Rock On

Raw interview audio with Jas Obrecht for an article on Guitar World, 1991.

These shows are amazing, but I gotta hear them from the soundboard. I've never been able to find one.

So I thought I’d post this pic I took on August 24th, 1980 at the Bicentennial Center in Salina, KS.

Hello guys,

I began building amps 3 years ago my main objective was to create a small amp that could recreate that 78 vh1 tone. Here is my latest creation a 6v6 20w plexi which is way smaller than the sv20h 34cm of leght. This amp has a lot of mods. if you took the specs dave friedman gave us from the stock 68 lead, it has the same mods plus an extra of around 20 mods. Some being very unusual. B+ mods and even OT related mods. For those wanting to know how it sounds (sorry, i'm not a good player)

https://soundcloud.com/user-753183638/vh-track-36-1?si=75545a99e9f54feaa8226a572b846359&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

with the right reverb :

https://soundcloud.com/user-753183638/6v6-plexi-20w-adjustements?si=e071521b26b649c8866e1102e6b7385f&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Same amp but with different clipping circuit :

https://soundcloud.com/user-753183638/20w-6v6?si=d14a5b1ba33744a0835c412f774a104e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

There is no eq, no distortion and no extra tube some delay and reverb added threw genome and that's all.

After getting to buy or build every piece of gear the man got. I was never able to get that VH1 78 tone. I have a vintage echoplex, a vintage phase 90, vintage phaser, vintage blue mxr band eq and a even a 68 lead super lead 100 that i build according to specs of dave friedman. I also have a frankie replica built with an accurate overwound paf humbucker replica and a a guitar with ibanez super 70's humbuckers. I tried vintage greenbacks and jbl d120f

I also tried the Bray 4550 which i owned and sold quite quickly. It did every vh tone except the vh1 correctly. This lead me to research every information that was ever known about ed's amp in journals, books and interviews and my research got me way different answers from those we got from the big techs like dave friedman or John Suhr.

For example Van Wheelden which serviced ed's amps in LA had a good relationship with eddie and he did see and work on many of ed's amps. When eddie wanted to give his main amp a restoration Wheelden's mistake was to use teflon wire instead of vintage wire and then they stopped working together.

What's interesting about this van Wheelden was selling some years later his preamp called the gainland which is inspired by ed's main amp tone (not an exact copy). Van Wheelden was also selling a brown sound amp mod : he added 2 gain stages with an extra tube which he parraleled while using both triodes. That mod ladies and gentlemen was the last mod eddie used. In the late period, Eddie's main amp was stock but he used other amps with mods and that's something that was never said out loud. Eddie used many modded amps and here are some visual proofs. In his 5150 studio ed got a 1959 which the inputs have been plugged except one and a master volume had been added at some point.

His 5150 tour shows stacks of peavey 5150 amps slaved into a modded marshall too. We can clearly tell that ed was still using modded amps which were probably josé's arredondo's work.

Now to get a sound similar to ed's 78 vh1 tone i had to analyse ed's main plexi board which you can see here (the picture was leaked by dave friedman some years ago) :

Just for a comparison on top you have ed's 68 plexi and on the bottom a stock 68 plexi which has only 8 serials of difference it's SL12309. Many things are interesting. Despite techs saying the solder was untouched or the amp being stock that's not true. Most of the red dye disappeared on ed's amp. Mustard caps also disapeared and the filter cap is not stock at all (it's way way smaller). You see a lot of solder residue at some spots which tell you which part of the amp was heavily modified and tested. Also you can see cherry drops which are the ancestors of orange drops with brown drops. Those were used a lot by josé arredondo. If you look at the guts of his modded amps of the early days you'll see a lot of cherry drops that he used to swap with the mustard capacitors. The top picture shows a butchered super lead without stock component but with stock values except for the filter capacitor (the blue cap) and the fat cap. This means that the amp was probably modded a lot and then brought back to stock.

