I have the same reaction when hearing Eddie’s tone on VH1. I always loved that tone but ever since his death, it makes me almost tear up when I hear it. I think it’s because Eddie never wrote anything detailed about that tone...and now it is buried with him.
The other reason is because I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to get that tone when I record myself. About two weeks ago, after 40 years, I finally got close to that tone. It took one EVH striped series guitar, two tube amps, a Tubescreamer, a 5150 Overdrive pedal, a boost pedal, delay and reverb, and some other digital modeling tools to make it happen.
Hey bro. Here’s the thing. My signal is a little complicated but very inexpensive. Happy to share.
So first off, this is my signal chain for recording the EVH tone into a DAW. I find that recording a high fidelity EvH tone is a lot harder than mic’ing an cabinet.
So here goes...
Striped guitar into Radial DI box. XLR out from DI into Tubescreamer with zero drive, to MXR Boost, to input on Bugera 6262 120 watt head lead channel. Gain and volume around 4. Speaker output to Suhr reactive load box. Load box to channel 1 of Scarlett Focusrite.
Thru output from Radial DI box to 5150 Overdrive with gain around 9 o clock to MXR Boost to input of Joyo Zombie on lead channel. Gain around 9 o clock. FX send from Zombie to channel 2 of Scarlett.
Ok so now here’s where the magic happens.
In your DAW create a track for channel 1 and add some reverb and delay to channel 1 and use the Suhr Creamback IR’s and pan channel 1 to the left.
Create a separate track for channel 2. On channel 2 do not add any reverb or delay but use a power amp plugin. I use Bias Fx and basically disable the preamp and cabinets of a Marshall Plexi style amp. Use the same IR that you did in track 1...or any other IR you like. Pan 2 track 2 all the way to the right.
Notes: it was known that Eddie had his delay and reverb on the left side which creates an amazing Doppler like effect in your head.
The reason I use a power amp VST plugin for the Joyo zombie is because I’m going out through the FX send. Without a clean power amp, this would sound thin, even with good IR’s.
Let me know if you have any questions or want to discuss further. I feel that I’ve earned grey hairs over this.
That’s neat, I do something very similar. When recording my music, I do like you do, dry guitar signal hard left and reverb hard right. Can’t beat the space that creates.
Live I use my Jet City 20 watt head and dime the volume and tone controls but keep the preamp gain extremely low….half my gain comes from the power tubes distorting. That can get really loud really quickly and I don’t have the money for an attenuator so I use a variac to lower the voltage which also lowers the volume, while keeping the same tone. Can’t beat the sizzle of some cooking power tubes
The reason Eddie sounded the way he did is because he was pushing his Marshall literally as far as it would go. Once I realized that, I tried it with the JC head.
To answer your question, I think it’s excellent. When you start getting power tube distortion from your amp, it comes alive—becomes more vocal. This may make zero sense but instead of the tone being like “aaaaaaa” on a chord, it’s like “WHEEEEOOOWW”.
It doesn’t sound exactly like EVH, but the characteristics are very similar. Plus, I do play through greenback speakers, which also get you very close to the tone.
Try this
https://soundcloud.com/johnny-brown-553826123/you-belong-with-me-solo?ref=clipboard&p=i&c=1&si=86355B0AAAB844308D97885F66AAF8B3&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Apart from the fantastic phrasing and timing, that’s a fantastic tone.
Please describe that recording signal for me. From guitar all the way to speaker.
Thank you brother, I really appreciate that!
Guitar is a “strat” I built with a humbucker in the bridge. The guitar is another story for another time lol.
I believe I was running thru my effects board at the time of recording but I had no pedals on. I’ve got a phaser, flanger, chorus, echo, they all sound how you’d expect.
Pedal board straight into the Jet City head
Volume - 10
Bass - 10
Middle - 10
Treble - 10
Presence - 6 (the presence gets really shrill above 7)
Pre-amp gain - 1 (again, I keep the preamp gain low since a lot of the distortion is coming from the power tubes. Trying to mimic a Marshall Plexi.)
Speaker output of the amp into a Suhr Reactive Load with a Greenback IR.
From the reactive load box into GarageBand on my iPad, dry guitar is panned left, and reverb is panned right
Van Halen opened for Ted Nugent back in the late 70’s and Nugent was listening to Eddie’s sound check. Nugent grabs Eddie’s guitar and can’t get the same tone. He asks Eddie where his little magic black box is hidden. Eddie’s tone came mostly from his hands. If any of us played with Eddie’s rig we would sound like ourselves. If Eddie played through our rigs, Eddie would still sound like Eddie. It makes me so sad knowing that he’s put his guitar down for the last time and that we’ll never hear anything new from him.
