EVH's original Plexi and the FAS Brit Brown amp



Here's a reference track I've been using. It's a compilation of VH intro's where it's just the guitar blasting through the Marshalls. I like the Mean Streets tone the best. IMO it seems to be the most refined. Maybe it was the one that was captured just right?

Listen to the Mean Streets clip and compare it to the Letterman clip at the beginning of this thread. Take into consideration the Mean Streets clip has studio sauce thrown in and the Letterman clip appears to have just a 57 on the cab. To my ears those are the same sound and that's what I'm trying to duplicate.

At this point my questions are stock? Variac? Mod'd? Boosts on the front?

Even though I think the stock Brit Brown is damned close out of the box I tweaked it a bit more using what I've learned from this adventure. And it's so damned close. But I still want to do this with vintage virtual components. Lol.... "Virtual Vintage" now there's a marketing slogan!
 
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I've used a Variac on my amps since 1981 because the only power Attenuators available used to sound dark. I needed to lower the volume on a Mesa Boogie Mk 2 c because it sounds like crap at lower volumes. To my surprise it sounded very close to the VH tone which is very bright.
I have to disagree that the tones comes only from his hands. It does in a way but not when just playing one chord.
I also used a dummy load since 1986 and if you have a good one and you pass the signal from the dummy load to a ten band eq whole using the Variac it will get you closer to the VH sound.
But I always had to use a MXR eq and a mild boost to get the sustain.
One thing I agree about EVH having his own tone was because his technique because he didn't use a lot of distortion which many guitar players use to cover their bad technique.
This is apparent when you listen to Spanish Fly, his playing still sounds fluid.
It's very difficult to get the VH tone on the Axe Fx, but I've heard people that have gotten scary close! I've had good results with the Plexi 50, but the Plexi 100 sounds to dark.
You also need to use a graphic eq in front of the amp with a frown face curve.

The closest I've got to the EVH tone is with a modded Marshall Plexi by David Bray. I use a Variac set at 90 volts and bias the tubes closer to 35 mV which is what normally would be at 120 volts. Then I run the speaker output to a custom made dummy load, then into Hush 2c, then to a Boss GE 10 graphic eq, to a Rane Mixer and a Mesa Boogie 2 90 which has a presence control. It sounds more like VH 2 or the tone from Woman Children First.
 
Okay I must confess...

I went to the trouble of putting together:

EQ pedal -> Bray modded Plexi -> THD Hotplate load box -> dbx 160 compressor -> rackmount GEQ -> power amp -> Marshall 4x12 TV with Greenbacks.

I still couldn't play Eruption worth a sh!t.

But the tone was not too bad.

No variac though :( Dammit now I've got to explain to the wife why I've *need* to re-aquire a Bray modded Plexi , TV cab, .... and finally a Variac! :)
 
I am one of those folks that has been trying to chase the VH sound for years. I have Rocco's patch and it sounds great. I think the thing that is hard to capture is that percussive nature of the picking that doesn't get harsh. I use B+constant to bring some of that out but there has to be a few more parameters that would help with that.
 
It's no question Ed had/has great tone. But I also remember reading on some recording forums awhile back that there was also quite a bit of studio magic on VH's first album. They had interview clips with Michael Anthony and Roth (if I remember correctly) talking about how Ed's tone didn't sound like that when he was tracking. The quote was something like "it was very different than what they heard on the album"
 
gearjunkie said:
But I also remember reading on some recording forums awhile back that there was also quite a bit of studio magic on VH's first album. They had interview clips with Michael Anthony and Roth (if I remember correctly) talking about how Ed's tone didn't sound like that when he was tracking. The quote was something like "it was very different than what they heard on the album"
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I don't remember where I found this, I think it might have come from an 'old' Matt Bruck interview ?



* By the time it was mixed and mastered, this tone was considerably sweetened. This track sounds like the mic was not far off center cone. By the time it made the record, some of that 3k scratchiness was gone.

They either eq'ed the track in mixdown or sweetened all the tracks in mastering. A good reminder to tone freaks here that the recording console is a huge factor in what we hear on records and how we evaluate tone.

Edit: Now that I think about it, Templeman and Landee loved to dip guitar tracks a few db around 2.2k, which opens up the lows and highs. He did it with the Doobies and Montrose. Likely that’s what was done here too. I don't think Eddie liked it, because by the 3rd album, as Eddie gained more clout, and more so by the 4th, he wasn't doing it much ….
 


Straying from my original plan a bit on this one. This is the Brit Brown with some tweaks that I learned while tweaking the Plexi. Now that I see how close I got this one I think I can go back to the Plexi. The recording is broken into 4 parts back to back without interruption alternating between me and Ed.
 
R.D. said:
I don't remember where I found this, I think it might have come from an 'old' Matt Bruck interview ?



* By the time it was mixed and mastered, this tone was considerably sweetened. This track sounds like the mic was not far off center cone. By the time it made the record, some of that 3k scratchiness was gone.

They either eq'ed the track in mixdown or sweetened all the tracks in mastering. A good reminder to tone freaks here that the recording console is a huge factor in what we hear on records and how we evaluate tone.

