Eddie was an idiot

[HoboMan]

wax potting pickups- yeah it works on 1 of 5 the other 4 you melt the insulation & solder

boiling strings to stretch them?? oh come on,,,,

we know Ed liked to fuck w/ people in interviews back in the day but he was also on the "white train"..


just an old guitar world (1980ish)i was reading- made me laugh.

btw- Mr. Zog's tropical water sex wax works best if yer gonna do this or Burt's bees real honey wax-the same chit ya use to wax yer old lady's private parts- lower boiling point..

I've wax potted a lot of PUs and never ruined any of them.
You're definitely doing something wrong if you ruin 4 out of five.

 

[distortion9]

....and apparently there's a "top secret" way he winds them too, he specifically wouldn't elaborate - again who knows whats true and what's BS.....

From what I remember, he would keep turning the ball end of the strings as he wound, making sure they wouldn't twist..he wanted them to stay straight.

More interestingly, he would wind them from the bottom of the post UP so that there would be little angle break over past the nut.

This was pre-Floyd Rose when he was using a standard Strat type trem...theory being that the straighter the strings were, the better they would stay in tune.

 

[ReiGnMaN]

wax potting pickups- yeah it works on 1 of 5 the other 4 you melt the insulation & solder

boiling strings to stretch them?? oh come on,,,,

we know Ed liked to fuck w/ people in interviews back in the day but he was also on the "white train"..


just an old guitar world (1980ish)i was reading- made me laugh.

btw- Mr. Zog's tropical water sex wax works best if yer gonna do this or Burt's bees real honey wax-the same chit ya use to wax yer old lady's private parts- lower boiling point..

I love posts like this.... mainly because after reading I always think "I'm sorry, who are you and what have you done?...."

Sorry, he did most of that stuff and he'll be the first to tell you he ruined plenty of gear trying things out....

 

[John 14:6]

From what I remember, he would keep turning the ball end of the strings as he wound, making sure they wouldn't twist..he wanted them to stay straight.

More interestingly, he would wind them from the bottom of the post UP so that there would be little angle break over past the nut.

This was pre-Floyd Rose when he was using a standard Strat type trem...theory being that the straighter the strings were, the better they would stay in tune.

I think Eddie probably did something like this little trick to keep his Stratocaster tremolo in tune. It really does work. You should also lube all the contact points. The guitar will stay in tune with heavy use of the bar. The lube with keep the strings from snagging when you bend. I have a couple of Malmsteen Strats that just do not go out of tune.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Oyc6slYRc]‪How to keep your Strat tremolo in tune. Frudua Way - www.frudua.com‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Wiseblood]

From what I remember, he would keep turning the ball end of the strings as he wound, making sure they wouldn't twist..he wanted them to stay straight.

More interestingly, he would wind them from the bottom of the post UP so that there would be little angle break over past the nut.

This was pre-Floyd Rose when he was using a standard Strat type trem...theory being that the straighter the strings were, the better they would stay in tune.

That makes sense, his whole point in the section where I read what I read/posted, was everything he did was to work toward getting his guitar to stay in tune, which is why he said he used 8-42's as well...

 

[Papus]

Eddie is full of shit same as Blackmore, Page, Clapton etc etc.
They all tell tall tales to protect their mojo

 

[eaglewolf]

I didn't follow EVH much after about 1981, so I really didn't know a lot of the issues people had with him. Basically he sounded like a jerk from what I've read - and the comments here tend to indicate the same thing.

Whatever grievance I had about his personality though, I absolutely adored his playing. When it gets down to it, that is the primary thing for a guitarist you don't have to work with. Malmsteen didn't impress me in the interviews I read about him either, but I wouldn't take anything away from his playing because of it.

David

 

[TheLoudness!!]

I still can't believe people are going out of the way to get that EVH sound. If everybody found that sound, it would be a boring world because thousands of guitarists would sound like him. Gear is still only a portion of the sound. There are to many variables from the way one picks to how hard they grip the strings. The player is MOST of the sound you are hearing but the gear helps a specific guitarist find the sound they are known for or are comfortable with. David Gilmour hates locking nut tremelo system's while EVH uses them frequently...

Most everything you read from famous guitar players is complete bullsh**. Why would they go out of their way to tell all these magazines what equipment that they REALLY used??

It's like Dimebag. I am a Pantera guy for sure but I do not believe that he always used Randall's. During the "Reinventing The Steel" tour, there was a massive wall of Randall Warhead's but backstage there a VHT Pitbull. As the owner of a VHT, They can do that boomy Pantera sound with ease. Who knows all what Dimebag REALLY used.

