JBL's and studio room and reverb and other effects will dominate the studio tone much more than a bit of slaving could.
Ed could have been running his effects into the board after the miced amp, who knows.

Studio tones aren't really that real. They have so many things done to them.
Trying to cop Ed's live sound off bootlegs is more realistic but even those tones depend on how the bootleg was recorded.

[BURN]

Get as close as YOU want an move on...a lot of his tone on the bootlegs is left to be desired.IMHO

[plexified]

Leadguy ,

I want to step out and profess that you are one of the coolest participants in the history of the internet . That being said it is so hard to recover from such a statemetnt , and I will . Here we go ... The gravel settles and the truth follows the same .Like a fly fisherman ( in which I am ) , that whole process is an exercise in relaxation and humility . No fishing involved , and in this journey it is very similar . We know that Ed loved a 59 les paul junior into a single hundred watter and matching cabinet . That alone is a huge statement . To believe that alone is hard , but we have the internet that shares backyard parties and live shows and are true to the sense that you can , CAN bring thousands of people to a backyard to hear you . Without a whammy bar or a chain of effects . The bottom line was the tone and the player . Hell , he was even singing the songs at times . Not THE singer or the promoter , OR the producer . Come on man , a P-90 can change the world . Lets stop for a moment and acknowledge this . A P-90 into a stock Marshall , which was essentially a Super PA , changed the world into a mathcing cabinet . Effects aside , production aside . Period . Wanna VH1 sound ? Start with the work , the beginning . No stupid emphasis on action is going to get it . And his action was less than an eight of an inch on the high and low E strings with the first fret fretted . Some folks have weighed in on this and all I can say is some use a highly specialized damper to aide their tapping and low string requirements . No mallice intended . In addition , as bullder and enthusiast , Ed had to overcome what was a tone chasing fact . Fact , you have a gap if your gonna shim the neck that sucks tone , he would rather play higher action than have a tone sucking gap with a shim in his guitar . Fact. A player that reports back that his origional axe is uncomfortable is accurate . One the pickgaurd was missing , exposing the entire cavity and from the visual standpoint probably dibilitating . The next fact is that how do you really play Eds guitar and feel good about it . At the factory , we all just about shit ourself each time he brought in his gear . We always found him Lost , Lost in the factory , finding the paint booth or the milling machine finding his own experiments . The bottom line was always that he knew what he was doing , for a reason . Stop the insanity and get your core tone going on . No effects , your house shaking or the place that your stand is held just resonating under your feet . If the tone is not inspirational enough for you to tilt back your head and loose your present perception of time . Well you gotta work on some things to dial it in . You should be opening your eyes and crawl your way to the cabinets dancing on the floor , resonating so hard that when you find them its your skills that pull the leash and they should moan . I mean scream and moan with ya . The slab or foundation vibrating under your feet . The police on the way . Leadguy is the goods and we should be grateful he is here . I am . And as a result , I turn it up , vibrate the figurines off the shelf , tilt my head back and hope the mike picks it up . At least the small voice activated recorder jumps to auto and slams down the memory . Come on gang , get inspired , drop the effects and grab the raw tone , the vibe and then your neighborhood can scream , everybody wants some .

[beaulieu]

pretty sure the box on top of the Farm aid amp was his Variac!

[vanhalen5150]

I always like reading your posts "Plexified", but you always should end them with..."and know you know the rest of the story".

Cheers.

[leadguy]

Thanks plexified.
I always enjoy reading your posts.
I always thought I was mostly ignored or considered to be FOS.
I don't have any 100% answers, just some likely things.

Here is some new info about Ed's pedalboard

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=30570" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;