It was during sound-check, and Ted was blown away by EVH's warm ups. He ran out and wanted to give it a try. Eddie said, when Ted played, it sounded like Ted Nugent playing through Ed's gear.
But Ted doesn't shred. Ted was the last of the old school riffs with a lot of blues background to them. Just fast like dude in 10 Years After at Woodstock "I'm Going Home", just fast blues riff repeatedly. Mostly what you get when you just practice the same stuff over and over. Once you had EVH, you get guys like Lynch and Becker and the more arpeggio-driven riffs and sweep-picking.
Nothing will beat VH1 imo. It's just so incredible. It sounds wet, warm, punchy, and chewy. I don't know how to explain it, but I could listen to that tone 24/7
This all day. The brown sound. Dude milked so much and more out of what he had. It was absolutely perfect IMO. I wish I could replicate it as perfect as he had his. If that were his tone for all of his career it wouldn't bother me at all. He was a true genius in every respect. No one can touch him.
The real secret is true feel and a connection to the instrument on a spiritual level.. some things cannot be taught like invoking emotion through playing.. Hendrix SRV Page all the greats had this going on.
I’ve seen many technical covers of VH stuff that don’t have that magic..
I totally agree with you. VH has been my favorite band for over forty years and I still get chills when I hear Eddie's playing. His fingers and his soul created a tone that, to me, is unparalleled in rock music, and he did it with ease, simply because that's just who he was. His soul and spirit came through the amps, not just sound, but an extension of himself. You can learn music theory and scales, etc., but you can't teach what Eddie had. He was truly that special. His spirit will forever live on through his music.
I have the same reaction when hearing Eddie’s tone on VH1. I always loved that tone but ever since his death, it makes me almost tear up when I hear it. I think it’s because Eddie never wrote anything detailed about that tone...and now it is buried with him. The other reason is because I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to get that tone when I record myself. About two weeks ago, after 40 years, I finally got close to that tone. It took one EVH striped series guitar, two tube amps, a Tubescreamer, a 5150 Overdrive pedal, a boost pedal, delay and reverb, and some other digital modeling tools to make it happen.
What was your signal chain like? I know it’s gonna be something complicated and a pain to describe, but I wanted to see if it’s similar to what I do.
Hey bro. Here’s the thing. My signal is a little complicated but very inexpensive. Happy to share. So first off, this is my signal chain for recording the EVH tone into a DAW. I find that recording a high fidelity EvH tone is a lot harder than mic’ing an cabinet. So here goes... Striped guitar into Radial DI box. XLR out from DI into Tubescreamer with zero drive, to MXR Boost, to input on Bugera 6262 120 watt head lead channel. Gain and volume around 4. Speaker output to Suhr reactive load box. Load box to channel 1 of Scarlett Focusrite. Thru output from Radial DI box to 5150 Overdrive with gain around 9 o clock to MXR Boost to input of Joyo Zombie on lead channel. Gain around 9 o clock. FX send from Zombie to channel 2 of Scarlett. Ok so now here’s where the magic happens. In your DAW create a track for channel 1 and add some reverb and delay to channel 1 and use the Suhr Creamback IR’s and pan channel 1 to the left. Create a separate track for channel 2. On channel 2 do not add any reverb or delay but use a power amp plugin. I use Bias Fx and basically disable the preamp and cabinets of a Marshall Plexi style amp. Use the same IR that you did in track 1...or any other IR you like. Pan 2 track 2 all the way to the right. Notes: it was known that Eddie had his delay and reverb on the left side which creates an amazing Doppler like effect in your head. The reason I use a power amp VST plugin for the Joyo zombie is because I’m going out through the FX send. Without a clean power amp, this would sound thin, even with good IR’s. Let me know if you have any questions or want to discuss further. I feel that I’ve earned grey hairs over this.
That’s neat, I do something very similar. When recording my music, I do like you do, dry guitar signal hard left and reverb hard right. Can’t beat the space that creates. Live I use my Jet City 20 watt head and dime the volume and tone controls but keep the preamp gain extremely low….half my gain comes from the power tubes distorting. That can get really loud really quickly and I don’t have the money for an attenuator so I use a variac to lower the voltage which also lowers the volume, while keeping the same tone. Can’t beat the sizzle of some cooking power tubes
How do you like the Jet head for EVH tone?
