Still chasing the fg brown sound

[So this is love]

ok this is an old topic probly for you and shouldn't be in main lol, and its Sunday and I am exhausted at persuing this brown shit tone, I have every fx pedals, evh tube amp and other fg axe fx possible and my hear tells me the sound is still missing something.... I was looking for a fg crate gfx 212 a year ago and said to my self this crap cannot be better than the EVH tube amp I own lo fg l. and tonight I am looking online for these fuckers and none are available anywhere for sale wtf??? a $200 amp has disappeared...no bullshit what are you guys using for EVH past and post DLR?

[So this is love]

and don't you tell me its in the fingers kind of crap...

[So this is love]

I can't believe you regular poster and "failed guitar player" as per Krusty, are all watching american idol tonight? lol!

[Seshmeister]

and don't you tell me its in the fingers kind of crap...

I was about to say that... :)

I think the other thing people get wrong most often is that there is less gain/distortion than you maybe think especially in the CVH years.

[Nitro Express]

Don’t overlook speakers. Ed used to record with a Marshall B cab with 2 JBL 120 speakers on top and two Celesian greenbacks on the bottom. The JBL’s sound awful on their own but paired up with the Celesians it’s an important component of the brown sound.

[Nitro Express]

Also a EQ pedal is a big help to shape your sound. Ed used them live to boost the mids. He also used the preamp in a echoplex to boost his signal. He used Marshall Super Lead 100’s with every knob maxed out. He would run them around 89 volts to get more compression and sag.

Really nothing magical about his rig. Everyone that played his guitar through his rig sounded like them.

[Nitro Express]

https://www.suhr.com/electronics/amplifiers/suhr-sl/

If you want the “brown sound” a Suhr SL will get you there better than a 5150. It’s got a built in variac feature. This amp is made to do classic VH. Get a good attenuator so you don’t blow the windows out of your house. I like to use a Power Station to tame hot amps.

[Nitro Express]

I think the Suhr is actually better than a vintage Marshall. For one the input shielding is better. I have a 68 plexi that’s stock and it picks up radio stations. A Suhr won’t. They run shielded wire from the inputs to the preamps. On some Hendrix bootlegs you can hear his amps picking up radio signals.

[ZahZoo]

There's just so many variables that can get you to the tone you are trying to achieve. The tough part with Ed's early tone was he was driving those Marshalls really hard. Unless you have a studio with good soundproofing it's difficult to work with those volumes... plus you have to have room acoustics that help.

What I would suggest is really work on getting your guitar setup dialed in. Then make sure your amps are operating at their best. Tubes in good shape and learn how to bias them and find their sweet spot. It's a tough challenge and you could go thru a lot of tubes just to find the right matching combo that brings the amp alive... Think of it as a race car... it has to be tuned to produce the desired horsepower. Ed's distortion came from driving those tubes... not a pedal.

To find your tone... sit down with just the amp and guitar. No pedals and tweak your gain and tone settings all across the spectrum to find the sweet spots in both clean and overdriven signals.

My go to advice... go thru all that but find a tone that YOU like and stick with it. Then the it's in your hands crap won't drive you mad...

PS... Hendrix picked up radio signals primarily from dirty, ungrounded, non-polarized, unshielded electrical systems... and the primary culprit was his Wah pedal.