Pat_rocks_and_rolls
New member
Hello this thread is here to share knowledge about van halen's tone for everyone.
there are 2 parts if you are only here for specs, gear and technique go directly to part 2. Part 1 is what has driven my ambitions.
Part 1 :
As many of us, i loved rock n'roll music. I always wanted to play guitar however i never come close to play it. As a 90's kid
i wasn't born in the right era. However one day something changed : i remembered a song that i loved so much but i didn't knew about van halen. This song was Jump. Once my dad talked to me about the band i looked for it on youtube and i clicked on other van halen songs and Oh My God i lost my ****... Literally if you think that this effect could only take place in 78 or in the 80's you're wrong lol. What i heard was even better than a orgasmic oberheim synth, it was raw tone. Van halen was making the speakers spitting sound as i would say ! it seemed that they were coughing sound. After years now i've heard most of reputed guitarists and some of the best tones, but no one could reach this feeling of power coming from van halen. I enjoy metal and hard rock a lot... However no artist in those music styles could achieve what van halen could. Raw tone, power and clarity all in one.
After hearing Van Halen torpedo
i couldn't stay without playing guitar anymore... 3 weeks later i bought my first baby. 8 years ago i began my quest to chase that tone. During those 8 years of guitar learning I played mostly van halen songs again and again until it sounded right to my ears. Playing, recording, hearing. As i'm self taught i remember that i have played the unchained rythm parts at least 500 times to get it sound right (that pre chorus part -_-'). adding the right amount of palm muting etc. The playing became right however i became really obssessed to make it sound exactly the same.
So here is when things began to change. I was thinking : there is something that I and many players do wrong chasing tone or not. We buy premade guitars to premade specs. And we end sounding close to each others. As Van Halen did, as Angus young did, As Rhoads did and as brian may did and so many other legends we have to create our own voicing. All those legends were always doing tricks to their guitars. they all used customized pickups or modified them to have their unique tone.
We as players have to adapt instruments to ourselves and to our tastes. So as a van halen fan i was like if i want to sound like him i better do like him... I began to read and watch videos about guitar making, pickups , wiring and guitar history.
i made my first guitar a Kramer 5150 with a duncan JB. My old guitar was a MIJ fender contemporary. When i plugged my JB into my amp i lost my **** and was like OH MY ! That **** has Balls ! I immediatly tried every van halen riff i knew and the JB was very close to the van hagar era sound. Panama sounds almost perfect with a single JB and a single pot.
I learnt that day that gear can make a huge diffrence but not only ! Previously i tried the JB on my epiphone lespaul when the kramer 5150 paint was drying and i wasnt really impressed at all. However the tone changed a lot when i wired it in the kramer 5150. It was brighter and punchier without the caps and the additional tone pots. since then i rarely use any guitar with a tone pot.
I wasn't satisfied... I was like you're getting closer but it's not it at all... I was like yes pickups make a huge difference so let's try different things... I was chasing the van halen 78 tone and i began to search every tiny informations i could get from forums (seymour duncan, metropoulos, vhlinks, etc...). First thing i was surprised to see how divided the community was.... every one wanted to know the truth and the secrets. However many of us seemed to forget that the first album is mostly 2 guitars and we dont know if there are more. Those 2 guitars have 3 pickups (i wont discuss about the shark neck pickup).
We know that the frankie pickup was the pickup from eddie's ES-335, an overwound paf around 9k however was it alnico 2 or 5 ? we will never know... Even if evh, everyone and duncan says it is alnico 2. the ES-335 from the same era had usually alnico 5 pickups. I just believe that when duncan rewound the pickup he wasn't happy with alnico 5 anymore and changed it to alnico 2.
For the shark bridge pickup, we don't know much more. recent pictures of the shark shows us mighty mite ceramic pickups in it. However the pickups are different in the video clip of running with the devil. The shark has black pickups in it which is not cream and black.... Those black pickups could be the original pickups of the guitar : Ibanez super 70 alnico 8 pickups jacob deraps used them with a germino plexi and it sounds killer.
after learning all of this i was like well if seymour made it he certainly kept the ''plans''. There i discovered that the 78 model existed. i ordered one and put it in the kramer 5150. i had a duncan 59 and it was close however the 78 model was different... It sounded more original and a lot closer specially when you played the intro from i'm the one !
