Mod 7 : Unleash the brown sound + Marshall plexi sounding way better and cheaper than the sv-20

[asd123asd234sdrf]

because the transistors i used are extremely difficult to find.

Dude. It's not hard at all to get workalike transistors. Like, at all. Like @PelliX said, once you take some measurements, it's child's play. I would work on getting some clips that sound good before worrying about selling anything...

 

[pat_rocks]

Dude. It's not hard at all to get workalike transistors. Like, at all. Like @PelliX said, once you take some measurements, it's child's play. I would work on getting some clips that sound good before worrying about selling anything...

Yeah but I’m not the only one saying this amp sounds better than anything I got at home. The issue as you stated is recording it properly i was waiting my echoplex ep3 but it has been lost in the eBay hub… got unlucky I’ll get a refund and buy another one…

 

[PelliX]

Yeah but I’m not the only one saying this amp sounds better than anything I got at home.

 

[Marcomel79]

Lets see how many pages this thread will produce

 

[Marcomel79]

Yeah but I’m not the only one saying this amp sounds better than anything I got at home.

Who else does?

 

[PelliX]

Who else does?

I'm guessing people who don't own a guitar amp. Or a regular amp with a phono input they can abuse for guitar. Or a mixer with a mic input that could be used in such a fashion. Or, no offense, the deaf.

 

[Marcomel79]

I'm guessing people who don't own a guitar amp. Or a regular amp with a phono input they can abuse for guitar. Or a mixer with a mic input that could be used in such a fashion. Or, no offense, the deaf.

Friends dont count......

 

[SmokeyDopey]

I dont think it is the recording, but the amp itself. Sure the recording can contribute to the thin or tinny sound, but it has like a voltage starved quality, similar to some fuzz pedals that have a bias knob, where it sounds almost like a gate as PelliX pointed out earlier in the thread.

I also thought it could be a low buffer size but it doesnt seem like thats the issue.

Keep at it pat, guitar recording can be really tricky

 

[ElvisNixon]

No, that's further off course to me than the clip I commented on before. I'm having a hard time believing that a stock SV20 with just the Schaffer Storm. True, I haven't used the Storm myself, but it sounds like ultra-harsh solid state clipping or a bad under-voltage situation on a transistor. Is this really guitar -> storm -> SV20 -> cab -> mic?

It’s not the Schaffer Storm that’s the problem with the recording. I bought the original version of the Schaffer several years ago when it came out. I don’t have it handy and can’t remember the model name. I also have a Storm.

What the Scaffer-Vega wireless systems did is eliminate most of the noise that made other earlier wireless devices almost unusable. The design is a “compander” which compresses the sound coming from the belt pack and then an expander circuit on the receiver.

If you’re a dinosaur like me, you may remember that certain cassette decks had DBX noise reduction in addition to Dolby B and C. The DBX system was also a compander based noise reduction system. It compressed the recording and expanded the playback. I’m referring to compressing and expanding of the dynamic range in a circuit rather than a compressor or expanders you see in studio racks.

The Schaffer based pedals tend to be hard to get a bad sound out of unless you’re not using your ears. The effect is very subtle although the Storm gives you enough control to make it sound a little thin. When set right, it seems to better match the impedance between your pickups and the beginning of your effects signal chain if you use it as the first pedal and when you use it as your last pedal, it changes the impedance between your effects and amp.

It’s great for adding a little cut and a different feel to your overall sound, but not anything massively groundbreaking. I can say that I don’t think it’s the whole problem of even a little of @pat_rocks ‘s recording woes. If he’s using his SM57, I would say that’s the sound coming out of his speakers. Just my.02

 

[ElvisNixon]

Who else does?

“They” of course!

 

[ElvisNixon]

I honestly hope you don’t waste all your money trying to sell your amp. All this time and money you claim to have invested. You start by claiming things you regurgitate from internet as your own personal “discoveries” of absolute facts that nobody else but you can figure out. You then are proven wrong and move on to the next unfounded claim.