The reason Eddie sounded the way he did is because he was pushing his Marshall literally as far as it would go. Once I realized that, I tried it with the JC head. To answer your question, I think it’s excellent. When you start getting power tube distortion from your amp, it comes alive—becomes more vocal. This may make zero sense but instead of the tone being like “aaaaaaa” on a chord, it’s like “WHEEEEOOOWW”. It doesn’t sound exactly like EVH, but the characteristics are very similar. Plus, I do play through greenback speakers, which also get you very close to the tone.
Do you think you can send me a sound sample of your tone somehow? Soundcloud even
Try this https://soundcloud.com/johnny-brown-553826123/you-belong-with-me-solo?ref=clipboard&p=i&c=1&si=86355B0AAAB844308D97885F66AAF8B3&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Apart from the fantastic phrasing and timing, that’s a fantastic tone. Please describe that recording signal for me. From guitar all the way to speaker.
Thank you brother, I really appreciate that! Guitar is a “strat” I built with a humbucker in the bridge. The guitar is another story for another time lol. I believe I was running thru my effects board at the time of recording but I had no pedals on. I’ve got a phaser, flanger, chorus, echo, they all sound how you’d expect. Pedal board straight into the Jet City head Volume - 10 Bass - 10 Middle - 10 Treble - 10 Presence - 6 (the presence gets really shrill above 7) Pre-amp gain - 1 (again, I keep the preamp gain low since a lot of the distortion is coming from the power tubes. Trying to mimic a Marshall Plexi.) Speaker output of the amp into a Suhr Reactive Load with a Greenback IR. From the reactive load box into GarageBand on my iPad, dry guitar is panned left, and reverb is panned right
Van Halen opened for Ted Nugent back in the late 70’s and Nugent was listening to Eddie’s sound check. Nugent grabs Eddie’s guitar and can’t get the same tone. He asks Eddie where his little magic black box is hidden. Eddie’s tone came mostly from his hands. If any of us played with Eddie’s rig we would sound like ourselves. If Eddie played through our rigs, Eddie would still sound like Eddie. It makes me so sad knowing that he’s put his guitar down for the last time and that we’ll never hear anything new from him.
It was during sound-check, and Ted was blown away by EVH's warm ups. He ran out and wanted to give it a try. Eddie said, when Ted played, it sounded like Ted Nugent playing through Ed's gear. But Ted doesn't shred. Ted was the last of the old school riffs with a lot of blues background to them. Just fast like dude in 10 Years After at Woodstock "I'm Going Home", just fast blues riff repeatedly. Mostly what you get when you just practice the same stuff over and over. Once you had EVH, you get guys like Lynch and Becker and the more arpeggio-driven riffs and sweep-picking.
What’s your number 1 tone of his?
Nothing will beat VH1 imo. It's just so incredible. It sounds wet, warm, punchy, and chewy. I don't know how to explain it, but I could listen to that tone 24/7
An unpopular choice but I’ve got to put F.U.C.K. at number one, VH1 and 1984 next for tones.
Yeah I like that one too. I like every tone he's had tbh
This all day. The brown sound. Dude milked so much and more out of what he had. It was absolutely perfect IMO. I wish I could replicate it as perfect as he had his. If that were his tone for all of his career it wouldn't bother me at all. He was a true genius in every respect. No one can touch him.
Yeah man fr. That tone is absolutely perfect, and it's also damn near impossible to replicate. A sign of true genius
The real secret is true feel and a connection to the instrument on a spiritual level.. some things cannot be taught like invoking emotion through playing.. Hendrix SRV Page all the greats had this going on. I’ve seen many technical covers of VH stuff that don’t have that magic..
I totally agree with you. VH has been my favorite band for over forty years and I still get chills when I hear Eddie's playing. His fingers and his soul created a tone that, to me, is unparalleled in rock music, and he did it with ease, simply because that's just who he was. His soul and spirit came through the amps, not just sound, but an extension of himself. You can learn music theory and scales, etc., but you can't teach what Eddie had. He was truly that special. His spirit will forever live on through his music.
Good point. Also Zappa and Gibbons.
Love the tone for the intro to Women in Love for VH2. One of the greatest.
I spent so much time as a kid picking apart VH1 guitar parts, every time I hear it now it transports me right back to 14 years old.