Edit: Now that I think about it, Templeman and Landee loved to dip guitar tracks a few db around 2.2k, which opens up the lows and highs. He did it with the Doobies and Montrose. Likely that’s what was done here too. I don't think Eddie liked it, because by the 3rd album, as Eddie gained more clout, and more so by the 4th, he wasn't doing it much ….
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This is really good info to know! Post recording EQ is always elusive when your jut working with the basic pieces of equipment.
 
Narzugon, when you get your 'final' tweaked EVH Marshall, if you wouldn't mind it'd be awesome if you could either post a patch or a Axe-Edit block for the modded amp! :) This is a great thread for those of us who love EVH tones and gear lore! ;)
 
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.

There's a story out on the 'net somewhere that talks about Ted Nugent wanking on EVH's rig, then hearing EVH wank on it, and they were worlds apart. Ted sounds like Ted, and Eddie sounds like Eddie. The gear doesn't matter - technique is the thing.
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I hear this all the time when these discussions come up. Although you are 100% accurate, I think the debate is really around "What is it about the tone of Eddies #1 Marshall Plexi that is different from another Marshall or a Fender, etc".

Eddie would sound like Eddie on any amp. But if he were to play through a Twin Reverb, he would not sound like the Eddie playing through his #1 Marshall Plexi.

If "tone" was completely in the fingers (as I agree a lot of aspects of tone are) then it wouldn't matter what amp a person used. (The word "completely" being the critical word in that sentence)

Also, I would add that I read an interview where Eddie said a lot of his sound is a result of the engineer in the studio. If you listen to early VH recordings (i.e. demo, clubs) you can hear that Eddie's Plexi sounds less (how can I describe this....?) rich and full. Sounds a little thinner. I think any one of us that has been in the studio has experienced this affect on our tone.

A nice (or nicer) room, good preamps and mics, EQ, compression, etc in the hands of a talented engineer can bring that extra lushness to our tone.

And THIS my friends is what (IMO) the Axe-FX is capable of. You can have it sound like your standing in front of the amp - OR - you can make it sound like your tone has been filtered through the expertise of a talented engineer in a great room with the best gear.

I would guess that if you had the opportunity to stand in the room with Eddie and his Plexi and then in the control room while Eddie played you would consider the total quality of tone to be better in the control room.
 
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Warrior said:
If "tone" was completely in the fingers (as I agree a lot of aspects of tone are) then it wouldn't matter what amp a person used.
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I know. I cringe whenever I hear someone say it's "all in the fingers". Get up on stage with nothing. No guitar. No pedals. No amp. Just your fingers. See how that works for you. :D

On the flip side, a friend's son works in Nashville as a recording engineer. He once had a rather famous country guitarist in the studio and after he was done tracking, he told the guy, "Man, that is one great sounding guitar!"

The guitarist put the guitar in a stand, walked away and said, "Now how does it sound?"
 
You might want to play around with the "character" and "cathode" settings a bit. I just plugged in and just for fun, swapped the Plexi 100 for the Friedman in my preset. I dimed the treble, mids, and presence, and then started messing with some of those other settings just to see what it could bring out.

It is definitely hard to capture this sound because it is an overdriven, hot-tubes, loud tone but harnessed and clean. I always said that Eddie's early tone sounded more like a muscle car than an amp. It sounds like at any moment his amp is going to just explode. :)
 
romanianreaper said:
It is definitely hard to capture this sound because it is an overdriven, hot-tubes, loud tone but harnessed and clean. I always said that Eddie's early tone sounded more like a muscle car than an amp. It sounds like at any moment his amp is going to just explode. :)
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No kidding! My approach thus far has been a straight ahead approach. I've taken the data that R.D. posted as a starting point. Broke out the manual and the wiki (Yek amazes me) and attempted to plug in that data where it would fit including trying to replicate a variac lowering the voltage. I then attempted to capture the resonance of a Pre Rola loaded cab.

From there I tried the frown face EQ (other EQ settings as well) pushing the front and or bringing up the rear. I tried the echoplex pushing the front end as well as a treble boost.

The problem I'm having is the type of distortion he's getting. I keep getting a smooth distortion while his is ummm.... "grainy"? I keep referring back to that Letterman clip at the top of the thread because to me that's a fairly pure representation of his tone in my opinion. Sure there is a mic and I'm sure they have an in house engineer. But it's less altered than the studio recordings. In that clip you can really hear the bark in his tone. Even in the Mean Streets clip. It's doll'd up but it's obviously there.

The one parameter that has made the most difference has been damping. It seems to break the distortion up at higher settings and sweeten the highs. But the side effect is odd if over used. It seems that with big notes and chords it was really getting there. But then maybe an open A hit with less aggression lost it's umph. Bring up the preamp distortion and you're fighting another battle. It's definitely a balancing act (you're the man Cliff).

My "common" adjustments have been in these areas: Speaker page as well as speaker drive. Supply Sag, Xformer Match, B+ Time, Damping, Power Tube Bias, Bright cap and MV cap. That's not to say I haven't tweaked other areas.

The basic page I dimed the tone stack as well as the MV and pretty much leave that. Since I'm trying to replicate what he possibly did (academic reasons - before someone freaks out). I tweak the input gain trying to find that balance. In the cab block I settled on the TV mix basketweave and occasionaly play with the motor drive and proximity.
 
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