They call Eddie Van Halen’s electric guitar tone the Brown Sound but really it’s the Friday Night Sound. It is one of the most evocative guitar tones ever created. Harmonically reactive, juicy, volatile; it has the power to erase Monday morning from the calendar. How did he do it?
Careful experimentation with his technique, banks of Marshall Super Lead 100-watt heads and ambitious DIY guitar design - projects such as the Frankenstrat, which saw a Fender Strat body equipped with a Gibson PAF humbucker in the bridge, with a Floyd Rose later applied to accommodate a flamboyant style that was and still sounds ahead of its time.
From time to time Van Halen would season this tone generously with a MXR Phase 90, tape echo, flanger and wah, but still, as with all the world’s greatest players, his tone is greater than the sum of his signal chain.
Guitars
Early on, it was very clear that Eddie Van Halen’s style could not be fully evolved on any off-the-shelf instrument. By ’74, he got to making a guitar that would combine Gibson’s power with a Fender-esque feel. This was the Frankenstrat.
Put together with a 50-dollar Strat body and 80-dollar neck that Charvel had rejected, the Frankenstrat had a Gibson decal on the headstock for a while. It was originally finished in white with black stripes, with Van Halen adding the red some time later. “I did not have the money and the guitar I wanted didn’t exist,” he told Guitar World in 2006.
In 1979, Van Halen took receipt of the Bumblebee. Used throughout the touring for Van Halen II, it was built by Charvel and finished in black with yellow stripes, with a rudimentary locking vibrato for dive-bombs and a DiMarzio humbucker in the bridge. Nothing was off-limits; a Danelectro neck on a Charvel body? Well, why not? Whatever works. A true seeker has got to keep an open mind.
The designs would get more outlandish. Check out the DragonSnake he was brandishing on the cover of Guitar World back in ’81. It makes his Ibanez Destroyer 2459, aka the Shark, look tame. Van Halen would use his Kramer signature S-style, which applied a similar red, black and white finish to the Frankenstrat but with the hockey-stick headstock. He had a Kramer doubleneck, too, and signature models with Ernie Ball Music Man and Peavey.
Perhaps it was inevitable that Van Halen’s tone chasing would one day culminate in him steering the development of his own brand, EVH Gear. Now a subsidiary of Fender, producing an expansive lineup of signature Van Halen guitars such as the Wolfgang, amplifiers, and effects co-developed with MXR, EVH Gear is the first place very much a one-stop shop for any player looking for some of that atomic punk mojo.
No expense spared
On a budget
Amps
In the beginning it was Marshall Super Lead 100-watt heads and lots of them. Legends have grown about what sort of mods were made, but those who have worked on Van Halen’s Marshalls - such as Dave Suhr - have noted only the most minor changes. Others disagree. But those old Marshalls often had their own peculiarities when it came to circuitry.
He used a variac transformer to lower the output voltages for his amps, an epiphany he had after getting British Marshall that was wired for the U.K.’s standard voltage of 230V. The working theory goes that at lower voltages the amp was quieter and had warmer, more saturated distortion - the same principle is at play with Fuzz pedals, such as the eponymous Variac Fuzz from MXR, where choking the voltages gets a more extreme breakup.
You can, of course, wreck your amp if you are not careful but this was Van Halen improvising once more, making discoveries as he went.
These days you don’t have to play is a suite of Van Halen signature amps that don’t require anything like that to get that gain.
No expense spared
On a budget
Effects
You’re going to want some effects if you are to recreate all the tones from the Van Halen back catalogue but EVH himself has always enjoyed the fundamentals of guitar playing, his guitar running straight into an amp. His technique blossomed out of the lack of effects; he couldn’t afford them, so why not make his technique the effect?
That said, there have been some crucial stompboxes in his rig. He used an Echoplex EP-3 on the early Van Halen records, and a variety of MXR modulation pedals have been perennials. His recent live rigs have included a Boss OC-3 Super Octave, a Boss CE-5 Chorus Ensemble and an MXR Smart Gate to kill some of the noise, and a rack-mounted Roland SDE-3000.
The good news is all of these come cheap, expect perhaps the high-line delay and echo effects. Check out our feature on his live rig here for his amp and pedal settings.
No expense spared
On a budget
