"Guitarists": Exploiting our demographic has gone too far

[bigchillcar]

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.

[Rick Lee]

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.

[bigchillcar]

+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.

[Sonic dB]

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...

[Rick Lee]

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.

[Rick Lee]

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

[Sonic dB]

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...

[ToddM]

screw EVH; Knopfler all the way

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

[scottmandue]

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.

[Rick Lee]

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.

[Jim Richards]

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

[Sonic dB]

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.

[Rick Lee]

Originally posted by Sonic dB
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.

[Rick Lee]

Just found this gem on some of his secrets.

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

[Az911]

Originally posted by Rick Lee
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.

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

[bigchillcar]

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

[Rick Lee]

Originally posted by Az911
There is a reason why he spent so much time modding amps/guitars/playing with effect.

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.

[bigchillcar]

+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.

[Rick Lee]

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.

[bigchillcar]

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??