'70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

[Chickenwings]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

I have an old mag i bought back in the mid 80s when i was a van halen nut. He says that he used a PAF, which he rewound (I am assuming hotter) then dropped into a can of parrafin wax. Apparently he toasted a lot of pickups doing this because he said if you leave it in too long, the heat will melt the wire. So going by this, i guess the closest you will get off the shelf to a frankenstein would be based on a Paf with extra windings...
Would that be a custom 5? Or would that be too hot? Perhaps one of Seymour's EVH (evenly voiced harmonics! ha!) pickups....
I think the JB thing is not quite what Eddie had in mind when he was destroying/rewinding old pafs to make his perfect pickup. He did state that "kids to day just don't care, they just slap a dimarzio in there and say - Hey Its Rock and Roll! But I (evh) was looking for a certain tone...."
So at a guess perhaps a custom 5 would be the best match these days....

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

I have an old mag i bought back in the mid 80s when i was a van halen nut. He says that he used a PAF, which he rewound (I am assuming hotter) then dropped into a can of parrafin wax. Apparently he toasted a lot of pickups doing this because he said if you leave it in too long, the heat will melt the wire. So going by this, i guess the closest you will get off the shelf to a frankenstein would be based on a Paf with extra windings...
Would that be a custom 5? Or would that be too hot? Perhaps one of Seymour's EVH (evenly voiced harmonics! ha!) pickups....
I think the JB thing is not quite what Eddie had in mind when he was destroying/rewinding old pafs to make his perfect pickup. He did state that "kids to day just don't care, they just slap a dimarzio in there and say - Hey Its Rock and Roll! But I (evh) was looking for a certain tone...."
So at a guess perhaps a custom 5 would be the best match these days....

And do not forget about the Gospel of Gear according to EVH...:lmao:

 

[oilpit]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

I will say that the Custom 5 is not even remotley EVHish...
The EQ is all wrong...

 

[jafo]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

You could probably accomplish this by eq and compression, but EVH's pick attacks and tone usually sound more like A2 than A5 to me -- more "softer and warmer" than "sharper and brighter." There's a wider treble in his tone than you usually find in A2, so I'm pretty sure he uses unmatched coils (well, in the old days, at least).

Maybe it's A4; that was the most common mag in the old PAFs, after all, and would account for much of the tone and attack characteristics.

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Not to forget he sometimes used metal picks..!

 

[jafo]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Oh yeah, I did forget that, actually.

Amazes me, actually, how he managed to use so much radically different gear and still end up sounding like himself. Kinda makes me wonder why he bothered to tweak stuff...

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O3P8cL5Zec
Black pup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glJve8dDwfI

Cream pup

What are they?

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Right, no answer...impossible?

 

[YHWH]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Right, no answer...impossible?

... that first link led to some MTV thing they did in '91. Except for the round black pickup on Ed's Chet Akins acoustic/electric and the EMGs in the Steinberger, I can't see black pups anywhere else in the vid.


The "Unchained" Strat w/ the extra thick mahogany body looks like it had a rewound DMZ PAF. No cream bobbins were available on Duncans back then...

 

[jhale667]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

The "Unchained" Strat w/ the extra thick mahogany body looks like it had a rewound DMZ PAF. No cream bobbins were available on Duncans back then...

You sure about that? I could swear I have a Duncan catalog from '83-84 (first one I got, I think) that had a picture of a double cream pickup in it...? :scratchch

 

[Budweiser]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Eddie used '59's on the first few albums. He told me the other day when he dropped by for a beer.

:friday: :27:

 

[YHWH]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

You sure about that? I could swear I have a Duncan catalog from '83-84 (first one I got, I think) that had a picture of a double cream pickup in it...? :scratchch

... could've been a custom shop Pup like the "EVH" pictured in the catalog was. Never seen an all cream SD that was sold retail. BTW... have you seen the white tape wrapped around the pickup bobbins on the "Unchained" Strat? That's not standard wrapping on most pups I've seen...

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii4/classalpha/4d5107cc.jpg

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

... that first link led to some MTV thing they did in '91. Except for the round black pickup on Ed's Chet Akins acoustic/electric and the EMGs in the Steinberger, I can't see black pups anywhere else in the vid.


