590 posts 10/10/2016 4:20 pm
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Brown sound
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I am a victim of the science age, uh
A of the storm, whoa yes
I can't remember when I was your age
For me, it says no more, no more
Nobody rules these streets at night like me, the atomic punk
Whoa yeah, wow
I am the ruler of these nether worlds
The underground, whoa yes
On every wall and place my fearsome name is heard
Just look around, whoa yes
Nobody rules these streets at night like me, the atomic punk
Ooo, ahhh
I am the ruler of these nether worlds
The underground, oh, oh
On every wall and place my fearsome name is heard
Look around, whoa yeah
Nobody rules these streets at night like me, nobody, ah
The atomic punk
What I want to talk about is Eddies guitar tone or brown sound. It's not a big deal any longer because he's marketed the shit out of every aspect of his created original tone he invented way back at the beginning of his career. Now, you might think," so what, what does that have to do with me and my situation "? I'll tell you why. Because of what he did, it now affects all music and guitar players and a lot of stuff you listen to in your day to day affairs without even realizing it. But anyway, here is what set me off, and I'll tell you so you don't have to go through any unnecessary work and aggravation. I watched this video of this guy who accurately recreated Eddies original brown sound. I was impressed by all of the detail this guy put into it. He worked on every aspect of it from the guitar pick up to the amp head settings and the alterations including an actual variac voltage control unit installed on the Marshall plexi amp head. He also uses similar effects that Eddie used at the time to enhance his sound and performance. So, I was thinking about this, and I was going to go on line and buy all that stuff and put it together myself. Then I watched this guys video again, and I realized I didn't have to. Because I already have it! I have the guitar, the pickup, the amp, the effects and the alterations to the amplifier already built into it. You've seen it in my videos, like the Eruption you really got me video I have posted on my profile. This guy was going into all the details of the equipment. I'm familiar with it, because I've read about it for years and freaking years. All he's doing, to give you a metaphor you might relate to, is taking the a model T and trying to make a modern automobile out of it. You could do that of course, it would take a lot of work and designing to accomplish that. But, it would be a lost easier to just go out and buy a new fucking car! LOL! But, it's interesting from a tech geek stand point. But, the main reason you wouldn't want to do this, is because, the stuff that Eddie used in his early days was cobbled together from existing equipment at that time. He took it apart and put it back together to create a totally new sound! But, the stuff he used wasn't efficient. For instance, the variac voltage control on the marshall head. It used to blow the tubes up! He had to have several amps rigged up like that, just to get through one show. After one blew up, he'd switch over to the next one. That's not a good way to use your equipment. Also highly dangerous because it could cause fires and who knows what else.
Why Eddies did this was because he didn't want to use a distortion pedal. Because, he could get better sounds out of his guitar with a natural distortion of an overdriven amp. Today, all amps have a overdrive knob or gain to them. Back in Eddies time, they didn't. It's amazing now, that no one did what Eddie did, take it apart and screw around with all the different aspects that created the tone. He wasn't an engineer, but he knew what kind of sound he wanted and he worked on it until he achieved it. From the wire around the pick up magnets to the over driven tubes it created this monster sound. I don't have to rig up a bunch or stuff risking electrocution or death, every time I want to get a cool sound, because Eddie found some real engineers to create the sound for him. All I have to do, it turn on my 5150 amp. To get the overdriven tone, I just have to turn up the gain dial. The guitar I built, to be like Eddies original frankenstrat has a Frankenstein pick up, just like the one Eddie made for his first guitar. Then there are the effects. Eddie has marketed all of those too. The main one you need is just the MXR phaser! That gives it the classic sound he used on most of his songs. Yes, the flanger, and the chorus and the delay pedals were used too. So, today, you don't even have to go broke buying one of his amps. He created a pedal that gives you the tone no matter what amp you're using. So, for a few hundred bucks you have Eddies tone!
But as I was watching this video, I remembered, I used to do the exact same thing, for the same reason. I used to rig up my equipment to try to get cool sounds. But Eddie just did it on another level and went so far as to take everything apart, find out how it worked and then improve upon it. Now he promotes his own brand of equipment. And the stuff is good, it's better then anything else out there. Isn't that strange?
Addendum
I cut this post short because I was tired and wanted to do other things. But I forgot to mention something important. This guy I just described went and got all of the original equipment that Eddie used to create his tone and rigged it up the same way. It would be an intricate and labor intensive task for anyone to do it that way. That's probably why most people wouldn't do that. But there was another video I found, where someone tried to recreate Eddies tone, but he used strictly and computer program for the job. It's a program called AXE FX 2. You just go online or down load it somewhere and you can click on any amp or effect you can think of to create the tone. You can even tweak or adjust the settings for every things you're using to create the sound. That is a lot easier then searching online trying to find every gadget that Eddies used to create his sound. But instead of doing that, you could just do what I did, and buy his amp and guitars and effects and just play them. That would be the easiest and simplest way to get his tone. I know at one time, getting his sound was this big dark secret and people were desperate to find out what he was using. You can read the interviews from that era, the late seventies and early eighties. Eddie was lying his ass off, telling people he wasn't using anything special and that all the magic was in his fingers and playing style. That was partly true. He did even have a unique style of playing that needed to be mastered as well. But he did actually have a black box that gave his amp a unique tone. He had all this stuff rigged up, like the guy in the video showed you. The difference was how he was regulating the voltage on his amplifier then everyone else was doing. Which if you don't understand it. To get a distorted sound, most people would just use a distortion pedal and turn their amp up real loud. Eddie did the same thing, but from another area in the amp. He distorted the amp at the source in the form of the voltage regulator. Was it better? I don't know, but it did give the amp a unique tone and that's probably what he was trying to do. Create a sound no one else had so he would stand out more. He also had a different style of playing with the tapping thing he did. And when the Floyd rose tremolo unit was developed it created even more possibilities for creating new and unique sounds for the electric guitar. Since he has done this, the music world has never been the same. So I wanted to add this other bit of information in case someone wanted to get Eddies sound. You can also go online and get the settings preset for you to somewhere. And then just down load them onto your computer and run it into an amp. Also, another thing I want to add. Eddie has marketed every aspect of his tone and sound. You can go out and buy all his stuff and have it for yourself. But here is something you should be aware of. He plays stadiums and arenas with that shit. Unless you're doing the same thing, you don't need or want to use anything that powerful. That's why he markets the smaller combo amps. If you buy the big rig and two four twelve cabinets to blast in your basement or bedroom, you'll break all the windows in your house and shatter your ear drums!  That's how powerful that stuff is. I see in the videos, some guys have all that stuff in their living rooms and it doesn't sound good. Because it was never meant to be used like that. So that's just another tip I thought I would share with you. You can ignore me, and go out and do everything I told you not to, but in the end, you'll see I was right all along. 
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Are you kidding me? 
