Dave's art. Ed's guitar. Separated at birth?
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Ed played pretty much straight into his amp while recording and the effects were added later by the recording engineer. Live he used his Phase 90, Flanger, maybe an EQ pedal to boost the mids and he used the preamp in Echo Plex to get a clean boost and maybe get some slap back from the tape loop. That was the basic setup but that evolved a little bit as more modern equipment became available.No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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Dave is full of shit. Anyone who has done a Frankenstrat paint job knows you spray black as the first coat and then you use painters detailing tape to mask where you want the stripes to be then you spray it white. Peel the tape and then mask it again and do the red coat. That’s how Ed did it.
Dave said Ed had a solid white guitar and they used electrical tape and duct tape. Bullshit. Duct tape is real wide and no stripes on that guitar are that wide. Maybe the taped up another guitar but Ed never talked about it.No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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You would also end up with a black guitar with white stripes masking and spraying a white guitar. So bullshit Dave. What’s next? You came up with the Mean Streets intro because you were listening to some black dude playing slap funk on the bass?No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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Dave is full of shit. Anyone who has done a Frankenstrat paint job knows you spray black as the first coat and then you use painters detailing tape to mask where you want the stripes to be then you spray it white. Peel the tape and then mask it again and do the red coat. That’s how Ed did it.
Dave said Ed had a solid white guitar and they used electrical tape and duct tape. Bullshit. Duct tape is real wide and no stripes on that guitar are that wide. Maybe the taped up another guitar but Ed never talked about it."If you want to be a monk... you gotta cook a lot of rice...”Comment
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THAT was the weirdest fucking thing to me, however many years ago - 15 or so years back - when those Franky replicas were selling for 10 to 20k a pop or whatever it was...replicas all the way down to cigarette burns and a quarter stuck under the bridge...this being twenty tears after Ed had even played with Franky onstage.Scramby eggs and bacon.Comment
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It was actually Dave. No, really, just ask him. Or don't ask him: he'll tell you anyway.Scramby eggs and bacon.Comment
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I think Wolfgang said recently Ed viewed it as a piece of shit and it was just kept lying about on the floor until it ended up in the museum. I'm sure if you played it then it would be way worse than a $500 EVH guitar but middle aged stockbrokers want to believe that if only they but a replica of it for $25000 they will suddenly get great at guitar. I think part of this is because the tapping bit in Eruption can be done after 6 months of taking up guitar people thought/think that their playing will continue rise at that level and when after 5 or 10 or 20 years they still can't play half of the rest of it they think it's something you can just throw money at.
I've done it myself - I remember buying books of guitar tabs back in the day assuming that I would then be able to play stuff ignoring that
a) If I bought sheet music to a Bach concerto would I expect to suddenly be able to play that on piano?
b) A lot of the tab books weren't accurate at all. Nowadays YouTube is also often wrong but at least it's free, you have video and you can shop around.
And I had such shitty gear for the first five years of playing, and a lot of the friends I had who had better gear than me couldn't play nearly as well as I could because they didn't practice as much, yet back in my early teens I used to always think if I had better gear that in and of itself would make me play better...this was 1982 to 1987 or so, when Charvels, B.C. Rich, Kramer Pacers and the like were these souped-up hot rod guitars in my eyes...
And I used to think Ed's Franky was this ultimate souped up hot rod guitar that had all these insider secret gear modifications which gave Ed this edge...yet that Franky guitar didn't even have a Floyd Rose on the first album, and Ed was doing all that cool tremolo stuff before he even started using a Floyd Rose.Scramby eggs and bacon.Comment
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To this day the biggest mystery to me about early VH is how the guitar didn't go out of tune more live. I know stretching strings and all that stuff but still...Comment
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The same reason Yngwie stays in tune with a regular Strat. You use a brass nut and keep just enough down pressure on it to let the note ring but no more than that. Also it’s how you use the bar. You yank the strings back into tune. There’s an art to it. But Ed would switch guitars during the show.No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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Ed did the red coat later. He got pissed that people were making copies of his black and white guitar so he took the guitar apart and masked it with tape and sprayed it red. He put an extra pickup in and screwed a selector switch in the middle pickup route. He cut the pickguard and screwed the part that holds the knobs in the guitar. He might have put the Floyd on at this time. Anyways he wanted a freaked out looking guitar nobody else would want to make. Ha! Ha!No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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People who worked with Ed said he did things real simple. People over analyze him. What pickup or potentiometer did he use? Whatever was on the bench that day. He would throw stuff together and if it sounded good he used it. The guy followed no rule book. Van Halen was a bunch of happy accident from just trying different things.No! You can't have the keys to the wine cellar!Comment
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