VH Tone DEEP DIVE - Pete Thorn & Dave Friedman

**MF5150** · 11.28.20, 05:48 PM

For the EVH Tone Chasers out there. I'm about ten minutes into this and it's fascinating. Also, you can't beat Pete and Dave. They are such great guys. Pete's a hell of a player and Dave knows amps and specifically VH's amps better than almost anybody.

And they don't just nail the sound.

It IS the sound.

**5150rob** · 11.29.20, 07:17 AM

what a totally awesome video...... Pete and Dave are great. Loved how they did this one. Lot of great info there.

loved it thanks for sharing

Rob

**Jedi McFly** · 11.29.20, 10:00 AM

Yup, they nailed it. Gosh that must be a fun rig to play through.

**Brett** · 11.29.20, 01:49 PM

This is a perfect example of why things can be found on YouTube that don’t need to be paid for like some silly podcast that Dweezil Zappa is doing. Can you imagine getting better information from him for money than this? No you won’t.

**sinners__swing** · 11.29.20, 02:20 PM

Originally Posted by Brett

This is a perfect example of why things can be found on YouTube that don’t need to be paid for like some silly podcast that Dweezil Zappa is doing. Can you imagine getting better information from him for money than this? No you won’t.

I was going to post earlier today and say the same exact thing but I didn't want to stir shit up.

Excellent video. I watched it before it was posted here.

**Brett** · 11.29.20, 02:21 PM

By the way if you watch that whole video I don’t know how you can walk away and say Ed isn’t the greatest rock guitar player of all time. Pete does a great job of re-creating Ed’s feel and tone, and you really get a ridiculous amount of respect for what he was doing that nobody was. Also the swing necessary to play his riffs correctly is one of the biggest things that I think people forget. It’s not just about hitting the notes and chords correctly, it’s about how you are hitting them. I find even after all these years that is the hardest part about playing a Van Halen song correctly. Getting that swing perfect. Ed was really a fucking genius.

**sinners__swing** · 11.29.20, 02:32 PM

Originally Posted by Brett

By the way if you watch that whole video I don’t know how you can walk away and say Ed isn’t the greatest rock guitar player of all time. Pete does a great job of re-creating Ed’s feel and tone, and you really get a ridiculous amount of respect for what he was doing that nobody was. Also the swing necessary to play his riffs correctly is one of the biggest things that I think people forget. It’s not just about hitting the notes and chords correctly, it’s about how you are hitting them. I find even after all these years that is the hardest part about playing a Van Halen song correctly. Getting that swing perfect. Ed was really a fucking genius.

He certainly was a genius. Pete is a killer player and does a great job playing the licks. But, it's one thing to copy the man but it really does melt the mind when you think about how much shit lined up in the universe to have one guy come along and create all of this. From the sound, the songs, the techniques, the gear, etc...And what is really scary is you have to wonder how much of it was just done naturally and wasn't thought out much by Ed and he just went with what sounded good to him. It just fell into place. His feel and ears were incredible. Plus his intuition.

In my opinion he was the best rock guitar player of all time.

**Brett** · 11.29.20, 02:36 PM

What sucks is there is a large part of the musician world that just doesn’t really have a deep understanding of all of this and probably never will. The kind of guys who don’t look past the world through Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page glasses, and it makes it hard to get through to people like that sometimes.

**sinners__swing** · 11.29.20, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by Brett

What sucks is there is a large part of the musician world that just doesn’t really have a deep understanding of all of this and probably never will. The kind of guys who don’t look past the world through Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page glasses, and it makes it hard to get through to people like that sometimes.

I see what you're doing here. lol.

I grew up on Hendrix and Page, I have older brothers. I learned Hendrix and Page tunes, inside out. I have respect for both players, they both influenced loads of people.

But, Eddie, sorry, I knew from the first time I heard him he was a lot different. He grabbed my ear and I was fascinated with his playing from day one. Let me just say I started playing around '83 so it was all fresh and a magical time. I remember being obsessed with Little Guitars, Mean Street, and I'm The One. Trying to figure those tunes out, which I did eventually, by slowing down the drive belt in my Sony Walkman. It took a lot of time and practice and I ate it up and practiced 8 hours a day for years, not just VH but a lot of other stuff. I had the VH bootlegs on cassette back then. I knew a circle of people that would get them I think from some local record booth at a flea market. Then '84 hit and I figured some of that shit out. I saw photos from the '84 concerts with him doing the table tray deal, and I was like WTF? So I would listen to the bootlegs and try and nail down the tray part and figure it out. I think Guitar for the Practicing Musician just came out with song transcriptions with tablature and shit, which was a big deal then. I remember trying to figure out what the fuck he was doing with the rolling harmonics (pulling off and sliding the side of the pick hand up and down the string), the technique he does in SGMAD, that drove me nuts. THere were no videos, at least none that I had seen at that point. I did eventually stumble on how he did it by accident one day and I was on cloud nine for a week. I remember showing my friends and they were like "Dude, that's it!". I also obsessed over Spanish Fly for years, for some reason I always liked that more than Eruption.

