These go to eleven

:)

You are kidding. Thats the greatest guitar player ever to draw breathe.

he looked sorta like jeff beck, but too young and don't think he does comedy. :D

That guy is my hero.

He is currently writing a classical piece in D minor which he claims is the 'saddest of all keys' and is provisionally entitled 'Lick My Love Pump'.

No, Jeff Beck sorta looked liked Him. Lets just say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery...

........or flatulence, as the case may be.

"Break Like The Wind"

Awesomeness at its most awesome.

Word on the street is that Marshall is about to release a limited
edition Nigel Tufnel Signature Series Amp, something that they have
only done for the likes of Jimi Hendrix in the past. Look for this
100W head and Celestion packed cab to hit the street at a cool price
of $24,999 (£12425.5679). This amp goes well beyond the limited
edition Tufnel Amp that was released back in 1990 which hit a cool
20 on the volume knob...the inside word is that the new amp has
the capability to hit 21.

More info on Nigel's previous Marshall collaboration:

http://www.spinaltapfan.com/articles/marshall.html


btw...did any of you guys notice the limited edition Chet Atkins
blonde Gretsch Country Gentleman that was located inside of the
special sound and bullet proof 'cone of silence' showcase in that
video? that axe is truely one of a kind...

+1 http://mywebpages.comcast.net/NickBu...ot_worthy2.gif

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1766409

Spinal Tap reunites at Live Earth, along with "every bass player in the known universe." Featuring bassists from Foo Fighters, Metallica, David Grey Band, Bloc Party, Madonna, The Beastie Boys, and more.

FWIW, here is a real '50s Orange Gretsch 6120 that will probably end at less than $15k. The $24k asking price for that Brian Setzer reissue is laughable, IMO.


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230150197760

Well folks, it just keeps getting better. EVH now has a "custom" Celestion speaker. (Think same old-same old with his red stripes on a sticker slapped on the magnet).

Celestion EVH Announcement

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1184639991.jpg

Yeah, but I believe they only come in his new amp and can't be bought separately.

A buddy of mine had a pickup go bad in his EVH Ernie Ball Music Man. EB would only replace it if he sent them the bad pickup first, no matter what he paid. They did not want those stray DiMarzios floating around out there.

and those are the most amazing speakers with a red and white striped
sticker on the back that you are ever going to hear...

(until the next reissue)

EVH or not, Celestions are good speakers and supposedly these were reverse engineered from his famous old Marshall Plexi. You gotta admit, his old Plexi is one of the best sounding amps of all time. He got a good one and he got it when he was 16. He even used it on the fisrt few tours until it got lost for a while, and when he got it back, it didn't leave his house anymore after that.

Indeed.

And above all, Eddie Van Halen deserves respect for borrowing on this very mystique to this day to make a buck. (His amp was nothing different to what anyone else was using back then....or, now for that matter.)

Pity he isn't (seemingly) able to do it by writing music any more though.

You know Ed has literally mountains of unreleased recordings. While there's always drama going on with the VH, the band, Ed is pretty tireless when it comes to making music and building gadgets. We're still seeing late night tv commercials about unreleased Elvis or Beatles stuff. Imagine how long that stuff will go on for once Ed passes on.

i hope to very old before ed passes.. :( being such a huge, huge fan of his back in my high school/college days of the early-80's, i appreciate all the info you have on ed, rick. i only thought i knew a lot about 'him'. guess what i knew was limited mostly to his playing techniques, which i tried to emulate in those days..

I love the guy too. He's why I started playing, as goes for probably a million other kids in the 80's. But he hasn't been taking good care of himself. I sure wish they'd get their act back together WITH Mike and Dave and hit the road. It wouldn't take much time at all to cobble together an album or two from the stuff he has laying around. And they'd outsell the Police reunion tour.

true..i'd be eager to see the original lineup. i'm not much for live concerts anymore, but the last i'd seen in years was when vh came through little rock back in the fall of '04. i've followed how rough he'd gotten in appearances, but hear he's recently emerged from rehab with short blonde locks. hope he's doing well. i'd love to see his playing 'partially mature' into something like what clapton represents for his generation...seeing ed maybe start doing some 'unplugged' work or really 'whammy blues'.. ;) but he's a rocker through and through..i hope he keeps performing, living up to his legend. he has nothing to prove..just always a treat to hear the man's fingers at work.

That "reunion" tour in '04 was slammed by a lot of folks, but I must have caught them on a particularly good night. Ed looked great, in super physical shape, tanned, rested, sober and he played like a champ. I was about 15 ft. back from center stage too. Best $50 I've spent in a while.

+1...my brother, who's only 28, but grew up hearing me pounding out ed's licks and his music, and i were on row four, center stage. he was all over it then. awesome. i was hoarse when i left. and man, i fought all over the place to try and get a pick..stuck around afterwards, but they had already combed every sq. mm.