The "Unchained" Strat w/ the extra thick mahogany body looks like it had a rewound DMZ PAF. No cream bobbins were available on Duncans back then...

Sorry it is fixed now...these are 2 live set ups with the same amps and 2 different guitars and pups

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Dude, what does this even mean...

Ed was using a PAF pulled form a 335 around that time...

SD didn't start offering a EVH/78 until MUCH later...

Also the EVH/78 and JB have nothing to do with each other...

The EVH and the 78 have nothing to do with each other except for the Van Halen use..The EVH is a custom shop and the 78 was first hum pup Marketed by SD, They are 2 different pups represent 2 different eras of EVH

 

[dr.barlo]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Huh?

B :eyecrazy:

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

Because it is typical in a humbucking loaded guitar to use a 500k pot.

However you can use 250k's...

Seymour used 250k pots in the Tele Gib but NOT out of choice...he just used the stock pots and switch that was already in what was left of the Telecaster...I'm sure that if he had a set of 500k pots handy he would have used them.

I agree, but someone early posted that 500k pots would be too harsh! Hence....my post about the 500k pots.

 

[YHWH]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

... the only "tie in" w/ Edward VH and the JB pup is that the Kramer Baretta which Ed once endorsed, was equipped w/ a JB... at least my Barettas were. :banghead:

Anyway, being that Ed's first Kramer guitar was a "Pacer" and not a Baretta, neither the JB pickup or the Baretta's body shape had anything to do with Edward's Kramer(s)...

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... the only "tie in" w/ Edward VH and the JB pup is that the Kramer Baretta which Ed once endorsed, was equipped w/ a JB... at least my Barettas were.

Anyway, being that Ed's first Kramer guitar was a "Pacer" and not a Baretta, neither the JB pickup or the Baretta's body shape had anything to do with Edward's Kramer(s)...

Interesting that Kramer would put JBs in the Barettas and not a 78...at the time when EVH was endorsing that guitar company..

 

[evhguitars]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

... the only "tie in" w/ Edward VH and the JB pup is that the Kramer Baretta which Ed once endorsed, was equipped w/ a JB... at least my Barettas were. :banghead:

Anyway, being that Ed's first Kramer guitar was a "Pacer" and not a Baretta, neither the JB pickup or the Baretta's body shape had anything to do with Edward's Kramer(s)...

This would lead one to believe the first marketed SD hum pups in 1978 were JBs.
Today Seymour Calls that first hum pup a 78..but.. in 1978 he wanted to call them the Van Halen.

Something just does not add up correctly in the history of SD JB pups and SD EVH-78 pups.

 

[MattPete]

Re: '70s-'80s and JB -- any guesses

I've never heard Eddie Van Halen playing anything that sounded like an A5 JB.
But I haven't heard most of the pre-record live recordings. So for 76-77 anything's possible.

PAF and JB are very different pickups. EVH's early sound is very open and chewy, not compressed with beaming harmonics.

I suppose it's possible he used an A2 JB like Allan Holdsworth. Or that the infamous "broken" pickup was actually a PAF/JB hybrid rather than PAF/Custom.

The JB has a signature tone, and even though 75% of Eddie's sound is his amp, there is no hint of a JB in the remaining 25%. I think a lot of people overthink the whole EVH sound -- heck many of his best recording were with his Ibanez Destroyer and not Frankie. Really, a PAF-style pickup will get you mostly there, the rest is the amps.

EVH's amp setup is certainly unique, and few people chasing his tone bother with the variac that is a big chunk of his amp's squishy tone. And engineer/producer did a lot to sculpt the final sound.

There is A LOT of disinformation on the web. Believe me when I tell you that his amp setup was not unique and can be hit spot-on with a stock cranked Plexi (or a powerscaled one) into Celestion G12 M25 Greenbacks.

Woody was talking about mid-80s, though. I still don't hear anything like the JB until maybe 5150 era, and there's enough distortion there that he could have used almost anything to get that sort of sound. Overdrive/boost/compressor plus low or medium output pickup...

I stopped listening after 5150, so I couldn't comment.