Now you’re trying to sell these 100 winning slots to buy a $2K amp that judging by the recordings still sound like a symphony of kazoos.

I’ve tried to help you with your recording in past threads and was about to say what was wrong with the equipment list of 5150 studios you posted in another thread) It’s an LA2A peak limiter. I was also going to tell you which piece of gear was most likely to be used on which instrument including the guitar signal chain (it isn’t the Pultec MEQ5). Since this is now a commercial enterprise of yours, I tell you that. I’ll tell you the rest for only $500.

 

[nortiks]

Now you’re trying to sell these 100 winning slots to buy a $2K amp that judging by the recordings still sound like a symphony of kazoos.

ROFL! Now I have to clean the iced tea I spewed off of my monitors! That is soooo funny!

 

[pat_rocks]

I honestly hope you don’t waste all your money trying to sell your amp. All this time and money you claim to have invested. You start by claiming things you regurgitate from internet as your own personal “discoveries” of absolute facts that nobody else but you can figure out. You then are proven wrong and move on to the next unfounded claim.

Now you’re trying to sell these 100 winning slots to buy a $2K amp that judging by the recordings still sound like a symphony of kazoos.

I’ve tried to help you with your recording in past threads and was about to say what was wrong with the equipment list of 5150 studios you posted in another thread) It’s an LA2A peak limiter. I was also going to tell you which piece of gear was most likely to be used on which instrument including the guitar signal chain (it isn’t the Pultec MEQ5). Since this is now a commercial enterprise of yours, I tell you that. I’ll tell you the rest for only $500.

First Point : This amp is a real reproduction of eddies preamp board according to dave friedman.

The only amp available with this preamp board are the sl67 and sl68 so this is already a suficient reason for a vh fan to buy this amp.

Second point : this is has a extra gain stage. Even if we can't prove the amp ever had one. We know that eddie used to slave into mark 2 plexis used them as gain stages. So adding a gain stage to a stock sl68 would be similar but not exactly the same as slaving it. I believe that's why josé used to add 2k7 .68 uf extra gain stages because eddie slaved into mark 2 plexis which had those values for gain stage.

Third point : eddie had a master volume there are tons of proofs and i recently bought the exclusive reprint of the van halen japanese magazine because no one has high quality of the pictures or is willing to scan them in HD. YOu can clearly see a thick potentiometer in the back of the amp in 1978 with a sticker which is probably an arrco sticker. I found on an amp exclusive website a schematic of a josé amp using a special pair of transistors with a different gain stage compared to what he used. I tried it and it instantly boosts mids and remove a lot of bass. It sounds very van halen.





I'm not claiming i'm selling the copy cat of what ed had. but i think i was able to recreate something sounding close by using real accurate values eddies preamp board + josés gain stage and one of josés transistor pair.

fourth point : Removing the 82k resistor makes your amp to transition into a class AB - B amp mimicing the transition of class that ed's amp had with the 20ohm load resistor. And this discovery i made it by accident. That's after i forgot to rewire the 82k rtesistor that i was like wtf... it sounds like a distorded plexi at low volume. Then people on tdpri and someone else explained me why this had this effect and someone brought me to this info :

this is by the music historian and journalist christopher michael about eddies amp :

>The reason why the load resistor is set higher than the selected impedance of the amp selector is because a 100 watt Marshall head at full volume into a resistive load set to the same impedance as the head will put out way over 100 watts, try 160-180 watts. This is because the amp will go into class B mode. When a cabinet is being played at full volume its impedance climbs, especially higher if it is a sealed closed back cabinet. This higher load tends to keep the amp at around 100 watts. A head played into a resistor of the same value will fry the primary windings of the transformer due to the excessive A.C. currents. So increasing the load resistor by at least twice sort of keeps the A.C. currents in the range that the output can deal with, at full volume. This does not muddy the sound. After the potentiometer, it is low impedance source and can drive the effects with no problem. That's why his flanger had so much of a strong effect. The Echoplex is quiet in this setup. If you were to connect a EP3 Echoplex in front inputs to a 100W Marshall on full volume, the noise and hiss levels would be insane.