After that i understood that the kramer 5150 wasn't for me : i prefered the Roth era sounding van halen to the Hagar era. I sold that kramer 5150 for 1300 dollars but it wasn't enought to make a high quality and close franky replica.
During the time i was gathering money i was left with an issue : i lost my main axe. I was like well let's make it like eddie... Let's buy the cheapest **** we can to make the frankie... I bought a basswood strat chinese body for 50 dollars and a neck for 70 dollars. I leveled the frets put a graphtec nut on it, adjusted the heigh, bought some gotoh tuners a gotoh trem and tried different pickups and ended finally with a 78 model in it. This guitar is a good example of cheap sounding good. Once i came to the guitar store with it to try some amps. A van halen fan asked if he could try it, i let him and he gave me his phone number for whatsapp. He wanted to trade it for his 1976 stock les paul custom. Les paul aren't my cup of tea even if i like the sound i don't like to play them... I would have take it however the pain job on my black and white frankie was so amazingly accurate that i decided to not trade it... That ***** is still my practicing axe. i told him that anyways it wasn't a fair trade for him.
finally i reached the amount of money for making the red frankie with high quality materials. i'm actually painting it and relicing every single scratch on the body.
During 6 years of research i tried to gather each vh related pickup i could, every amp that sounded close, gathered a lot of informations and here is the result (there are plenty of sounding VH pickups but those retained my attention) :
Part 2 :
PICKUPS !!! :
Keep in mind if you want to sound like him remove your neck pickup keep 1 pot no caps. If you do not, your pickup will sound completely different. Or just make a real super strat. Dont forget to shield the control cavities with aluminium foil cause it affects tone and eddie's are too. Electronics affect a lot the way you sound to make a comparison a humbucker with a tone pot will sound like if you put an old drag in front of your speaker compared to non tone pot. It will loose punch, presence and brightness :
VHI :
#1 78' model/ ES-335 PAF if you didn't know about the 78 model custom shop humbucker from duncan here it is : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyKXwdqwXM
#2 duncan 59
#1 ibanez super 70's (original pickups in the ibanez destroyer/ Alnico 8)
#2 Mighty mite 1300/ duncan super distortion those are 70's pickups and can be really expensive.
Cheap alternative (20 bucks) for the best of both worlds (getting the 9k paf + the ceramic bar of the shark) 8.8k ceramic :
caliguitar H47 Zebucker of all he pickups i tried this one impressed me the most for ratio quality/price (20 bucks) : it sounds killer. It's a neck pickups just reverse it and use it as a bridge pickup !!!
VHII :
#1 dimarzio 70's PAF alnico 5, 8.29K those are very rare (the hotest version of them) and difficult to find. (van halen admitted he used one of those for some vh2 songs in a interview) the duncan 59 is almost the same 8.2k alnico 5.
#2 70's dimarzio super distortion/ Mighty mite 1300/ duncan super distortion. For the dimarzio i'm talking about the 70's model the actual ones sound a lil bit different.
Fair warning/ women and children first :
#1 EVH Frankenstein humbucker
#2 Duncan IM1
1984 :
#1 JB modified with a rough short alnico 5 bar (like the ones in the T tops)
#2 custom custom
90's era :
dimarzio tone zone and air norton
Here is a comparison between some pickups Using the ultimate brown sound amp (keep in mind that the bray is the 78 box sounding amp)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2XasTLvPqY
for synths if you like piano i played jump on some of them and those were the best i tried xD :
#1 Oberheim ob-xa
#2 roland jupiter 80
#3 Yamaha moxf 6
keep in mind that those aren't the exact pickups. plus too many guitars may have been used for the records so it may be a lot of pickups. those are what i and many people think are the closest sounding.
For amps : it is very important to know that the main signal was almost completely dry reverb and some effects were achieved with salve amps (wet/dry/wet). The echoplex was for some songs in front of the main amp.
