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Hey guys, we are back for the second installment of what looks like it's going to be a line of videos. I think I've had a lot of requests to do this Van Halen thing, this brown sound quest. So, this is the second installment of the brown sound quest. It's going to deal with, um, Van Halen 2. And that was an album that the guitar sound changed pretty drastically from the first album. You know, Ed always said that he didn't like the first album, didn't like the sound. It was too raspy, too distorted, too trebly, too much reverb, yada yada yada.
Um, there's a number of changes on Van Halen 2. I'm going to try not to ramble as much as I did last time, but just to get to the heart of it. This album was recorded at Sunset Sound, but it wasn't mixed at Sunset Sound. It was mixed at Westlake Recording in Hollywood. Still there, studio is still there. But what that says is that, or what that, what that causes is that, um, the famous echo chambers from Sunset Sound weren't available during the mix. So they didn't use echo chambers, they used actual reverbs. They used EMT reverbs, um, whatever Westlake has as a house reverb, and maybe they used some rack stuff too.
So on this video, I'm still going to use the Sunset Sound plugin, but I'm using the EMT reverb for the reverbs, um, instead of using the chamber, the chamber emulations that are in that Sunset. They sound great. It's an EMT 140, it sounds killer.
Now, Don Landee said that everything was the same. He recorded everything the same from Van Halen 1 to Van Halen 2 and never quite understood what everybody said, what sounded so different. But the guitar definitely sounds different. Um, and there's a number of reasons for that. The amplifier was modified. And again, my speculation, but this is just, just sticking through it and listening in, in countless hours of playing this stuff and trying to figure out what the, there's little minute subtle tonal changes. This album is, is a little bit warmer sounding. Um, it's cleaner. The guitar has definitely got a cleaner sound. Um, but it still has a brightness to it. And there's a couple of reasons for that.
But anyway, the amp was modified. It's got the fat cap on V2 installed. You know, the fat cap mod. You know, we know it was done to the amp. Guys like Dave Friedman and Mike Sano, and you know, there's a, there's a pretty big list of other guys that have worked on the amp, on the famous, the famous amp. And it definitely does have the fat cap in it. Um, I speculate that this is when the mod was done, was sometime after Van Halen 1. But I think the amp definitely had the fat cap mod for, for this album, for Van Halen 2, and it has it for, for every album forward from there. All four tubes are in. I took them out, I took two tubes out in the first video because I think that's what went on. The Variac is turned down lower. In this video, I'm running the amp at 71 volts. I think that's about it.
Just as an overview, so let's get into it and see where we go from here.
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All right, here's one of the guitars we're going to use for the Van Halen 2, this Van Halen 2 video here. This is the same one I used in for the Van Halen 1 deep dive that we did. It's, uh, quick, quick recap. Music Craft, hard ash body, northern ash body. It's their Frankie cut. Boogie Body's neck. It's a wide fingerboard, one and three-quarters inch. Standard tremolo, Fender tremolo, Fender reissue 6061 tremolo, I think it is.
But here's the change. Um, we've all heard that Ed rewound pickups and did this and did that. And, and, you know, in my first video, I was pretty set on the fact that he was using that PAF that he pulled out of the, out of his '69, or I'm sorry, the '61 335. Um, I think that's the one that Seymour Duncan ended up rewinding for him. And if you look at the timeframe of when it was done and what Seymour was up to, Seymour was winding pickups for Mighty Might, you know, he was doing the DiMarzio copies. And Seymour was trying to get on his feet. And he had, he had kind of come up with a, he came up with the super hot pickup that was, and I say super hot, I mean hot marketing-wise among celebrities. And he, and he had gotten a bunch of guys converted to what, what would eventually become the JB. And what he would do is he was doing winds. He would rewind the artist's pickups. And the wind that he was doing was his prototype JB wind.
So, a couple of things that lead me to that. And again, this is all just speculation, but I have, I have literally, I have put dozens of pickups through this guitar cycle, dozens of pickups through this guitar, all of the popular ones, all the famous ones, all. And I was reluctant to the JB because I always, well, no, I can't be the JB. The JB is too obvious. It's too, it was the hot pickup. You had the DiMarzio Super Distortion and you had the JB. Um, and DiMarzio was out a few years earlier than the JB. So that was the most well-known one. The JB probably started hitting music stores in like '79, '78, '80, somewhere in there. And then it was, it was the hottest selling, biggest pickup out there. I think. I mean, everybody had to have the JB.
