Most people don't realize they're using more Gain...

[j3ffr0]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

I find that Eddie's "brown sound" didn't have much gain at all. It's a cranked Marshall 1959. Not sure if he used an OD pedal on the front end. I guess it's relative to what it's being compared to.

Indeed not much gain compared to Metallica or Slayer. Regardless of how Eddie got his early sound (variac, cranked, 59, etc...) , it has always takne a lot more gain for me to get a sound reminiscent of Van Halen than something reminiscent of Zeppelin or Stones out of any amp I've ever had. Hard to make the pinch harmonics sing and some of those notes squeak and squeal without it.

[moon]

Another thing about gain is that it isn't always applied equally to the full bandwidth. For example, tubes used for gain will have a cathode resistor which is often bypassed with a capacitor. The cap increases gain but it also acts like a high pass filter. Larger values will allow the full signal bandwidth through but smaller ones will increase the cut-off point so that mids or high mids and above are pushed through the tube harder causing increased clipping and crunchy distortion on these frequencies. This creates a noticeable difference in the character of the sound.

There are also other parts of the circuit where the designer can choose to high-pass or low-pass the signal - and of course the EQ controls themselves.

I don't know much about the EVH sound but if he's using an amp which favours pinch harmonics that might explain why you have to bump the overall gain up to get to the same point in the pinch-harmonic frequency band. The right overdrive pedal might be able to sort that out.

Another interesting thing about the EVH setup is that he de-coupled gain from loudness. That's always a problem with tube amps where you maybe want to crank them up just so to get a particular quality of overdrive but maybe this will be the wrong volume, either too quiet or too loud, for the venue/neighbours. AFAIK EVH used a dummy load on the primary amp and then fed the signal to a slave amp. The main amp provided all the tone and the slave all the volume.

That's the idea behind products like the Bad Cat Unleash. There's also a great reactive load circuit by Randall Aiken which is very simple and easy to build - you knew I had to squeeze a DIY reference in somewhere...

[Raebrek]

Maybe they just don't know what the gain does?













What does the gain do?

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by Raebrek

Maybe they just don't know what the gain does?

What does the gain do?

Hi Raebrak, see post #10 for an explanation. An easy way to think of it is the amount of distortion (although people may say that isn't truly correct). Early Led Zepplin used less distortion (gain) than Van Halen, who used less distortion than Metallica.

Many amps have a "gain" or "drive" knob, or an Overdrive / Distortion pedal will be used.