#1 68 marshall jmp super lead + variac 90 volts + use 6CA7 tubes (Electro Harmonix are close sounding compared to the original Sylvania) (the bray would take the first place if this amp wasn't the original ****.)
#2 Bray 4550 => this one will help comon mortals who don't have the ''fingers'' ! anyone can sound van halen with it. However it is really expensive. Quality has a price !
#3 Germino Lead 55 I didn't believed jacob deraps however after trying one i was like wow ! just wow with a variac this little monster performs perfectly !
#4 Friedman BE-100 / Metropoulos amps
#5 Granger m50
Practicing amps those wont get you the perfect Vh tone however it will be close enough to appreciate it :
#1 Yamaha Thr10x : https://youtu.be/MW00KztosMM?t=112 Perfect for practicing and it's cheap !
#2 Marshall JCM1-C 50th Anniversary Believe it or not put a greenback on this lil monster use the boost button play with the settings and there you go ! After trying many tubes i replaced the jj for a vintage mullard and that's even better. a lil video of the original amp played by Mike the Great ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QMI9wbi3XE
#3 isn't really an amp but it is the cheapest and most affordable solution=> Bias FX play a little bit with the 6 band eq and you'll get dangerously close
Kemper jimi top brown sound profil will also make you sound like the original records.
Speakers those are imperatives :
#1 Celestions greenback coupled with jbl d120f if you are rich there you go ! after doing some research and looking at some recording studio pictures it seems that it was the original configuration for the recordings.
#2 Celestion greenback
#3 Scumback m75 => those have a more presence and sound awesome.
The best Van Halen players On youtube some of those will help you a lot more than TABS :
#1 Closest sounding covers of all time Thorny2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SL2MdUthYU
#2 The best Van halen technique copy cat of all time : Mike from mikesmusiconline : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktSdzpzQWo he sells nice guitars
!
#3 Jacob Deraps we all know him comon
#4 kent carlevi : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7yTgprRPw4
#5 Phil x : this guy loves everything from van halen like you and me ! he is certainly one of the best guitar players in the world.
#6 Doug steele : If you have a doubt about a tab go check his videos... Even if it isn't always accurate that man knows his stuff : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8wp-SFmgU
Getting The TONE :
you perhaps may have the gear and the skills but you dont sound like him ? let's see why.
- First of all ted templeman worked a lot on the van halen songs without its hard work van halen wouldn't sound van halen. He helped to create this monster tone.
- The mics used for recording were very close to the cones of the speakers nearly touching them.
- Van halen stricly uses thin string gauges : 9-42 are the closest you can buy. He used 0.6 celluloid picks and now he uses 0.6 nylon.
The most important : The right hand picking technique !!!
Many people people underestimate the picking angle a lot. Here is WHAT MAKES VAN HALEN TONE UNIQUE : Van Halen holds the pick with 3 fingers the thumb, the index and the middle finger. Why does he need 3 fingers ? well this question interested me a lot. He does it by habit however this is the explaination for that razzor spitting sound. When van halen released the video for the evh 5150 3s i slowed it down and watched every movment from his hand. Guys it was the first time we could get this close to his hands playing...
Edward Van Halen picks the strings with an almost 90 degree perpendicular angle to the strings. It's around 80 degrees to keep enough control of it. By playing like this he needs more strenght than usual to counter the bouncing power released by the elasticity of the strings and that's the reason he needs 3 fingers. The pick acts like a knife trying to cut the strings and it's way different than usual strumming. The thumb always looks to the top. Just try this technique for dance the night away and you will directly recognise that you made a huge improvement to sound like eddie.
This technique is the **** however it is hard to master... even zakk wylde said in a interview : eddie picks with its 3 fingers, i tried it but i can't do it... It felt very uncomfortable. If you already have your own picking technique this one will be hard to master.
Just don't forget to always slightly palm muting at the bridge. You'll need some time to measure the right amount for each song but it will definitvely pay for your ears.
however eddie is a god at right hand playing. He can switch picking techniques and angles way faster than comon mortals so we will never get as close as the man himself.