But there's just, there's just sort of some tonal things and some sensitivity things that happen with the JB that you don't get out of other pickups. Um, and I know I'm going to get, I'm going to get just pounded for this, but this is a JB. It's the Antiquity JB that I've got in here. Um, and I know everybody thinks it's an A2 because of the Frankie pickup and everything. I think Seymour was just making that Frankenstein pickup as what an aged magnet would sound like. And that's why he went with the A2 instead of the A5 that's in the JB. Um, this is, you know, the Antiquity is supposedly a slightly degassed Alnico 5 magnet. And it just, it just has all the characteristics. Would you, you guys decide, you tell me if I'm right or I'm wrong. But I'm, I'm pretty sure it's the JB. So that's what you're going to hear, the Antiquity JB in this guitar. And we'll see where we go from there.
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Okay, the other big secret here on this album, and it's not really a secret, but it's one of the components, is the Schaffer Vega wireless system. This is the transmitter from that. It's, I don't know if you can see it, it's, it's got embossed here, it says Vega. Um, this is from a Cetec Vega system. The Cetec Vega came out after the Ken Schaffer SVDS, the Schaffer Vega diversity system. It was the wireless system. It was the one that all the, all the big guys used. Angus Young, Joe Perry had one. I mean, anybody who was relatively big at the time had the Cetec wireless. When wireless had first come out.
And these are cool. I mean, they're super cool. By today's standards, you know, you'd look, take a Shure U4. I think they're U4D is the diversity of the UHF system. You know, they just, the sound quality, the clarity, and everything is better, and the reliability. You know, but these have a sound. And the reason for that sound is that they're, they're a fixed ratio compression. And they have this, I don't know if you can see it, there's a, there's a little knob here, it's a screw, it's like a screw potentiometer. And that adjusted the compression and boost of sorts. So you could, on, if you look at the Schaffer transmitters, they actually had a knob sticking up on the pot. They just didn't have the screwdriver potentiometer thingy. So you could actually adjust your boost and compression level. And so these do a, the fixed ratio is a 2:1 compression done at the transmitter. And then at the receiver, it's reversed, one to two. So it expands it again. That's why they call it companding. They created that word, compression, expansion, companding. So all wireless units do it. But the newer ones, the more expensive ones, like the Shure, they do, it's like an audio referenced companding. It's not a fixed ratio. So it, it does the, it does the compression and expansion as required based on what the signal needs to have done and how hard you're hitting it and everything else.
So, anyway, you're going to hear this on the video too. I'm going to be using the wireless because Ed used the wireless in the studio for Van Halen 2. And he used this, and he used the Schaffer system at least up and through the 1983 tour, Diver Down. So, I mean, he used it. It's all over Fair Warning. You can see the, it's not on the album, but it's on the tour, the '81 tour. So this, this is it. This, so you'll hear this too. Cool unit.
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Oh, oh, my.
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And here's the Shark. This is what we're going to be using for the other songs, or for the, for the non-tremolo songs for this video. Um, he used it on like "Dance the Night Away," "Out of Love," "Bottoms Up," "Light Up the Sky." The guitar solos are overdubs in those. Um, "Women in Love," the main song, it's the Shark. Um, so everything else is the other guitar, black and white striped one. But interesting, this is an Epiphone. So it isn't the Japanese Senwood that the Ibanez Destroyer is made out of that he hacked up. But I don't think it's making that big of a difference. I don't, I've got, I have the Greco, you can see it behind me, that's the Senwood. These guitars sound really close to each other. They're pretty similar sounding.
Pickup. Now, this is where it gets interesting. All right, so we've all heard that Ed took a magnet out of his PAF and put it into a Super Distortion, took the ceramic magnet out because he said the DiMarzio's too raspy and, you know, just that kind of grating sound. So I did that. This is, this is a 1977 DiMarzio Super Distortion humbucker. It was, people will get mad at me because I wrecked a vintage pickup, but, you know, big deal, that's what we're here for. The thing howled uncontrollably anyway. The early DiMarzio's just, they were, they fed back like crazy. So anyway, this has got an A5 magnet in it, a rough cast A5. Took the ceramic out. I put the spacers in underneath because the ceramic magnet is much thicker. So than the, than the A5, the thin A5 magnet or the standard PAF type A5. And it sounds, it sounds cool. What he essentially did was by doing that was he kind of created a JB again. That's what that is. So you take, I mean, it's a, it's a 14, 13 and a half, 14k wind, 14k wind with an Alnico 5 magnet. That's what a JB is. So that's what this is. That's what this is. It's a vintage DiMarzio with an A5 magnet. And we're going to be using it for the video.
