GUITARS, AMPS & GEAR
Rod Brakes talks to techs and gear experts about EVH’s hallmark sounds and kit
Eddie Van Halen didn’t just revolutionise guitar technique – he almost single-handedly changed the way people think about designing electric guitar gear forever. We hear from some of the industry’s top brass, including Brian McDonald and Matthew Brown who worked directly with Eddie on his EVH brand of guitars and amps at Fender, along with renowned British tone-mongers Tim Mills and Dan Coggins whose own sonic creations owe a debt of gratitude to the great man himself…
BRIAN MCDONALD
Brian McDonald spent more than a decade at Fender serving as marketing manager for the Jackson, Charvel and EVH brands when Eddie’s first products were launched.
“EVH was a brand I helped launch [in 2007]. I was there from the beginning. Matt Bruck was Ed’s guitar tech and assistant at the time. He’s a really cool guy. And there were other people at Fender who worked very closely with them both: [master builder] Chip Ellis was the guy who did the guitars, and Mike Ulrich did the amps. Mike and his team borrowed my Peavey 5150 to figure out how the Resonance function worked. It was just part of the engineering process. But I am not exaggerating in designating Eddie Van Halen as a genius when it came to innovation and product design. The methods he used to develop and test were very interesting and new to us. He had an incredible ear for the subtleties – a next-level understanding of the way things work independently and together. He was very much like an engineer, but he was also an artist – and an exceptional one at that. He had a very unique skill set.
“That said, all the gear Eddie developed with EVH aside, I heard him play a Telecaster into a Twin and it still sounded like Van Halen. His favourite guitarist was Eric Clapton. He could play all of that Cream stuff. I heard him play I’m So Glad and the solo from Crossroads note for note. I’m so glad that people are celebrating his life and contribution to the musical language we all enjoy. What was interesting about working for EVH was not only was he a rock star, but he was also a celebrity. People at NAMM would ask me all kinds of questions, like, ‘Who is he dating?’ and ‘What kind of wine does he drink?’ Trivial stuff like that.”
MATTHEW BROWN
Matthew Brown is the product development manager for Fender’s EVH brand and worked closely with Eddie on the development of new EVH amps and guitars.
“Ed Van Halen was involved in every aspect of the design process for EVH products. He was a ‘touch and feel’ type when it came to the instruments and amplifiers. You could provide a digital rendering that looks to be a sure hit and he’d say, ‘What’s it sound like? What’s it feel like?’ He truly was connected to the guitar and music. You just felt it in his presence and knew it was in his soul. Having revisions on the products before coming to market is inevitable. He would push and push and push you to be better because he knew when it was there. He could feel it. He made everyone around him better
in every way. Every nut, bolt and screw was signed off by him.
“The EVH relationship started on the Charvel front with the Charvel EVH Art Series guitars in 2004. Three striped versions: red, black and white; black and white; and black and yellow. From there, we started the amplifier design for the first EVH 5150III 100W Heads that come in black and ivory. These were unveiled in 2007. Also, the first EVH-branded guitar – the Frankenstein replica – was released the same year. Since then, the line has evolved to cater for all budgets and playing styles. Currently, the amplifier line features 100W and 50W Heads in 6L6 and EL34 versions, as well as 1x12 and 2x12 50-watt combos with the same palette of tube options. On the more portable side of things, we have the lunchbox [LBX] amps that will knock your head back: 15 watts of all-tube power with quarter-power switches. There are three variants with different channel types. Lastly, we have the EVH cabinets that pair with any of these, including 1x12, 2x12, and 4x12 options.
“On the guitar front, the Wolfgang USA is an EVH design – and then some! These premium USA models are made in our Corona facility in California, while the Wolfgang Specials and Striped Series models are built in our facility in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. Then we have our Wolfgang Standards, which are built in our partner facility in Asia. The line has evolved to be fruitful and we aren’t stopping any time soon. There is much more to come! There are a good amount of recent developments in the EVH line, including a couple of key ones that are currently lighting the world on fire. First, there’s the Frankie Relic, which is a tip of the hat to the original Tribute version from 2007. This is a serious guitar for any player or a collector. And then there are the
EVH 5150III 50S Head and EVH 5150III LBX-S Stealth amps, which are decked out in an all-black finish and will appease any appetite for tone.
“I’m partial to [Van Halen’s] early years, but I also have an appreciation for the later and more recent work Eddie and the band have done. When you pair any guitar in the line with the amps, you can literally dial all the knobs to 12 o’clock, turn the guitar to 10, and as you hit the first G chord, a smile from ear to ear will occur! But you can dial in your favourite tone and sound like yourself as well. That is how amazing these products are. I know I sound biased, but it’s true. Eddie used and owned everything in the line. His preference for touring would be his EVH Wolfgang Signature Stealth guitar and [5150III] 100S 6L6 and S 100W EL34 Heads. For pedals he used a custom ’board featuring his MXR EVH line of pedals, which are great as well.”
DAN COGGINS
Van Halen devotee and stompbox designer Dan Coggins founded Lovetone and Dinosaural before lending his expert ear to ThorpyFX.