If you have a mxr type delay here is the Echoplex settings for ATBL :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTIHC86sDZo
i just hope this will help people trying to reach van halen's tone because i think it's the most awesome guitar tone of all time.
there are 2 parts if you are only here for specs, gear and technique go directly to part 2. Part 1 is what has driven my ambitions.
Part 1 :
As many of us, i loved rock n'roll music. I always wanted to play guitar however i never come close to play it. As a 90's kid
i wasn't born in the right era. However one day something changed : i remembered a song that i loved so much but i didn't knew about van halen. This song was Jump. Once my dad talked to me about the band i looked for it on youtube and i clicked on other van halen songs and Oh My God i lost my ****... Literally if you think that this effect could only take place in 78 or in the 80's you're wrong lol. What i heard was even better than a orgasmic oberheim synth, it was raw tone. Van halen was making the speakers spitting sound as i would say ! it seemed that they were coughing sound. After years now i've heard most of reputed guitarists and some of the best tones, but no one could reach this feeling of power coming from van halen. I enjoy metal and hard rock a lot... However no artist in those music styles could achieve what van halen could. Raw tone, power and clarity all in one.After hearing Van Halen torpedo
i couldn't stay without playing guitar anymore... 3 weeks later i bought my first baby. 8 years ago i began my quest to chase that tone. During those 8 years of guitar learning I played mostly van halen songs again and again until it sounded right to my ears. Playing, recording, hearing. As i'm self taught i remember that i have played the unchained rythm parts at least 500 times to get it sound right (that pre chorus part -_-'). adding the right amount of palm muting etc. The playing became right however i became really obssessed to make it sound exactly the same.So here is when things began to change. I was thinking : there is something that I and many players do wrong chasing tone or not. We buy premade guitars to premade specs. And we end sounding close to each others. As Van Halen did, as Angus young did, As Rhoads did and as brian may did and so many other legends we have to create our own voicing. All those legends were always doing tricks to their guitars. they all used customized pickups or modified them to have their unique tone.
We as players have to adapt instruments to ourselves and to our tastes. So as a van halen fan i was like if i want to sound like him i better do like him... I began to read and watch videos about guitar making, pickups , wiring and guitar history.
i made my first guitar a Kramer 5150 with a duncan JB. My old guitar was a MIJ fender contemporary. When i plugged my JB into my amp i lost my **** and was like OH MY ! That **** has Balls ! I immediatly tried every van halen riff i knew and the JB was very close to the van hagar era sound. Panama sounds almost perfect with a single JB and a single pot.
I learnt that day that gear can make a huge diffrence but not only ! Previously i tried the JB on my epiphone lespaul when the kramer 5150 paint was drying and i wasnt really impressed at all. However the tone changed a lot when i wired it in the kramer 5150. It was brighter and punchier without the caps and the additional tone pots. since then i rarely use any guitar with a tone pot.
I wasn't satisfied... I was like you're getting closer but it's not it at all... I was like yes pickups make a huge difference so let's try different things... I was chasing the van halen 78 tone and i began to search every tiny informations i could get from forums (seymour duncan, metropoulos, vhlinks, etc...). First thing i was surprised to see how divided the community was.... every one wanted to know the truth and the secrets. However many of us seemed to forget that the first album is mostly 2 guitars and we dont know if there are more. Those 2 guitars have 3 pickups (i wont discuss about the shark neck pickup).
We know that the frankie pickup was the pickup from eddie's ES-335, an overwound paf around 9k however was it alnico 2 or 5 ? we will never know... Even if evh, everyone and duncan says it is alnico 2. the ES-335 from the same era had usually alnico 5 pickups. I just believe that when duncan rewound the pickup he wasn't happy with alnico 5 anymore and changed it to alnico 2.
For the shark bridge pickup, we don't know much more. recent pictures of the shark shows us mighty mite ceramic pickups in it. However the pickups are different in the video clip of running with the devil. The shark has black pickups in it which is not cream and black.... Those black pickups could be the original pickups of the guitar : Ibanez super 70 alnico 8 pickups jacob deraps used them with a germino plexi and it sounds killer.
after learning all of this i was like well if seymour made it he certainly kept the ''plans''. There i discovered that the 78 model existed. i ordered one and put it in the kramer 5150. i had a duncan 59 and it was close however the 78 model was different... It sounded more original and a lot closer specially when you played the intro from i'm the one !