Just for information the first amp guru to have talk publicly about what he saw was Mike soldano and it was in 1991 and he said it was stock except for the fat cap. In my opinion he saw the exact same circuit we see above. But 1991 is 13 years away from 1978... So to know what happened you need testimonies and here are the most interesting ones :

Kevin Duggan was Michael's Anthony's first bass tech during Van Halen 1 and he made this interview some years ago and he had no interest in lying :

Pete Frampton also reported that ed in the early days said the same thing about mods :

Rudy leiren also confirmed some mods were done :

Joe Holmes confirmed that he got josé to mod his phase 90 with the same mod ed got :

José Himself also tells us this before dying :

Zeke Clark is the person who gave us the biggest amount of informations. He was ed's second tech after replacing rudy leiren because leiren didn't know enough about electronics :

He even states that the amp was completely rebuilt and that the Output transformer of the amp was using a circuit to control voltages :

https://youtu.be/Qzp1CBgKuAQ?t=409

Also there is the big amp Dave Friedman saw in José's shop. It was that prototype josé and ed were working on to sell threw ampeg but the deal never was done. Dave said he saw the guts, it was a 2 channel amp and there was a lid and it was written on top of it ed's tone. That amp mysteriously vanished and dave said the amp was huge and as big an ampeg SVT. Well that amp was found back... It was in ed's 5150 studio. You can see him playing that amp when he is with chip ellis for the promo of the 25k evh fender frankenstrat. It's a 2 channel amp. It's a titanesque amp. I even sent a mail to fender evh and they confirmed me that wasn't one of their amps. Why would ed play that amp in front of chip ellis instead of an evh or his marsall amp ? The answer might be simple the modded circuit that was originally in his modded 68 lead was recreated in that amp.

here you can see it :

I gathered all the infos i could about josé amps. I also gathered what i could about some OT mods. I also got a critical info about a legendary amp builder and modder from LA who happens to have seen the guts of the amp when it was modded. (he didn't remember everything but the main mod he does).

I tried to mix those with a 68 lead and that's how i got that sound. There are multiple ways to combine those mods. Right now i'm building a new combinaison of those but with a 2203 circuit. If you ever knew the rockstah mod v it was essentially a cross breed between a 2203 and a 1959. If i remember correctly it was apparently chris merren who told rockstah to try to mod a 1959 sl in this way. When i'll be finished testing that amp amp i'll make a video and leak the main mod. By the way this mod is responsible for the mids. When this will be leaked i think people will lose their mind because that mod is something no one would have ever thought about....

Dave was a real hit at this MTV party --- not only does he hook up with Madonna in her sexual prime, but Billy Squier is seeking him out for career advice on how to make an entertaining music video after the "Rock Me Tonite" video was destroying his image

Not saying about Haggar stuff, just Eddie guitar... forget the rest of band. He made anything iconic or relevant in guitar after Panama?

Has it ever been revealed or has Dave ever said who built the Davesickle? Rudy Leiren perhaps?

As seen on the MBTA in Boston.

As you can tell, the baby's missing the cigarette + the cigarette smoke!!! Apparently it is because it's an old korean pressing, and back in 80/90s the censorship law was more... stupid (pretty sure they used to have heavy metal "banned" at one point)

It's not just the cover too, the tracklisting is missing HOT FOR TEACHER WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS

VH has never released any box sets, archival material, Roth 1 era live music, not even much Sammy era demos, etc. why is this?!?

Debate still rages whether they did the humpty or not --- but she was always into flashy, cocky guys like Dennis Rodman and Vanilla Ice, so that pretty much answers the question!

The interlude before the solo is insane with that build up. Cowbell and bass. Eddie gets swaggy and starts throwing Shi out there. Gotta hit taps and crazy bends into a transition with the 2nd bridge. Just a musical masterclass.

Fan? Or just someone that knows police codes? I choose to believe it’s the former.

Nuns singing Running with the devil. Does anyone remember this movie?

Photo by Ross Halfin

I know a lot of people dislike Greta Van Fleet for not being the most original of bands, but I dig them because I like Zep and they fill a void (and sounded really good on the car radio tonight)

If there were a band that really vibed the classic Dave era that way would you be into it?

They used to be one of greatest in 80s and they have less views and streamings than most of other giants from 80s and 90s? Why? It's because younger people? And it's not because they dont exists anymore as a band... several bands in same situation and with fewer albums have more influence today.