“As far as I’m aware, Eddie used an early script [logo] MXR Phase 90, and those pedals can give you a bit more grit and distortion in the sound. The current EVH MXR Phase 90 has a switch for the script [mode], so you can get a bit more crunch and grind out of it. I particularly love the sound of the earlier albums – the Phase 90 on Eruption and Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love [from 1978’s Van Halen] and the MXR Flanger on Hear About It Later and Unchained [from 1981’s Fair Warning]. Eddie was inspirational for me in terms of his tone. His sound was amazing. About a week or two before he died, I was down the local pub and put Mean Street on the jukebox. When it came on, it put a big smile on my face. It still sounds amazing. I think Fair Warning is my favourite Van Halen album, along with the first one… And maybe a few others!
“Some people think of Van Halen as a thousand notes a minute, but to say that is to get Eddie wrong because he was also very much about space, rhythm and tone. When I listen to his ‘brown sound’, I hear it as frothy, fizzy and complex with lots of harmonics. It’s like a bright yet low-pass filtered sound with lots of intermodulation distortion brewing. That’s how I interpret it. He was brilliant. Along with Brian May and Allan Holdsworth, he had a mad scientist approach to seeking and achieving the individual tone he was after. He obviously knew what he was going for and seemed to have a lot of fun getting those sounds. I remember reading he put a huge piece of foam in front of his 4x12 to attenuate the sound acoustically, and he was making his Marshall distort more readily and modifying the attack by taking the voltage down with a Variac.
“He was definitely into tinkering and exploring and perfecting his art, but, as ever, a lot of the music was in the fingers. And in Eddie’s case, it was also in his smile. Aside from being a genius player, he had all the other
“SOME PEOPLE THINK OF VAN HALEN AS A THOUSAND NOTES A MINUTE, BUT TO SAY THAT IS TO GET EDDIE WRONG BECAUSE HE WAS ALSO VERY MUCH ABOUT SPACE, RHYTHM AND TONE” DAN COGGINS, LOVETONE/DINOSAURAL/THORPYFX
“ED MADE EVERYONE AROUND HIM BETTER IN EVERY WAY. EVERY NUT, BOLT AND SCREW WAS SIGNED OFF BY HIM” MATTHEW BROWN, FENDER
attributes like showmanship, stage presence and charisma, while treating the band as a collective. You look at any of those old pictures of him and he looks like a rock god. And he is! There are a lot of people, like me, who were inspired by his singular approach. I was sad when I heard he’d died. I was in tears about it. I spent a lot of time listening to him in the 80s. It was formative for me and has always stayed with me. I didn’t realise until now, but that was a big part of fuelling whatever it is I’ve done since when designing pedals.”
“I’m old enough to have grown up through Van Halen, whereas some of the lads here at Bare Knuckle aren’t. They were born way after it started. But I told them, ‘Whether you are aware of it or not, if you play rock guitar, the majority of the techniques that you take for granted will have his touch in there somewhere. And pretty much all of the equipment that you use, somewhere along the line it will have been influenced by his innovations.’ The amazing thing is it all seemed so incredibly evolved so early on. He was doing all these experiments with the amps and the guitars to a very accomplished and confident level right at the beginning. Which is partly why the tone is so good – there’s a confidence in his playing that comes from his knowledge of the equipment. To think that somebody in their early 20s was that together, while cutting classic tracks and dropping solos like Eruption is staggering.
“There was an evolution in Eddie’s sound over time. There was that big, characterful early tone, and as it progresses we get things like the [Eventide] Harmonizer appearing, which was also very distinctive. I remember everybody seemed to suddenly jump on that. And then that gain saturation started to develop more. He was very good at using a minimum amount of equipment to create a myriad of tones. Early on, he used an [EP-3] Echoplex to fatten things out, and there was that reverb-y vibe going on, which helped increase the sensation of sustain. In later years, he came up with the idea of the wet/dry/wet rig using the Lexicon PCM70 and Roland SDE-3000 digital effects units.
“That pickup tone on the early albums is what I would refer to as a moderate-output pickup. We’re not talking anything high-output. You can hear it in the frequency response of the tone – the way it’s interacting with the amp, the amount of headroom there is, and the way he was controlling it on the volume pot. It’s a very dynamic sound. It sounds like an early/mid-60s patent number humbucker. Those are usually relatively low-wind, symmetrical coils of 42 [AWG] poly with Alnico V magnets. They would have been unpotted, but of course Eddie famously wax-potted his pickups. I make a pickup called the VHII, which is inspired by that early tone, although I approach it from a different angle to recreate a ballpark vibe, rather than try to make you sound like Eddie Van Halen! It just doesn’t work like that unless you’ve got his hands.
“I can’t play anything like Eddie, but I would say he had a massive influence on me in terms of not being blinkered, and just stepping back to look at the bigger picture. I think it’s easy to get bogged down in rules and he would always talk about there being no rules. It was always a very positive thing – no boundaries, just play. In that sense, I can’t think of any better reason for wanting to pick up the guitar and be like Eddie Van Halen.”
“IT ALL SEEMED SO INCREDIBLY EVOLVED EARLY ON. HE WAS DOING ALL THESE EXPERIMENTS WITH THE AMPS AND THE GUITARS TO A VERY ACCOMPLISHED AND CONFIDENT LEVEL RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING” TIM MILLS, BARE KNUCKLE PICKUPS