After that i understood that the kramer 5150 wasn't for me : i prefered the Roth era sounding van halen to the Hagar era. I sold that kramer 5150 for 1300 dollars but it wasn't enought to make a high quality and close franky replica.
During the time i was gathering money i was left with an issue : i lost my main axe. I was like well let's make it like eddie... Let's buy the cheapest **** we can to make the frankie... I bought a basswood strat chinese body for 50 dollars and a neck for 70 dollars. I leveled the frets put a graphtec nut on it, adjusted the heigh, bought some gotoh tuners a gotoh trem and tried different pickups and ended finally with a 78 model in it. This guitar is a good example of cheap sounding good. Once i came to the guitar store with it to try some amps. A van halen fan asked if he could try it, i let him and he gave me his phone number for whatsapp. He wanted to trade it for his 1976 stock les paul custom. Les paul aren't my cup of tea even if i like the sound i don't like to play them... I would have take it however the pain job on my black and white frankie was so amazingly accurate that i decided to not trade it... That ***** is still my practicing axe. i told him that anyways it wasn't a fair trade for him.
finally i reached the amount of money for making the red frankie with high quality materials. i'm actually painting it and relicing every single scratch on the body.
During 6 years of research i tried to gather each vh related pickup i could, every amp that sounded close, gathered a lot of informations and here is the result (there are plenty of sounding VH pickups but those retained my attention) :
Part 2 :
PICKUPS !!! :
Keep in mind if you want to sound like him remove your neck pickup keep 1 pot no caps. If you do not, your pickup will sound completely different. Or just make a real super strat. Dont forget to shield the control cavities with aluminium foil cause it affects tone and eddie's are too. Electronics affect a lot the way you sound to make a comparison a humbucker with a tone pot will sound like if you put an old drag in front of your speaker compared to non tone pot. It will loose punch, presence and brightness :
VHI :
#1 78' model/ ES-335 PAF if you didn't know about the 78 model custom shop humbucker from duncan here it is : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyKXwdqwXM
#2 duncan 59
#1 ibanez super 70's (original pickups in the ibanez destroyer/ Alnico 8)
#2 Mighty mite 1300/ duncan super distortion those are 70's pickups and can be really expensive.
Cheap alternative (20 bucks) for the best of both worlds (getting the 9k paf + the ceramic bar of the shark) 8.8k ceramic :
caliguitar H47 Zebucker of all he pickups i tried this one impressed me the most for ratio quality/price (20 bucks) : it sounds killer. It's a neck pickups just reverse it and use it as a bridge pickup !!!
VHII :
#1 dimarzio 70's PAF alnico 5, 8.29K those are very rare (the hotest version of them) and difficult to find. (van halen admitted he used one of those for some vh2 songs in a interview) the duncan 59 is almost the same 8.2k alnico 5.
#2 70's dimarzio super distortion/ Mighty mite 1300/ duncan super distortion. For the dimarzio i'm talking about the 70's model the actual ones sound a lil bit different.
Fair warning/ women and children first :
#1 EVH Frankenstein humbucker
#2 Duncan IM1
1984 :
#1 JB modified with a rough short alnico 5 bar (like the ones in the T tops)
#2 custom custom
90's era :
dimarzio tone zone and air norton
Here is a comparison between some pickups Using the ultimate brown sound amp (keep in mind that the bray is the 78 box sounding amp)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2XasTLvPqY
for synths if you like piano i played jump on some of them and those were the best i tried xD :
#1 Oberheim ob-xa
#2 roland jupiter 80
#3 Yamaha moxf 6
keep in mind that those aren't the exact pickups. plus too many guitars may have been used for the records so it may be a lot of pickups. those are what i and many people think are the closest sounding.
For amps : it is very important to know that the main signal was almost completely dry reverb and some effects were achieved with salve amps (wet/dry/wet). The echoplex was for some songs in front of the main amp.
#1 68 marshall jmp super lead + variac 90 volts + use 6CA7 tubes (Electro Harmonix are close sounding compared to the original Sylvania) (the bray would take the first place if this amp wasn't the original ****.)