Signature gear works the same way. Half of the time, they don't even use it. It's a mind game for sheep tricking you into buying it thinking that if you buy it- you are going to nail this or that tone. Often times if you see a signature guitar, the one the artist uses is custom made by a luthier to replicate a signature guitar. It's sad but true and all about the $$$. I had a Dimebag Washburn 333. Horrible guitar to say the least. I also had a Randall Warhead. That amp was unreliable and had all the tone of a failing am transistor radio. I would have not pissed on that amp if had caught fire...

Live and learn....very few singature models are even worth looking at IMO. One of them is a Les Paul and the other is a Slash Jubilee. To each his own though...

 

[gdh1532]

I worked sound/lights and played since 1975, I can remember lots of players coming in with variax, and load resistors, back then they were big, to keep them cool, the load resistors were placed in distilled water. Lots of the amps were modded back then, it just wasn't well known. Even players like Joe Walsh had their amps modded.

I met Dimebag for the first time back in early 80's. Playing mostly cover tunes, name of the band "pantera". He switched over to Randall's, he used them
I met him again in 89' . He was having a amp sale at their studio Pantego . I went and it was all Randall amps, and cabs. I purchased a Randall RG 100HT blue faced rack mount .
If I was playing smaller clubs I used this amp, sounded real close to my modded 800's

Probably the Ramdalls he used on tours were tweaked to his needs. I've played other RG 100's. None of them sound like this one, don't know what was done to it, but it sound great.

 

[jwebb1970]

Regardless of the cool tunes and playing style (which he did not invent, only capitalized upon - see Allan Holdsworth, whom he credited in an early interview), anyone who has followed Eddie over the years has seen his true colors; and should take any tech tips he has handed out with a grain of salt.

But in all fairness, he came from an era when musicians and techs in general were not generous with their 'secrets' like they are today. Guitarists in particular tried to hide their best riffs and electronic tricks. Discovering the marketing potential for such 'secrets', and of course the Internet is what brought much of what we discuss freely into the light. Good thing too!

I recall an old interview w/ EVH where he stated that back in the club days, DLR used to try & convince Ed to play w/ his back turned to the crowd, so other guitar players in the audience couldn't see what he was doing. Again....grain of salt, but it does go along with others from that era not wanting to dole out thier secrets to the masses.

As for those who toasted their Marshall heads trying to use a Variac....I also recall EVH talking about that & how doing so would lead to the power tubes lasting roughly a few hours in the studio before they "melted"....that right there would have been a red flag to maybe NOT try and do this. Just get a freaking OD pedal & save your amp.

 

[jwebb1970]

That makes sense, his whole point in the section where I read what I read/posted, was everything he did was to work toward getting his guitar to stay in tune, which is why he said he used 8-42's as well...

And supposedly his pre-Floyd Frankenstrat had a brass nut w/ the slots cut too big. Helped prevent the strings from hanging up @ the nut, but also led to his low E string having a tendency to pop out of its nut slot often. I recall this from the fairly recent Fender/EVH Frankenstein & 5150 III promo videos.

 

[jwebb1970]

I think Eddie probably did something like this little trick to keep his Stratocaster tremolo in tune. It really does work. You should also lube all the contact points. The guitar will stay in tune with heavy use of the bar. The lube with keep the strings from snagging when you bend. I have a couple of Malmsteen Strats that just do not go out of tune.

‪How to keep your Strat tremolo in tune. Frudua Way - www.frudua.com‬‏ - YouTube

My current Strat has locking tuners & a 2 point trem bridge. I take a sharpened #2 pencil & grind the "lead" (carbon) into each nut slot whenever I change out a string. The bridge does not float, but I have it set up so that it just sits flush w/ the body - almost ready to float @ normal string tension I get much of the "floaty" feel w/o having any play in the opposite direction (I like to go to drop D tuning a lot & this way the rest of the guitar stays in tune - and keeps tuning if a string breaks, too).

Over time, the ground in carbon has begun to impregnate the slots of the bone nut. Eventually, I may not need to do the pencil thing much at all.

The things simply stays in tune.

 

[mickeydg5]

GRAIN OF SALT, all with a grain of salt

If you heat your strings to over 1300 celcius it will make them sound exceptionally fluid.

 

[jwebb1970]

GRAIN OF SALT, all with a grain of salt

If you heat your strings to over 1300 celcius it will make them sound exceptionally fluid.

Not to mention the really awesome glow they will give off just before "fluidity".

 

[racersteen68]

i boiled my humbucker.
sounded HOT!