>When I explained about the value of the load-resistor and the wattage the amp produces, there is a line that says the amp breaks into class B; that is incorrect. When the load increases with pentodes in P-P, the power outpout goes down and the distortion rises. BUT the Class will remain in AB1. The only thing that can change the class of operation into B is by changing the bias to cut-off, which can not happen on its own.



i finally got the damn pictures in high quality at home !

 

[PelliX]

I see that, in the larger picture of things, you've circled back to the amp being the source of your brown sound. Just a thread or two ago, it was all about the pedals. I quote:

Hello guys I was a hard defender of the Jose mods for Van Halen however after getting almost every pedal needed to recreate the sound I can tell you that pedals matter even more than the amp.

[...]

For the gain stages it’s still possible but most of the gain comes from the pedals. here is what I can tell you from my experiments with the pedals

You might have more luck selling complete "Eddie" pedal chains. Throw in a nice board with a decent power supply (no variacs, no crazy old tropical fish caps, no magic diodes) and make a package deal.

First Point : This amp is a real reproduction of eddies preamp board according to dave friedman.

Dave has no idea what the amp was like at the time of recording VH1. Neither was he there, or does he even know which amp may have been used for any given track. Right?

The only amp available with this preamp board are the sl67 and sl68 so this is already a suficient reason for a vh fan to buy this amp.

No; that's a reason to buy an SL67 or 68. Those work without unicorn fairydust unobtanium parts, are backed by warranty, do not require one to take part in a raffle and comply with electrical safety standards. To me and apparently most of everyone they sound better, too.

Second point : this is has a extra gain stage. Even if we can't prove the amp ever had one. We know that eddie used to slave into mark 2 plexis used them as gain stages.

Eh? We *know* that?

Third point : eddie had a master volume there are tons of proofs and i recently bought the exclusive reprint of the van halen japanese magazine because no one has high quality of thee pictures of is willing to scan them.

The plural of proof is proof, and you have none. Are you going to share this elusive magazine re-print, or does that cost, too? EDIT: I see you added some pics...

I found on an amp exclusive website a schematic of a josé amp using a special pair of transistors with a different gain stage compared to what he used. I tried it and it instantly boosts mids and remove a lot of bass. It sounds very van halen.

Regardless of the credibility of this uncited source of dubious integrity, would you finally knock it off on the 'special transistors'? Given that you've spent the best part of one and a half decades, I presume that you understand how a transistor works, right? Humor us; in layman's terms 'how does a transistor work'? Remember what Einstein said; if you cannot explain it simply, you do not understand it well enough.

I'm not claiming i'm selling the copy cat of what ed had.

Yes, you are. How could there be any doubt of this?

but i think i was able to recreate something sounding close by using real accurate values eddies preamp board + josés gain stage and one of josés transistor pair.

Oh, the transistor pair. I'm not into horses, but I detest cruelty to animals and this gratuitous beating of a deceased horse beggars belief. With all due respect, you've had your arse handed back to you so often - pardon my french - that it has more fingerprints than a doorhandle in a public space.

Even if you did somehow create something that sounds good, you won't sell it based on that personal account. When's the studio date?

 

[pat_rocks]

I see that, in the larger picture of things, you've circled back to the amp being the source of your brown sound. Just a thread or two ago, it was all about the pedals. I quote:



You might have more luck selling complete "Eddie" pedal chains. Throw in a nice board with a decent power supply (no variacs, no crazy old tropical fish caps, no magic diodes) and make a package deal.



Dave has no idea what the amp was like at the time of recording VH1. Neither was he there, or does he even know which amp may have been used for any given track. Right?



No; that's a reason to buy an SL67 or 68. Those work without unicorn fairydust unobtanium parts, are backed by warranty, do not require one to take part in a raffle and comply with electrical safety standards. To me and apparently most of everyone they sound better, too.



Eh? We *know* that?



The plural of proof is proof, and you have none. Are you going to share this elusive magazine re-print, or does that cost, too? EDIT: I see you added some pics...