#2 Bray 4550 => this one will help comon mortals who don't have the ''fingers'' ! anyone can sound van halen with it. However it is really expensive. Quality has a price !
#3 Germino Lead 55 I didn't believed jacob deraps however after trying one i was like wow ! just wow with a variac this little monster performs perfectly !
#4 Friedman BE-100 / Metropoulos amps
#5 Granger m50
Practicing amps those wont get you the perfect Vh tone however it will be close enough to appreciate it :
#1 Yamaha Thr10x : https://youtu.be/MW00KztosMM?t=112 Perfect for practicing and it's cheap !
#2 Marshall JCM1-C 50th Anniversary Believe it or not put a greenback on this lil monster use the boost button play with the settings and there you go ! After trying many tubes i replaced the jj for a vintage mullard and that's even better. a lil video of the original amp played by Mike the Great ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QMI9wbi3XE
#3 isn't really an amp but it is the cheapest and most affordable solution=> Bias FX play a little bit with the 6 band eq and you'll get dangerously close
Kemper jimi top brown sound profil will also make you sound like the original records.
Speakers those are imperatives :
#1 Celestions greenback coupled with jbl d120f if you are rich there you go ! after doing some research and looking at some recording studio pictures it seems that it was the original configuration for the recordings.
#2 Celestion greenback
#3 Scumback m75 => those have a more presence and sound awesome.
The best Van Halen players On youtube some of those will help you a lot more than TABS :
#1 Closest sounding covers of all time Thorny2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SL2MdUthYU
#2 The best Van halen technique copy cat of all time : Mike from mikesmusiconline : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktSdzpzQWo he sells nice guitars
! #3 Jacob Deraps we all know him comon
#4 kent carlevi : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7yTgprRPw4
#5 Phil x : this guy loves everything from van halen like you and me ! he is certainly one of the best guitar players in the world.
#6 Doug steele : If you have a doubt about a tab go check his videos... Even if it isn't always accurate that man knows his stuff : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8wp-SFmgU
Getting The TONE :
you perhaps may have the gear and the skills but you dont sound like him ? let's see why.
- First of all ted templeman worked a lot on the van halen songs without its hard work van halen wouldn't sound van halen. He helped to create this monster tone.
- The mics used for recording were very close to the cones of the speakers nearly touching them.
- Van halen stricly uses thin string gauges : 9-42 are the closest you can buy. He used 0.6 celluloid picks and now he uses 0.6 nylon.
The most important : The right hand picking technique !!!
Many people people underestimate the picking angle a lot. Here is WHAT MAKES VAN HALEN TONE UNIQUE : Van Halen holds the pick with 3 fingers the thumb, the index and the middle finger. Why does he need 3 fingers ? well this question interested me a lot. He does it by habit however this is the explaination for that razzor spitting sound. When van halen released the video for the evh 5150 3s i slowed it down and watched every movment from his hand. Guys it was the first time we could get this close to his hands playing...
Edward Van Halen picks the strings with an almost 90 degree perpendicular angle to the strings. It's around 80 degrees to keep enough control of it. By playing like this he needs more strenght than usual to counter the bouncing power released by the elasticity of the strings and that's the reason he needs 3 fingers. The pick acts like a knife trying to cut the strings and it's way different than usual strumming. The thumb always looks to the top. Just try this technique for dance the night away and you will directly recognise that you made a huge improvement to sound like eddie.
This technique is the **** however it is hard to master... even zakk wylde said in a interview : eddie picks with its 3 fingers, i tried it but i can't do it... It felt very uncomfortable. If you already have your own picking technique this one will be hard to master.
Just don't forget to always slightly palm muting at the bridge. You'll need some time to measure the right amount for each song but it will definitvely pay for your ears.
however eddie is a god at right hand playing. He can switch picking techniques and angles way faster than comon mortals so we will never get as close as the man himself.
If you have a mxr type delay here is the Echoplex settings for ATBL :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTIHC86sDZo
i just hope this will help people trying to reach van halen's tone because i think it's the most awesome guitar tone of all time.
Last edited:
