BOSS and EVH Collaboration - SDE-3000EVH

[Nitro Express]

I would say artist branding started with KISS. With recorded music losing its value artists have to have a few side gigs going. Merchandising is more important than ever.

[ZahZoo]

When I first ventured in to electrics in 1970 there wasn't anything artist endorsed or signature models. I bought a used Univox hollow-body that was an ES-335 copy for $40 with my paper route earnings and traded a sting-ray bike for a beat-up Sears Silvertone amp. At 13, I was the envy of my buddies... and a nuisance to my neighbors! LOL

Wasn't much in the way of pedals affordable or widely available then. Sadly back then you could pick up used Strats and Les Pauls for a couple hundred bucks or less. They were just viewed as old crap rather than vintage gold mines. Still have a 2-12 speaker from a 1964 blonde Fender Bassman rig I bought at a yard sales for $60 when I was 16... my buddy up in Alaska still has the amp and won't sell it back to me... I've been hounding him for 40 years now and he won't budge!

[Terry]

I'm sure there's a certain portion of the market that buys certain brands hoping to sound "like" the artist endorser... that's fine and typical in the gear market.

But then there's others who are chasing their own sound and see the capabilities something like this pedal/effect can do for their rig and signal chain. The reference to EVH's live sound rig give you a real world application of it's use and capabilities. There's a lot of guitar players that love Eddie's work but have no interest and certainly don't have his playing ability... so they don't try to emulate Ed's compositions. I'm that way... but the gear aspects are interesting.

When I first started playing, it was just before signature models and gear started hitting the market. You'd have players endorsing a line of guitars or amps or gear but it was along the lines of so and so uses these strings or Fenders or Marshall amps. This was, like, 1981 or so.

The first one I sort of remember being tied to a particular player was the Charvel Jackson take on the Flying-V which Randy Rhoads used, in that I think after Rhoads' passing it was named...was it the Rhoads V...something like that.

Like, obviously one could call Fenders or Gibson Les Pauls or Marshalls or Floyd Roses signature gear referencing the names of the manufacturers, but it wasn't until the mid to late 1980s that I remember, say, Fender putting out an Eric Clapton model.

[Terry]

The Ratt is still one of my favorite pedals. I have a Ratt, a OCD and a Plush Cream in my gig bag. I can get my sound with any amp using those.

I love my Pro-Co Rat distortion pedal.

My others (MXR Phase 90, MXR Distortion +, Boss Phase Shifter, Boss Digital Delay) are basically mothballed.

Olden-time stomp boxes.

The one other stomp box I used to love as much as I love my Rat was my DOD PDS 1000 Digital Delay. Lost track of it in the mid-1990s when I was moving around a lot. Am thinking of tracking down a used one online...I loved that fucking pedal. The BOSS one I got to replace it is good, but not the same.

[Nitro Express]

Fuck there is so much gear anymore it’s nuts.

[Nitro Express]

I'm sure there's a certain portion of the market that buys certain brands hoping to sound "like" the artist endorser... that's fine and typical in the gear market.

But then there's others who are chasing their own sound and see the capabilities something like this pedal/effect can do for their rig and signal chain. The reference to EVH's live sound rig give you a real world application of it's use and capabilities. There's a lot of guitar players that love Eddie's work but have no interest and certainly don't have his playing ability... so they don't try to emulate Ed's compositions. I'm that way... but the gear aspects are interesting.

The 5150 amps are liked by country players because the clean channel is on the twangy side. Ed never used the clean channel. He was on the red channel most the time but the channel Ed never used sells the amp to some customers.

[Nitro Express]

https://www.mojotone.com/Mojotone-Blackout-British-Head

If you want a really good old school 20 watt drive it to hell amp these are great. Hand wired, well built and one channel is like a Marshall plexi and the other is like a hot JCM 800. 6v6’s sound like EL34’s if you goose them hard. But this amp doesn’t mush out. The note definition is very good. Great for old school VH.

[ZahZoo]

I'm sure there's a certain portion of the market that buys certain brands hoping to sound "like" the artist endorser... that's fine and typical in the gear market.

But then there's others who are chasing their own sound and see the capabilities something like this pedal/effect can do for their rig and signal chain. The reference to EVH's live sound rig give you a real world application of it's use and capabilities. There's a lot of guitar players that love Eddie's work but have no interest and certainly don't have his playing ability... so they don't try to emulate Ed's compositions. I'm that way... but the gear aspects are interesting.

[Nitro Express]

You can’t polish a turd. If your golf swing sucks spending $10,000 in the pro shop ain’t going to help you.

[Nitro Express]

If you can’t sound like Ed unplugged, nothing you plug into is going to do it. You have to get the sound from the strings and guitar. Everything else just makes it louder and tweaks the sound a bit.

[Nitro Express]

A lot of Ed’s early tone comes from the speaker cab. You have to push the speakers and get that cab resonating.

[Nitro Express]

I only use pedals if I don’t have an amp that works for me or I have to keep the volume down. I have Fryette Power Station and you can use that to cut or boost the volume. It doesn’t thin out the tone like a static load box does. If I have that I just crank the amp and run a line out to the PA mixer.

But I have no use for the buzz box called the 5150. Ed ruined his tone using those.

[Nitro Express]

The Ratt is still one of my favorite pedals. I have a Ratt, a OCD and a Plush Cream in my gig bag. I can get my sound with any amp using those.

[Nitro Express]

I love power amp distortion. I was never much for the high gain preamp distortion thing. You can get great VH sounds cranking the shit out of low powered tube amps that have a Marshall style tone stack. I have a little 20 watt FUCH’s amp with just a volume knob and three tone knobs. I run it at 89 volts on a variac and crank every knob full up. I run it into a 2x12 with 25 watt green backs. Get the classic VH tone better than anything.

[Terry]

People get good Van Halen tone through all sorts of stuff including some cheap shit like the Epiphone Valve Jr. The real trick is knowing how to play like Ed. No black box is going to do that for you.

Never bothered with any of the EVH gear.

I can fiddle around with my stock Peavey amp, stock Ibanez or stock Charvel and MXR/BOSS/Pro-Co Rat pedals and get an EVH tone.

People love the idea of a single magic box being able to replicate the sound the various bits of customized gear Ed used throughout his career made. As you say, though (and I agree), more of it had to do with what his hands were doing than the gear he was using.