What really was Eddie’s Brown Sound???

foreign [Applause] [Music] buddies if you love Ed and you worship that sound you should enjoy this video this is a super nerdy Deep dive into the brown sound [Music] so October 77 Van Halen go into Sunset sound Don Landry and producer Ted templeman may start recording their debut album and we have very little evidence from this period like physical evidence like photos and documentation but one thing we do have is a picture from Don Landy taken from the control room looking into the live room at Studio One sun set sound this was October 77. so this is the tracking of VH1 and we can see exactly I say exactly we can see pretty much what's going on you know what's really important about this photo is the elephant in the room and the elephant in the room is what's on top of the cab yeah see what's on top of that 412. nothing the only time you don't put your ant pen on top of your cab is if you're doing something non-standard with it if you've got that amp head plugged into more equipment that won't fit on top of your cab you want to create a separate stack of equipment that would be the reason you see Eddie's cabs at the back of the stage usually three wide four wide two four twelves and then you pan to the right and sideways on looking across the stage over at Michael Anthony where the Roadie would normally stand and pass guitars are a line of heads usually too wide three wide maybe so you're looking at six or nine amp heads in that zone and these amp heads weren't just his classic Marshall they could be and they were various ones there were band Masters music man's sound cities other Marshals why would they be there young got a distortion pedal at Ed so you can't just switch to a music man or a sound City it's not going to sound anything like Van Halen some video footage I think involving Mark Cameron emerged recently and it shows a load box built by Jose arandondo Ed's famous guitar tech I think he met Jose in the early 70s this was Ed's guy from right back in the beginning and he built a load box which is purported to be exactly the same as Ed's and it's kind of like a tower I'll include some footage it's a tower of resistors huge big fat stick resistors that take the load of the amp you're looking for an impedance load Way Beyond the 16 or 8 ohm load that a cab would provide because what happens is when you turn your Marshall amp up to full like Ed did the load doesn't stay static that the speaker is placing on the amp that load actually increases due to the pressure in the heat and so it will often end up about 20 ohms when the amp is at full bore and that's what Ed's load was made for 20 ohms so you've effectively got this box that will take the entire loader off the amp so you don't need to plug it into the speakers and then it provided a line out signal which could then be fed into another device it could be fed into a recording console so you've got your di with full amp sound I mean this is back in the early 70s he was doing this guys Visionary um so you could take that or which is what he did Let's scan to later period he would take that signal and he would plug it into the harmonizers and The Echoes and then he'd feed those out into another power ramp a number of parents and he'd get a wet dry wet rig okay so using our load box we've now got a line out signal coming out on a jack lead and that line signal can be plugged into another amp why what do you get what you then got was the ability to produce more overtones through more valves but remember what if you've seen the sunset sound interview with Doug Messinger and he played Eddie's guitar sound during the fair warning sessions and he said those harmonics just beamed out of the guitar with no provocation but he said the amp was really quiet now was he looking at the amp head we was probably just playing through the cab and he didn't even see what the Hammerhead was and this is my conjecture is that is is main Marshall head providing all the tone all the wondrous ed sound the brown sound was then plugged into another amp which basically allowed you to get any any volume you needed but the tone would be locked in it would just be the sound at various different volumes something that's hard to do with the Plexi because the Plex is sort of clean all the way up to three or four maybe becomes classic rock somewhere about six I don't feel it sounds really like the Van Halen albums even on 10. there's an extra Sizzle there's an extra sustain involved in those albums that just doesn't seem represented by the gain stage of Marshall Plexi but listen I wasn't there I've got no proof and this is just conjecture is just Theory so enjoy it for what it's worth but if it does get you closer to the brown sound well you could buy me a beer next time you see me all right let's have a go at this then so I've got my guitar this is my H2 Strat that my dad bought me in 83 I think it was um it's got a regular tremolo on it's a Callahan vibrato can you see that the pickup is made by Jalen pickups it's an origin it's really cool the volume pop wallet the tone pop and that's 250k because it takes a bit of trouble off it which is good because these things can be quite bright massively heavy body I've got to be the northern Ash which I think Fender used in 82 so right this is plugged I've not got the effects plugged in but it's plugged into this spray head David Brays made this Coco 50 head it's brilliant I don't think that's exactly what was going on for Van Halen one hence this video but stop going into that and then I'm coming out of that into the line box that David makes I take a speaker an actual speaker load off it so there is a speaker with that sound but I'm taking the line out from that signal and going into currently this what I'm trying out is my groove tubes dual 75 Power Amp that I got years ago and it's amazing and I think it's I think it's working for this so but you can use lots of different types of power amps you can even go into another Marshall front end and just turn it down a little bit more experimentation to video had there but um let me show you what happens with the volume right so [Music] guitars off one and a half [Music] all right so it's kind of it's kind of fendering [Music] so it's kind of I think that's an Eddie sort of funky clean sound [Music] [Applause] and the volume's on two and loads left in the tank so if I go up to [Music] but it's really got that kind of ZZ toppy thing so this is now on seven [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] so that's going up to eight now and then it really takes on all the harmonics this is opened out all the way [Music] everything's popping out at this point [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I think that's what's going on with Van Halen one Van Halen II he didn't reamp it sounds a lot cleaner it sounds more like his his amp sounds but essentially from there onwards he probably reamps again if you enjoyed this and you'd like to see another one you just need to press subscribe and then you'll see it pop into your feed okie dokie thank you very much for now see you later [Music] um

Channel: martin smith guitar

Views: 63,538

Keywords: Eddie Van Halen, Brown Sound, Marshall, Bray coco 50, Variac, Slaving, Jalen pickups, Fender strat, Frankenstrat, Celestion greenback, Guitar, Pete Thorn, Johnny Beane, tone chaser, guitar nerd, paf, hum bucker, Floyd Rose, tremolo, vibrato, pick, herco, humbucker

Id: p5p4O1ZTZGM

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023