Pickups that sound like Eddie Van Halen

[Norcal_GIT_r]

My BG Dark gets a nice VH type of tone.

[noisebloom]

My BG Dark gets a nice VH type of tone.

 

I'm curious if your P.U.F. wound to about 8.7-9.0k could do the same thing?

[Norcal_GIT_r]

I'm curious if your P.U.F. wound to about 8.7-9.0k could do the same thing?

Pretty close..Yes.

[Spike Li]

Im not that familiar with EVH's music, but the HB in my hello kitty strat running through a boss metalcore and JC-120 sounds exactly like his tone on eruption to me

 

I realise that so many people will roll their eyes at this post that I can almost hear the grating already

[lincoln40]

Im not that familiar with EVH's music, but the HB in my hello kitty strat running through a boss metalcore and JC-120 sounds exactly like his tone on eruption to me I realise that so many people will roll their eyes at this post that I can almost hear the grating already

 

 

is that slipknot in your avatar?

[onelife]

 

I personally disagree with anyone trying to replicate another persons tone but if its your think go ahead.

 

 

I think it's okay to try to copy someone's sound.

 

As humans we learn by imitation and trying to get our music to sound like some other music that we like gives us a place to start. That's how we learn about pickups and amps. It's best if we don't get it quite right or if we mix it up with other bits to get our own sound.

 

I agree with you when you say replicate because that seems to indicate an exact copy and that would just be redundant.

[Spike Li]

is that slipknot in your avatar?

 

lol no, actually its a character from the video game Team Fortress 2, although I can see the resemblence with the jumpsuit and gas mask

[american_analog]

Low-medium output PAF style, alnico 2 humbucker and lots of gain.

[SirJackdeFuzz]

, the EVH Frankenstrat humbucker, Bareknuckles VHII all come to mind. For less money I've heard that the GFS VEH is good.

 

The '78 came first to mind for me too

[Edge11]

Theres an interview with Reinhold(sp?) Bogner where he does a run though on all of eds gear. He says that the E.S. humbucker her had was basically a single coil because the bottom coil was shorted out.

[tiltsta]

EVH is selling his line of pickups now that are supposed to be an exact match, both in manufacture and output, of the original 61 gibson pickup he used on his early recordings. You can even get it reliced to match the appearance of the actual pickup in his guitar if you want. I'd bet this option is about as close as you can get. Like others have said though, the EVH sound is sort of a generic mid to low output PAF style humbucker into a modded marshall, with Eddie plucking the strings of course.

 

[jamdogg]

 

Eddie's sound is as much amp and technique as it is pickups. JMO

 

 

I agree. That said I use a Williams attack bucker in my strat. It's a low output paf style pickup geared towards the evh fan.

[ashasha]

 

Theres an interview with Reinhold(sp?) Bogner where he does a run though on all of eds gear. He says that the E.S. humbucker her had was basically a single coil because the bottom coil was shorted out.

 

 

This is the one story that I actually find to be pretty accurate in my personal experience. I had a SD Distortion in the bridge of my Soloist and had a Duncan Triple Shot installed on it which let me select coils and series/parallel wiring. I tried it in single coil and it was probably the closest I've ever gotten to nailing that tone without spending a ton of time trying to dial it in.

 

But what I came in here to do was to just remind everyone that when you are trying to copy tones from an album you are not only trying to get the pickup, the guitar, the amp and the cab....you are talking about mics, mic placement, room, mixing console, EQ, offboard effects, compression of the tape, etc.

 

Basically anyone that says I can nail the early VH tone with a guitar a cable and an amp is pretty much full of it IMHO. You can get close, but we have no idea what the in room sound of that amp really was. And even if you did nail the recorded tone you aren't getting the real sound of just his rig live.

 

I suppose the point is that it's a rather difficult path to head down and usually ends up with a lot of money spent, time wasted and frustration. Get something close to the sound and work on learning to play with his feel and timing and it will sound 100X better.

[scud133]

EVH is selling his line of pickups now that are supposed to be an exact match, both in manufacture and output, of the original 61 gibson pickup he used on his early recordings. You can even get it reliced to match the appearance of the actual pickup in his guitar if you want. I'd bet this option is about as close as you can get. Like others have said though, the EVH sound is sort of a generic mid to low output PAF style humbucker into a modded marshall, with Eddie plucking the strings of course.

 

+1

 

Back when these first came out a few years ago, he said in interviews that he went through tons of iterations until they got it just right. If any pickup is going to be the brown sound pickup, it's that one.

[Krank'N]

The original "frankenstrat" used the neck pup from a Gibson 335.

[Angry Tele]

id get a SD seth lover...Ill tell you what I get a EVH tone with my tele and twin reverb by using a CMATMODS Brownie. It uses Ed Guidry's 'Brown Sound in a Box2' circuit, and it delivers.

[Argh! Zombies!]

I wouldn't be so ready to trust Eddie's ears on how close the recent $400 signature pickup is. Or, you know, anything else.