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Here's the pedal board that we're using today. It is, from what we can tell, identical to what Ed would have used back in that time frame, in that time period, '78, '79. It's really super simple. So the output, either the guitar cable or the wireless unit, feeds the flanger right here. That goes out into the, into the Phase 90. Phase 90 then feeds the EP3 Echoplex. And this is just the footswitch for the on/off echo for the Echoplex. And the Echoplex goes straight to the input of the Marshall. So it's, it's super simple, really, really simple.
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Here's the amp used for the video. Same amp we used in the Van Halen 1 quest for the brown sound for the first album. Same settings too, everything identical. Here we've got volumes, Volume 1, Volume 2 on about seven and a half. Uh, we're just top left input, no input jumper. I mean, some people don't know, but Volume 2 does still make a difference. It kind of warms up the sound a little bit. But other than that, everything's on 10. Like I said, same configuration on the controls.
But if we go to the back side of the amp, if you remember in the Van Halen 1 video, we had pulled the two tubes, so we were running only two of the 6C7s. It gives you a bit more of a compressed kind of feel, a little bit more tighter kind of distortion, kind of, hard to describe. But I just felt that if, if you're in Van Halen's shoes, always trying to reduce the volume of the amplifier, because these things are so loud, they peel paint, that you do anything you can. And pulling tubes was an option. So that's, that's the one thing.
All right, so all four are in for the Van Halen 2 for this video. There is a modification in the amplifier. Now, we've got the fat cap installed on V2. I've got a switch so you can switch it off, so you can go back to the stock configuration. You go to the fat cap. So this, this fat cap is a 250 microfarad capacitor. And I think it's been said that Ed's was a 330. I've had a 330 in this amp before. I can't hear a difference between the 250 and the 330. So I don't think it really matters that much. It's just enough to thicken up the sound and warm it up a little bit. It's hard to describe, but it's, it's definitely something that you hear. It's subtle.
Also different from how we were running the amp in the first video. The first video, the Variac was set to 87 volts. On this video, we are running at 71 volts. That's right, 71 volts on the mains AC feeding the amplifier. So, just a couple other things that I may not have mentioned in the other video. The NFB circuit is 100k on the 4-ohm tap. And the mid-range pot is a, is a 50k, just like it's the same one. It's supposed to be a 25 according to the Marshall spec, and most of them are. But that was another, another anomaly on Ed's amp.
So, if you, if you're looking for any more information on the amp, feel free to reach out to me on the video comments and I'll answer it. But it's, it's a stock, stock '68 build with the Mercury Magnetic Transformers. And great amplifier, sounds killer.
For the "Women in Love" intro, I used this old parts caster that I put together. See, it's not a Fender. If you look closely, it says something a little different. But actually, it's an old Chandler, Chandler neck from the '80s. It's pretty cool. I've had this thing laying around forever. But otherwise, it's just a standard Strat configuration. And I played the, played the intro with just the middle pickup. It was, it was nothing special. So here it is.
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Okay, so this is the 4x12 we're miking. You can see the JBL D120 is at the top, there's two of them. And then there's two Celestion Greenbacks down here on the bottom. Two SM57s. Same miking setup we used on the last video for the Van Halen 1 sound. I mean, it's identical, it hasn't been broken down. If you look at the mic placement there, this is about, they're probably about an inch and a half off the grill cloth. So there's a little bit of breathing room. And each, each microphone, each 57 goes to its own track, obviously.