Regardless of the credibility of this uncited source of dubious integrity, would you finally knock it off on the 'special transistors'? Given that you've spent the best part of one and a half decades, I presume that you understand how a transistor works, right? Humor us; in layman's terms 'how does a transistor work'? Remember what Einstein said; if you cannot explain it simply, you do not understand it well enough.



Yes, you are. How could there be any doubt of this?



Oh, the transistor pair. I'm not into horses, but I detest cruelty to animals and this gratuitous beating of a deceased horse beggars belief. With all due respect, you've had your arse handed back to you so often - pardon my french - that it has more fingerprints than a doorhandle in a public space.

Even if you did somehow create something that sounds good, you won't sell it based on that personal account. When's the studio date?

i said the cause oif the gain was the pedals and the slaving. But i never said that the coloring of the distortion was caused by them... this is still an unknown and that's still the mystery. I believe i came close with the 82k and the transistors. But i have no proof that it was done this way and i believe it was not done this way. It's not because you've found a way to emulate a sound that you can't still chase how the original was done...




this a vh2 record session people didn't know if the knob was still there in 1978 because the above picture was too blurry since i bought the reprint and no one scanned it in HD i did it to confirm that he already had this pot on the back in 1978...

 

[PelliX]

this is by the music historian and journalist christopher michael about eddies amp :

>The reason why the load resistor is set higher than the selected impedance of the amp selector is because a 100 watt Marshall head at full volume into a resistive load set to the same impedance as the head will put out way over 100 watts, try 160-180 watts.

So far so good....

This is because the amp will go into class B mode. When a cabinet is being played at full volume its impedance climbs, especially higher if it is a sealed closed back cabinet. This higher load tends to keep the amp at around 100 watts.

No. Just no. Where is this energy going?

A head played into a resistor of the same value will fry the primary windings of the transformer due to the excessive A.C. currents. So increasing the load resistor by at least twice sort of keeps the A.C. currents in the range that the output can deal with, at full volume. This does not muddy the sound. After the potentiometer, it is low impedance source and can drive the effects with no problem.

Not sure what this guy was smoking, or whether he simply has no understanding of the material. Driving a valve amp with an output transformer into a resistive load does not destroy the amp. This is how most cheap attenuators work, ffs.

 

[PelliX]

this a vh2 record session people didn't know if the knob was still there in 1978 because the above picture was too blurry since i bought the reprint and no one scanned it in HD i did it to confirm that he already had this pot on the back in 1978...

You have zero reason to believe that's even a pot. Here's another random theory. Eddie's amps kept popping fuses because of the hacky job Jose did. On stage or even while recording, Eddie got very annoyed by them cutting out all the time. Some tech installed an automatic resettable fuse in that hole so one could push it back and carry on.

Sound ridiculous? Well, so does a lot of this waffle, honestly.

 

[lenheyvan]

Bottom line is that we all love the brown sound of EVH, right?

I am one of them, and recently I modified my Origin 50.
I like it because it has an EVH-like vibe.

 

[pat_rocks]

You have zero reason to believe that's even a pot. Here's another random theory. Eddie's amps kept popping fuses because of the hacky job Jose did. On stage or even while recording, Eddie got very annoyed by them cutting out all the time. Some tech installed an automatic resettable fuse in that hole so one could push it back and carry on.

Sound ridiculous? Well, so does a lot of this waffle, honestly.

Well dave friedman says he believes that it was a master volume. Perhaps he says that because he saw that the red marshall dye was removed on spots where you could wire a josé Master volume.

 

[PelliX]

Well dave friedman says he believes that it was a master volume. Perhaps he says that because he saw that the red marshall dye was removed on spots where you could wire a josé Master volume.

So, let's re-cap. Dave Friedman wasn't there, doesn't know, admits this, but hazards a guess. I wasn't there, don't know and I'll gladly admit it. That puts us on the same level. Technically, you might want to believe me more than Dave. Why, you ask? Because I'm not in the business of building or selling amplifiers. I just fix up the broken ones.