EVH's famous "brown tone" was imo his best sound.
You can really hear it best on the song "Fools" off of, i think
"Women and Children First" album...where he is dual riffing
with Dave's voice...that tone is/was his best

Supposedly he wired his Marshall with a Variac (rotational pot), to add
additional voltage to the input stage which created this tone...

Aha! But the Variac is a legend started by EVH himself. I have a Guitar mag. from a year or so ago where he says he used the Variac to actually LOWER the voltage so he wouldn't blow his amps up. But back in the famous interview from 1980 or so where he supposedly revealed all his secrets, he said just the opposite. In the more recent interview, he says he lied in the past to throw people off. I read an interview with his old guitar tech, Rudy Leiren, once where he said an EVH soundcheck consists of rolling the length of your index finger along the bottoms of all the knobs on the Marshall heads until they're all on 10. Do that a few hours a night and you would have to have something like a Variac or light dimmer switch to keep from melting your amps.

Oh, and everyone knows the best EVH ever sounded was at Jeff Spicoli's birthday party.

Eds full of doubletalk... anyway, the tone on W&CF was his best...
however he got there is his biz. :) I wasnt at Spic's B Day
bash so I wouldnt know about that...

screw EVH; Knopfler all the way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW21mHcrE9Q

So what is the final vote on how Eddie used the Variac... was it turned up or down? I heard the old story that he used it to lower the voltage. BTW a Variac is a variable transformer so once you go above the input voltage what you gain in voltage you loose in current. Not sure how that would effect a tube amp but you don't get something for nothing.

I have no idea how he used the Variac for real. I wouldn't be surprised if he had tinkered with it as well. He also had a guy named Jose Arrendondo in LA who modified his Marshalls for him. Lots of secrets there and no one really knows what the hell he was doing. But as with any great axe slinger, the real talent is in the hands. EVH would make a plywood axe through a Wal Mart amp sound good.

Wal-Mart carries amps? Whoa, I'm all over that!

Too bad EVH has a new amp deal.... otherwise he could have
Marshall do a $25000 re-issue of his famous brown-tone Variac amp, complete with coke razor scratches that occured while
cutting lines and tracks in the studio circa 1978.

Don't forget the Schlitz Malt Liquor pounder empties.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1184714368.jpg

Just found this gem on some of his secrets.

http://mr5150.vhvault.com/evh-brown-sound.html

There is a reason why he spent so much time modding amps/guitars/playing with effect.

great link, rick. thanks for pasting it...cool read.

Are you saying he can't play well? I think the reason he tinkered so much is because he just didn't like anything right off the shelf and honestly, back in those days, there wasn't 1/10 of the equipment, gadgets, mods and customized stuff available that there is now. When I first visited CA in 1996, I wanted to go see the music store in Pasadena where EVH got all his stuff before he got famous. It was called Dr. Music. It had almost no inventory but mostly sheet music. I was sure I was at the wrong place. Then I saw an almost hidden Polaroid of EVH pinned up behind the cash register. It was him with the guy who was working the register and was taken in 1980. Nowadays, you'd just go to Guitar Center or some online place to get whatever you wanted. Back then, you had to make it. No one made Strat-style guitars with humbuckers in them back then.

+1...i was buying gear about that same time. there wasn't diddly squat worth a damn off the shelf so to speak. in evh's hands, a ukulele would sound like a friggin' string quartet. ;)

When I bought my first real guitar, a Kramer, I had to order it through the only music store in our town. It took two months. And the Kramer factory was not even that far from my house either! The next nearest good music store was about 30 miles away. Both are still there and doing well, despite competition from the big box music stores. The first Guitar Center I ever saw was the one on the Strip in LA. What an amusement park that place was for me. I had never seen anything like it. Now I live walking distance from one and might go there once or twice a year for supplies. We are spoiled nowadays.

rick, i wanted a kramer in a seriously bad way in about '84, but wound up buying a red charvel model four with kahler tremolo. it was a walnut neck, but a pretty capable screamer. also had a u.s. strat with a maple neck and a body paint scheme called 'marble'..do you remember the guitar? had lot's of red, white, gray and black in it..looked like someone just tissed paint all over it. sweet-looking guitar. i always found the basic start neck best for blues/bending notes..the charvel for tapping, whammying and shredding. i still have a few old cassettes of my playing back in those days. fun to listen to every once in a while. by '90 i'd gotten rid of my electrics in favor of a hand-made alvarez yairi nylon-string, but i've been all acoustic piano since soon after that, having begun 25 years ago. i play 'cocktail' piano for volunteer at retirement centers. ed would be like, wtf?? :D