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All right, now this is what we're using for here in the studio for our. It's, it's basically our recording interface, but it also acts as, it's our monitoring solution too. So you get, you get zero latency. I set this up as a, it's the studio setup and we can change this configuration at any time. But I've got it set up for it's a 24-track. So thing I'm trying to do it old school like an old 24-track studio that goes to tape. Obviously, it doesn't, it records to an iMac Pro. But I've got 24 ins that we can record simultaneously with ease. I mean, I can have 25, 24 open mics in this room and it's just because there's zero latency. And we're monitoring in real time from the console. It, it just works out wonderfully. Then we've got, I've got it set for eight returns back from Logic. So you can be very creative in what you want to listen to or mix back into your monitor mixes. And then speaking of monitor mixes, we've got all kinds of stereo monitor mixes. So I think I, I think I've got it set up right now for six stereo mixes that we can run. And then there's a couple of mono mixes. So the performers can get, you know, you can adjust your mix any way you want. So this thing has been a great tool. But that's, this is our recording interface. And it takes the place of, you know, any of the USB or FireWire kind of interfaces. So that's what we use on the very front end of all of this.
Okay, so here we are in Logic Pro. The X32, that's the USB input for all this, which I just kind of explained. So what I try to do here in Logic is set this up as analog as possible. So I use these Waves plugins or any kind of plugin that gives me some, you know, some modeled emulation, analog stuff. So to start here, this is where the two SM57s come in for the Greenback and the JBL. So they're at equal volume levels, even though the JBL's a little bit louder, but it's, I compensate for that later on. But I start here at the top of the channel with this IK Multimedia plugin. And it's super cool, it's a Sunset Sound Reverb. And what I've got here at the front end is I'm assuming that in Van Halen 2, since they had a budget now and they already had a big selling first album, that they didn't get kicked around as much in the studio and they were kind of in the studio start to finish for the recording of this album. So I assumed that Ed placed his cabinet was placed in the iso booth in Studio 2. It's not, it's not a big deal, it just adds a little slight coloration. It's, it's emulated from, they actually use the mics from the mic locker at Sunset Sound. They use the consoles. So you're getting a little bit of that, that cool API analog console thing. It's, again, it's subtle, not really required for this. I'm just trying to be super precise. So I'm using those on the front end. We're in Studio 2 iso booth. So that's on, that's coming in for each channel, for each microphone. So just assuming that the mic is plugged straight in.
Then I use these Waves, where are you? I got to drag it over here, a Nonlinear Summer. And what this is, it's modeled after a famous SSL console. And the SSL is what I'm told is fairly, fairly close to the API, or at least it's got more of that bite in the high end that the API had. So I'm using those just to add a little bit of analog character. Same thing, got them on each channel.
Then I go into an API 550. But as you can see, everything is flat. The only thing I'm using is the filter, which is like a, a 50 Hz roll-off. It's a, like a high-pass filter. But everything else, just the analog on, and I'm just doing that so I pass signal through it because again, any kind of analog thing I can get in the signal chain tends to warm things up a little bit. So I'm using that here on both channels again.
And then I'm running into an 1176 here. I got to drag it over. 1176 compressor. And you see, if I start this up, we're not really hitting, so we're like, we're like 1 dB. And it's just, it's super minor compression. It's the famous Dr. Pepper setup, 10:2 and 4. Simple. I run one, so I'm not yelling over that. I run one on each channel to each microphone.
So anyway, we send these to another bus. So I'm, I'm like, I'm subgrouping them, summing them into one, one bus here. I've called it the two guitar tracks. And on that, I've got another one of these NLS, these Nonlinear Summers. Then we're running into the 2BQ, which is the Pultec here. This is Apple's Logic version of the Pultec EQ. So you can look at my EQ settings. Again, not a, not much different. If I go back to my Van Halen 1 EQ settings, which some, some people have asked for, there's really not a whole lot of difference. Same mid-range cut, maybe a little bit more low-end attenuation than here, but pretty much really similar.
So let's go back to the VH2 EQ. See, we're running a little bit more high boost. And I think maybe I'm, might be a hair bright on this, on this whole video. So let me just show you. It's a subtle change on it. You can listen here. So we go.
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Anyway, it's, I think it's somewhere in there. And I, I tend to air on the brighter side because it cuts through the mix better. And when you, if you play along with backing tracks, and take the, take Ed's guitar out of it and play along with those backing tracks you can find on YouTube, a little bit brighter seems to fit into the mix better. And it's, it's just, you know, I don't, I ran out of time. I'm rambling too much on this video as it is. So I was going to show you that too, but it's just, it just takes too much time.