 

From the Duncan custom shop, isn't there a '78 and a copyright-swerving "Evenly Voiced Harmonics" model? I was never clear on which was meant to replicate that first modded PAF of his. Or are they the same pickup?

 

It also seems to me the Alnico II Pro should be close (A2 mag, 7.85k...) but I've been informed that I am wrong and don't know about wire and should be quiet.

[scud133]

Just a bit more about the EVH Frankenstein pickup (which is actually only $140ish, not $300)...

 

The engineer tasked with recreating Eddie's original thought he had actually broken it at first because it measured at 0k. So he was freaking out and hooked it back in to the guitar and it turned out to play just fine.

 

So although it was just an old gibby humbucker that Eddie re-purposed for his frankenstrat, it definitely had some sort of voodoo mojo going on. And over several months, this guy and other people at fender agonized over recreating that pickup exactly.

 

It's not just whether or not EVH was satisfied, it also had to satisfy all the enigneers that were involved.

 

I don't think a more accurate represenation of Eddie's pickup exists than that one.

 

(all that was in a Guitar World interview back when he first came out with this stuff)

 

Of course, that's only a fraction of the equation with his tone. You're going to need a Plexi running on a variac, and a phaser, and EQ pedal and stuff like that. And his fingers.

[mikesr1963]

Since I only try and play like Eddie Van Halen at home I use a Line 6 Spider 3. I can pretty much dial in anyone I want to have some house party fun.

[noisebloom]

Conventional wisdom has it that EVH distanced himself from Seymour Duncan's 78 pickup very early on, to the extent that he discouraged Duncan from marketing the pickup. For years, the pickup was a gray market, special order item that the company was reluctant to acknowledge. Nowadays Duncan is offering the pickup a little more openly as a Custom Shop model, but they're still coy about it. Even now, you have to approach the company more or less directly for it, which adds to its mystique.

 

I have read rumors that EVH himself used the SD 78s in the past, although I haven't seen anything to corroborate that definitively. It's possible that he used SD 78s as his pickup of choice prior to 1984.

 

What is pretty clear is that as soon as EVH started playing his Kramer 5150, the Custom Custom became his pickup of choice, and any association with the SD 78 was effectively over. The hotter pickup changed EVH's sound from that point on.

 

Ed's been using hotter pickups for more than 25 years now. He's long since moved away from the slightly overwound PAFs that helped define his early sound.

 

I think it's a mistake to try to compare the SD 78 with the EVH Frankenstein humbucker. They are different animals. Yes, they're both Alnico 2s, but the SD 78 is ~9k, while the EVH Frankenstein is quite a bit hotter at ~14k. The EVH Frankenstein really has more in common with the Custom Custom, not the 78. I personally don't think the EVH Frankenstein gets you the early brown sound in spades, because it isn't quite the same pickup. It's more for Ed's later sound.

 

I think if you're looking for the late 70s/early 80s brown sound, go with the Seymour Duncan 78. It's hard to get any closer than the pickup Seymour wound specifically for EVH. If you're after EVH's sound post-1983, go with the Custom Custom or the EVH Frankenstein.

[Prages]

Don't forget that all the tracks on the VHI album that don't require a whammy bar were recorded with an Ibanez Destroyer with a Dimarzio Super Distortion pickup.

[noisebloom]

 

Don't forget that all the tracks on the VHI album that don't require a whammy bar were recorded with an Ibanez Destroyer with a Dimarzio Super Distortion pickup.

 

 

As I understand it, the Ibanez Destroyer had a Super 70 pickup, not a Super Distortion ... but yeah, the fact is that the recordings he did with the Destroyer still have that brown sound. It didn't matter whether he played the Frankie or the Destroyer or a Les Paul -- the storied sound is still there. So a magic pickup with fairy dust on it may get us closer, but it isn't the whole equation.

[The Rossness]

Didn't he take his original pup out of an old ES-335? I'm sure you could buy an original gibson PAF for a few hundred.

 

If you don't want to spend that much, I look at a Duncan Antiquity and get a Wayne Rock Legend guitar built for you out of ash.

 

The next step is to go to Dave Friedman and have him build you a HBE.

[Prages]

 

I'm sure you could buy an original gibson PAF for a few hundred.

 

 

You may be a little low on your estimate.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1960-Gibson-PAF-pickups-and-wiring-harness-complete-60-/270661577947?pt=Guitar_Accessories&hash=item3f04afecdb

[ashasha]

Didn't he take his original pup out of an old ES-335? I'm sure you could buy an original gibson PAF for a few hundred. If you don't want to spend that much, I look at a Duncan Antiquity and get a Wayne Rock Legend guitar built for you out of ash. The next step is to go to Dave Friedman and have him build you a HBE.

 

Yeah, but you have to remember that he allegedly took it apart and screwed it up somehow.

 

I love EVH, but about 90% of his recollection on tone is probably about 10% accurate. I mean does anyone remember the whole Jose Arredondo amp debacle?