EVH's original Plexi and the FAS Brit Brown amp

svl said:
Never heard about a particular way he tuned his B. What does he do, specifically?
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I don't think anything specifically w/ the B- string !

But Ed was notorious for just picking up his guitar ..., tuning to himself ..., telling Mike Anthony to tune to his guitar and then proceeding to record wherever they happened to be tuned at the time ....

Mostly that is in the vicinity of Eb, mainly because of Dave's voice ....

But other than that, I don't think he tuned in any special manor ?
 
Karl Houseknecht said:
Yes, he does. He tunes it about 10 cent flat on certain songs so it's more in tune with G string. Try it and you'll see what I'm talking about. You can easily hear this on Runnin With the Devil and Unchained.
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I'm not known for having 'dog ears', but I've been playing Runnin since 1978 and I've never noticed it ? I can play it and make it sound as close as it's gonna get w/ my technique and I've never needed to tune it differently ?

I'll have to check it out again when I get home tonight ?
 
would still love to see a Variac parameter added to the Axe. who knows what great sounds with Variac untypical amp models could be created. yes, maybe tweaking of various advanced parameters could get us there, but that was said about "changing tubes" as well and I think the recent tube select offerings turned out really good.
 
Cagey said:
Why does nobody sound like Jimi Hendrix? Or Robin Trower? Or, Stevie Ray Vaughn? Or, Eric Clapton. Or, for that matter Eddie Van Halen?

Hint: it's not the equipment.

Those guys have a touch. That's why they're famous. Not everyone can pull that sound off. Buy all the equipment you want, even the exact same stuff all those guys use - you still won't sound like them. In fact, if they showed up in your basement to play your Behringer V22, they'd sound like themselves while you sucked hind tit.
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What a load of bull. It's GOTTA be the coupling capacitors.
 
FractalAudio said:
Eddie basically tuned his B string to just intonation rather than equal temperament. When you play A barre chords the third is "sweeter".
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I always thought the 1/2 step down tuning is a little closer to just intonation even in equal temperament too.

Pete Townsend hated the third interval too. Bothered him a lot. He heard it as out of tune.
 
barhrecords said:
I always thought the 1/2 step down tuning is a little closer to just intonation even in equal temperament too.
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Nah....its still exactly the same. The problem with JI on a standard temperament fingerboard is that if you tune to pure Major 3rds between the G & B strings, your minor 3rds are awful between them now. Not to mention your Perfect 5th being extremely flat on a 6 string barre chord. Plus your octaves between the fourth and second string are off. Basically your stuck with 5th string Major barre chords that sound great, but nothing else.
 
LogicVG said:
Nah....its still exactly the same. The problem with JI on a standard temperament fingerboard is that if you tune to pure Major 3rds between the G & B strings, your minor 3rds are awful between them now. Not to mention your Perfect 5th being extremely flat on a 6 string barre chord. Plus your octaves between the fourth and second string are off. Basically your stuck with 5th string Major barre chords that sound great, but nothing else.
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The Feiten system and various zero fret products are meant to land you somewhere in between that right?

I've never owned or played a feiten setup. But I've heard people that hear thirds out of tune love em'.
 
Nope. Those slightly modify the scale so the intonation stays the same throughout the neck. Still the same very crappy 3rds, but at least consistent all over. Major 3rds in ET are sharp while Minor 3rds are flat, so no way those can be reconciled with just changing the nut or tuning.
The only way to go JI all over the neck is to have strange many fret per octave kinda puzzle like fingerboards (got a 64 tone one myself) or go fretless.
 
Hey

Yeah Van halen I and II albums have that little bit different tuning ,compare to standard tuning.
 
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Sean Ashe said:
I have buzz feiten on my tom anderson ( who did work on evhs stuff btw!) and the thing is incredibly in tune. I can play A shapes & D shapes now and they're in tune, all the way up to the 24th fret :) I'm an intonation nazi and have never been happier.
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There is a big difference between great intonation and having pure 3rds, or any other interval for that matter. What BF gives you is consistently tuned 3rds throughout the whole fingerboard. Love the BF on my Suhr too but in no way are the 3rds any better (by better i mean closer to JI 3rds). Its just an impossible feat given the way the harmonic series works.
 
Best "brown sound" I ever heard that sounds like Van Halen I is a Bray modified Marshall. No clue what he did....but damn.
 
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