So anyway, from there, from the 2BQ, again, I'm running another API 550. But again, flat, not doing anything analog on. We are rolling, you know, we're using a high-pass filter at 50 Hz. But, you know, it's a guitar, there's not much that lives down there anyway. And into that, we're using an H910 Harmonizer. An Eventide H910 Harmonizer. And I've, I've got experience with the real hardware on this. I've used them off and on for a long time. And they have a very unique sound. And I'm running this, not as a side chain, but I'm running it in-line on right on the bus. And I'm, I'm using the, I'm using the mix control on the actual H910. So it's not 100% wet like you would if you went side chain. The reason I'm doing that is because just running through this unit gives you a, a kind of a present, a really, it's a, it's a cool sound. And it's very noticeable. And without it, it gets, it's a little bit duller sounding. And that's the way the real unit works too. So I mean, it's a, it has character. And definitely Ed's character. I know Ed's got, or had, or they still sit at 5150 in the racks. He's got, he's used, I think H910 since almost the beginning. I'm not sure if they were used on the first album, but the Eventide H910 is pretty predominant on all of the Van Halen stuff, Van Halen 2 forward. And it only gets more and more prominent the later they get in the recording, through Sammy Hagar and all that stuff.
So that's in here. And again, very subtle. I've got 7% of the harmonizer in the mix. So it's really, really, really subtle. I can demonstrate.
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Here, that's without. So that's completely out.
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All right, so there you get a feel for that. So I've got the two tracks panned, not super hard. I mean, they're pretty hard left, but it's not so fully to the left because there is a little bit, if you listen, if you listen to the actual album tracks, that there is a little bit of, call it dry guitar, I mean, very little, coming in through the on the right side. So it's not a complete hard pan.
From there, in here, we send out to the EMT 140 reverb, which I've got here in this track. Nothing real special about that. I'm running, I'm running 150 millisecond pre-delay. And it works pretty well. It might be a little high, but I think that there was definitely pre-delay on the reverb. So but everything else, the reverb is EQ'd. I'm rolling off low end at 150 Hz. That's really about it. I do use a tape emulation just to, again, to go for that analog thing again. Very subtle.
As far as the "Women in Love" thing, I did those plugged direct into the board. So let me mute the electric guitar, the 4x12 cabinet. And here are the, here's the double track. The "Women in Love" intro. I got two tracks, just the NLS Summers. And then I'm running that, I'm busting that out to, and I've got that called the intro guitar. And same kind of setup, another NLS Summer, another compressor, Dr. Pepper setting, still not hitting it hard, it's just a little smoothing. Another, another version of a Pultec here. So it's got a slightly different EQ setup, but it's just to warm it up. It's a different guitar. Again, I'm running direct. I'm running, I'm using a direct line in. There's no amplifier involved.
So here's what it sounds like. This one's running through the H949. I'll show you that one. This is an H949 stacked. It's pretty cool. This was the later version. This came out in like '77 or '78. See if I shut off the harmonizer.
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So even though, even though I'm double-tracked, you still don't get that, that swirling chime, the chimey sound. So I played it twice. Two, two physical passes into two different tracks. Anyway, running into the H949. The delay is handled by the H949. We're running 375 milliseconds, as you can see right here. And that's handling the repeats on this. And the delay gets, when you get to the strumming part, the delay gets minimized. So let's start. I'll show you how we should, we should back the delay down.
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Wow. So there it is. That was a long one. I'm sorry. I, I still, I tried not to ramble. I think I still rambled. So anyway, that's the, that's the conclusion of the video. Let me know what you think. Um, I think we covered a lot, a lot of territory here and probably pretty accurate on a lot of it. Again, a lot of speculation, but give me your thoughts, questions, whatever. You know where to get me. I'll respond to comments and this and that. So again, thanks for watching. And maybe we'll do "Women and Children First" maybe. Although that's kind of, that's kind of similar to, to the, it's a combination of the two of these, of Van Halen 1 and Van Halen 2. But maybe "Fair Warning" would be a cool one because that's one, another one of those where the tone drastically changed. And it was, it was a super, I mean, a lot of guys think that was the best tone of all. So maybe we'll tackle that one next. Until next time, thanks for watching. See you.