Eddie was an idiot

[blues_n_cues]

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..

 

[NewReligion]

I agree. I have mixed feelings about his BS on his equipment. On one hand I understand that he wanted to keep it to him self but on the other hand he should have just said, it's a family recipe and not handed out disinformation to the millions of kids who chased tone and destroyed Heads, Guitars, Pickups, Cabs etc....

David

 

[Adwex]

I actually tried the string boiling thing once.

Yeah, I was an idiot.

 

[rjohns1]

Every pickup maker in the world now wax pots their pickups, in part by EVH doing it first. The boiling the strings bit is bogus though.

 

[poeman33]

I remember reading that the boiling string thing was to make them fresh again...not to stretch them. And I tried it once on old strings and it did work to a point. It gave them a little life back, but not to new standard. I could see trying this when you were on the road and so broke you were busking to buy a case of beer and couldn't afford to change your strings every day.

 

[blues_n_cues]

I agree. I have mixed feelings about his BS on his equipment. On one hand I understand that he wanted to keep it to him self but on the other hand he should have just said, it's a family recipe and not handed out disinformation to the millions of kids who chased tone and destroyed Heads, Guitars, Pickups, Cabs etc....

David

yeah i know, years ago(like '79) a friend gave me a bolt on neck explorer & i thought it would look cool on my strat- then Kramer came out w/ the banana head strats.
well fuck me runnin'

i still want a chopped black & yellow explorer w/ the turnbuckles.
Google Image Result for http://johnnys-epitaph.com/articles/wcfback.jpg

 

[RiverRatt]

I thought the string boiling thing was because new strings were too bright and he wanted them dead like old strings.

 

[johnfv]

I recall bass players used to boil strings to try to put some life back into them (rather than buying another expensive set), I'd never known anyone to boil guitar strings.

 

[scat7s]

I recall bass players used to boil strings to try to put some life back into them (rather than buying another expensive set), I'd never known anyone to boil guitar strings.

same here

 

[Skotosynthesis]

Yeah, I've talked to some old heads that claim they fried their 800's putting a variac on it b/c they read a/b Eddie doing it in some magazine.
Seems like it was a syndrome back then!
That and slicing perfectly good celestions with pocket knives.

 

[Wycked Lester]

when they first started talking about the variac shit back in the day, they claimed it was used to Raise the voltage to his amp,....then years later in another interview, he claimed that it was to lower the voltage.....?>? who knows,....

also,....i was thinking that explorer was a ibanez, no? Anyway, i read where he used that guitar alot, then when he cut the V in it, it ruined the sound of it. .....or so he says.

 

[Skotosynthesis]

It was always my understanding that it was used to lower the voltage and starve the plate, causing a tube brown-out... resulting in a "Brown Sound." Or something.
but that whole story might be complete bullshit.

 

[66 galaxie]

I think he said it was made of korina and sounded killer.
When he cut the v out of it, it took wood out from the bridge area and he said it lost all its balls and sustain.
I had the poster of that guitar and the story hanging in my jam room forever. I must have read it hundreds of times, but I drank so much back then.....

 

[Wycked Lester]

yea, i think i had the same poster

 

[bluesymetal]

I have a late 70's dimarzio super d in my charvel that I wax potted myself with no problems. It's pretty easy to do without wrecking the pup.

 

[thetragichero]

yeah i've boiled bass strings before and it helped a bit... considering they were five year old strings

 

[AlvisX]

I actually found the guy more influential & inspirational when it came to the gear ,more than musically .I didn't care about no brown sound,neo-classical tappin or any that ,but when it came to fck'n up guitars.....well now ,Im all about that
Reading those interviews as a teenager surely contributed to making me the "scientist" I am today

Wax potting pickups..just dont make it too hot ,just hot enough to liquify

From an article I wrote a couple years ago......

Another major source of DIY inspiration in 1978 was the guitar player in a new band that had just come out ,named Van Halen. Turns out this guy was assembling and playing his own guitars .He tracked down the parts,he cut his own pickguards,he re-wound the pickups
-a true Frankenstein who wasn't afraid to mess up a guitar if it helped him get to where he was trying to go.
Oh yeah, he was a pretty good guitar player too

Here's the whole article if you need somethin to read ...

http://www.mojomusic.com/alvin/pdf/fretboardjournal2009.pdf

 

[TwinACStacks]

ALVIN!!!! Put down that Telecaster.

You don't know where it's been....


TWIN

 

[__HM__]

First off, I wax all my pups in candle wax. Duncans, Gibsons, any humbucker gets dipped in straight up candle wax, in a double boiler on the oven. I cant even tell ya'll how many times its cured squeel. For me, anyways.

Second, I dunno about guitar strings, but I boil bass strings all the time (even more so - upright bass strings). Those suckers are expensive, and boiling em stretches em and keeps em clean as new. I know some guys with P basses from the 60s and 70s that've never bought a new set of strings. My brother's double bass has the same strings he bought it with in 1992, and they look new, cause he boils em.

Just sayin', maybe not *everything* EVH said about his gear was bullshit...

 

[bluesymetal]

First off, I wax all my pups in candle wax. Duncans, Gibsons, any humbucker gets dipped in straight up candle wax, in a double boiler on the oven. I cant even tell ya'll how many times its cured squeel. For me, anyways.

Second, I dunno about guitar strings, but I boil bass strings all the time (even more so - upright bass strings). Those suckers are expensive, and boiling em stretches em and keeps em clean as new. I know some guys with P basses from the 60s and 70s that've never bought a new set of strings. My brother's double bass has the same strings he bought it with in 1992, and they look new, cause he boils em.

Just sayin', maybe not *everything* EVH said about his gear was bullshit...

+1 my dimarzio's squealed like a pig prior to wax potting them. I used parifin (sp?) wax though. Using a double boiler, it couldn't be easier to do. Also my bass player boils his strings to get more life out of them.