"Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

i remember back in the 80's all us VH guitar freaks running around spray painting our Kramers and talking trash about gear... none of us had really good gear but made it work... these days good gear can be had for cheap compaired to those days...

but i remember EVH saying in guitar mags that when he records in the studio it's just the Marshall, no effects and so on... so a bunch of us fools were running around taking the reverb and delays off our sounds because Ed said he didn't use them... well ya i guess he recorded the amp dry but the end recordings after the producer was done with them are wet... reverb and delays come in handy for the sounds on those albums... LOL
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

What is this my lucky day?:eyecrazy: i just finalized a trade deal with a guy for his dimarzio axis bridge pup. I love these things for the VH tone. the one in my red axis smokes! lets see how it does in a alder charvel! :naughty:
now i will be able to test out the dimarzio super d and the dimarzio axis.
next i want another tb-5 custom
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

Guitar > Phase 90 > Flanger > Echoplex > Amp. That's what he REALLY did. He obviously fooled you guys! ;) Later however, he did run a dry sound and Landee added the effects on the board. That's what he did in Van Hagar too. He just ran his Plexi/Soldano/5150 dry and added the effects/harmonizer/etc and panned it how he wanted to. Read that article about Balance I linked to. Kind of interesting and like I said, I don't think he lies about his rig anymore. What's the point?
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

oddly Balance's guitar sounds are my favourite tone Eddie ever got to date... and i'm more Roth era fan!
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

oddly Balance's guitar sounds are my favourite tone Eddie ever got to date... and i'm more Roth era fan!

thats the ebmm with the pup i just scored:cool2:
my fav is VH1 but i also love the live without a net tone,it is very rich and powerful,warm
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

oddly Balance's guitar sounds are my favourite tone Eddie ever got to date... and i'm more Roth era fan!

I love the wall of sound kind of thing he had going on with Seventh Seal and Aftershock. It's like jangly clean, LOUD AS HELL and still has sustain and edge. I dig the drum sound too.
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

I love the wall of sound kind of thing he had going on with Seventh Seal and Aftershock. It's like jangly clean, LOUD AS HELL and still has sustain and edge. I dig the drum sound too.

Ian try a dimarzio crunch lab with some pitch shift de-tune
a pure wall of sound like that
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

one thing i and many learned from Eddie about getting a better tone from a bridge humbucker is the placement of the PU... i hear he hated his Black and Yellow Chavel strat from VHII era... it was bright as hell and i saw photos of it's guts where he had added a tone pot in the back of it to try and mellow the brightness.... in the end the pu was way too close to the bridge, much closer then the Frankie...

One of the reasons i didn't like the Charvel 1978 Aniversary model is because it had that single humbucker close to the bridge like the original designs would...

i had a strat years ago and got a pickguard aftermarket for a humbucker slot... installed everything and i was left scratching my head as to why it sounded so thin and bright... the company WD had routed the bridge humbucker spot really close to the bridge... much closer then the current HSS guards that Fender uses... i think most strat makers have found the sweet spot for the bridge humbucker models...

but ya the Frankie has the PU angled a fair distance from the bridge... i know that is part of the fatter sound of that guitar
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

Yeah, I placed my pickup about a half inch closer to the neck than the stock Fender/Squier setup had it. I had to carve up my pickguards but the results are great! I'll bet anything if Grover Jackson would have built the bumblebee out of alder or basswood, Ed would have liked it more but it was northern ash like Frankie but didn't have THAT sound. It had a Super Distortion in it stock and it was too bright. That's quite a feat!
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

Yeah, I placed my pickup about a half inch closer to the neck than the stock Fender/Squier setup had it. I had to carve up my pickguards but the results are great! I'll bet anything if Grover Jackson would have built the bumblebee out of alder or basswood, Ed would have liked it more but it was northern ash like Frankie but didn't have THAT sound. It had a Super Distortion in it stock and it was too bright. That's quite a feat!

yeah he hated it for that reason but there is another big reason too, that was the axe that grover was selling for $1000 a pop to the public without ed's consent, that pissed him off big time and is the main reason he left charvel and went with kramer,just to piss grover off! LOL!!! i heard he still does not speak or think very highly of him! wow! can you say hold a grudge? LOL!
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

When Ed recieved the black and yellow striped strat(made by Karl Sandoval who worked at wayne charvels shop,late 70s) it came stock with a fender type trem then it was changed to a prototype floyd rose which made the guitar sound bright.Grover wasnt involved at that time.
 
Last edited:
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

There's a lot of folks who think Grover was/is an a-hole. He built some awesome guitars though but was kind of a crooked businessman. He totally screwed Wayne Charvel out of tens of thousands of bucks when he sold the company to him. Eddie still likes Wayne and even had him work on a couple guitars in more recent times.
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

not many know that whole neck except the FB is painted black!

KARL LOOKS LIKE GENE SIMMONS! LMAO!
images



When Ed recieved the black and yellow striped strat(made by Karl Sandoval who worked at wayne charvels shop,late 70s) it came stock with a fender type trem then it was changed to a prototype floyd rose which made the guitar sound bright.
 
Last edited:
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

When Ed recieved the black and yellow striped strat(made by Karl Sandoval who worked at wayne charvels shop,late 70s) it came stock with a fender type trem then it was changed to a prototype floyd rose which made the guitar sound bright.

My mistake it wasn't built by Grover, but he was running the show after 1978, when Wayne left.

Those early Floyds were horribly bright. Steel blocks and something about the saddle design made them thin. Quite the opposite with my Gotoh Floyd. It totally improved the balls on my guitar over the 6-hole that was in it.
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

wow the fate of time!
StreamImage.aspx

he doesn't look like gene simmons anymore! LOL!
 
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

I like the black and yellow strat over the original frankie.My Ibanez prestige rg1550m in poisen pumpkin color is the same type of yellow of Eds color(yellow).
 
Last edited:
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

not many know that whole neck except the FB is painted black!

KARL LOOKS LIKE GENE SIMMONS! LMAO!
images

ya the Floyd would of added more brightness to that guitar... but look at the pu in that photo... it's right up against the 6 screw bridge almost... that added huge to the brightness too... when Ed added a gold FRO to that B&Y Charvel sometime in the 90's it looked like the bridge was right ontop of the PU almost... saw that photo in a Fanzine called The Inside...

i saw a video from guys at Kramerguitars saying the 5150 was Poplar... it is kind of a convincing video... makes me wonder how many VH fans made 5150 clones out of ash...
 
Last edited:
Re: "Seymour Duncan Special Van halen pickup 1979"

BUT, I find that more than anything, the right kind of string muting and pick attack/technique is the best way to approximate that Ed tone.[/QUOTE]

This is how it's done.
No matter what guitar,amp or effects are used.
 
Back
Top