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Hi-rez of Ed's live pedalboard in Japan
EVH
- Thread starter LeftyLoungeLizard
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TSJMajesty
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I always thought he used the variacs to lower the voltage. Although I do recall Eddie used to lie about his gear in his early days, and he didn't exactly say he raised the voltage, only that "you can."
Replacing tubes every day!
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I always thought he used the variacs to lower the voltage. Although I do recall Eddie used to lie about his gear in his early days, and he didn't exactly say he raised the voltage, only that "you can."
Replacing tubes every day!
I've gone down the variac route (still have mine but haven't used it in a while). Had to swap out the bias resistor to do so, however.
The trick is to first lower the voltage, then bias the powert00bz. Many assume you just lower the voltage and that's all.
Hard to say for sure with Ed - it's very possible at one point in time he tried turning up the voltage... and promptly fried things.
He did apologize in print soon after for what he said in previous article about turning up the variac.
But generally I'd say he was lowering it 89-90 VAC on the albums. Live could be even lower in the old days and club days.
I have one clip from back when I did the variac thing (although the rest of the circuit wasn't "Ed spec", more a bastardized JTM45/1987 thing):
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Very interesting snippet from Young Guitar (Japan) interview:
cragginshred
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Who carried all those heads in the early days??
TSJMajesty
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Dave's groupies.
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Robin "Rudy" Leiren
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BahamaDada
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Everytime I take a deep dive into pics of Eddie's gear I get the feeling pretty much everything was just duct tape and badassery.
cragginshred
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It is well known they did not have much money but all those heads and gear cost $$ Did Ed have a job in HS or how did he fund all that prior to getting a record deal?
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IIRC both brothers had paper delivery routes.
Plus his father helped out both brothers as shown in my earlier pic:
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cragginshred
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No idea who that is other than you said he was a roadie?
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He was Ed's first personal gear tech / roadie who stayed with him until '85 ish. Rudy was with Ed from the very beginning.
Read this interview with Steve Rosen:
Robin "Rudy" Leiren's ONLY Interview...unpublished from Steve Rosen!
Hi everyone! I'm really excited to share here, for the first time, THE only official interview that Edward Van Halen's longtime friend and guitar technician Robin "Rudy" Leiren has, to the best of my knowledge, ever given. Steve Rosen was kind enough to entrust me with transcribing the audio...
www.vhlinks.com
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James Freeman
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All these images of his gear tell me that his tone was never about the gear, it was really just a cranked plexi boosted by an eq pedal and the delay circuitry.
If there is a guitarist that the saying "all in the fingers" is most true about, it's Eddie.
If there is a guitarist that the saying "all in the fingers" is most true about, it's Eddie.
cragginshred
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Why did he part ways with Rudy in 85? My work computer will not let me pull that website up to read the article, but thanks!