It was a different time, almost like a different lifetime, seriously. Ed was like Merlin the magician to me and my friends. It was crazy. No other player had that impact on me, although I like a ton of other musicians.

**Brett** · 11.29.20, 03:35 PM

I like those other guys too although, I don’t really like Hendrix all that much, but there’s just a difference between what Ed brought to the table and what other guys did for me as a musician. Ed is the guy that made me want to get better everyday.

**sinners__swing** · 11.29.20, 04:17 PM

Originally Posted by Brett

I like those other guys too although, I don’t really like Hendrix all that much, but there’s just a difference between what Ed brought to the table and what other guys did for me as a musician. Ed is the guy that made me want to get better everyday.

As I mentioned in the other thread I'll take Jimmy Page over Hendrix any day of the week. The main thing I liked about Hendrix was his rhythm playing. I didn't really like his lead playing or even a number of his tunes. I respect him from the standpoint that he made a large impact on the scene but I think some of his live stuff sounded like dog shit. My older brother is a Hendrix is god guy. That's fine by me. But he also loves Ed. With Page, it's Zeppelin, the songs and the band as a whole, I love Zeppelin. I started on drums so Bonham is my guy as well.

Like you, Ed is the guy that made me want to get better everyday. He forced me to up my technique in order to play his songs. But, the beauty about Ed's stuff is he makes simple things sound hard, and hard things sound simple. People at all levels can learn a VH lick or tune, there's something there for everybody. His stuff is just fun to play and there's enough technique there to motivate you to practice but no so over the top where you're like..fuck this.

I had a conversation, or actually a heated debate ( the other guy was heated, I couldn't give a shit) back in the day with somebody at a party who was a Randy fan. The old tired debate, who's better.. Eddie or Randy? I always liked Ed better and I pointed out all the reasons why but one thing I said stuck with this guy. I told him the brilliant thing, among many, about Ed is he can play a planned out lick but it always sounds like the first time he played it, at least in his early years. It always sounded raw like he just improvised it, and you can't learn that. That's a gift. He told me years later when I bumped into him that he remembered that for some reason.

**Dave not David** · 11.29.20, 06:01 PM

Originally Posted by Brett

This is a perfect example of why things can be found on YouTube that don’t need to be paid for like some silly podcast that Dweezil Zappa is doing. Can you imagine getting better information from him for money than this? No you won’t.

I did buy this podcast package, not because I want/expect them to teach me how to get the brown sound (I actually figured it out on my AxeFX a few hours yesterday before this video was published), I just like podcasts and would like to hear long-form interviews from the musicians Dweezil is interviewing. Oh, and I was interested in seeing how they rebuilt sounds in the modeling units, as I use both an AxeFX and Helix (less so now).

That said, this was an incredible video by Pete and Dave, and I actually incorporated some of these ideas into my AxeFX patch (something I'll have to share a video on soon. I think I can get most of the sounds on one patch, lowering the gain as you get to Diver Down/1984, adjusting/adding a general harmonizer set to where it would have been, etc.

**rvk5150** · 11.30.20, 02:44 AM

Originally Posted by Dave not David

I did buy this podcast package, not because I want/expect them to teach me how to get the brown sound (I actually figured it out on my AxeFX a few hours yesterday before this video was published), I just like podcasts and would like to hear long-form interviews from the musicians Dweezil is interviewing. Oh, and I was interested in seeing how they rebuilt sounds in the modeling units, as I use both an AxeFX and Helix (less so now).

That said, this was an incredible video by Pete and Dave, and I actually incorporated some of these ideas into my AxeFX patch (something I'll have to share a video on soon. I think I can get most of the sounds on one patch, lowering the gain as you get to Diver Down/1984, adjusting/adding a general harmonizer set to where it would have been, etc.

Very cool and would love your insights on the pod even though I do not feel it should be charged for.

**Brett** · 11.30.20, 02:46 AM

Yeah I do the same thing with Guitar Rig 5. I have one preset that I use for Van Halen I and then I tweak it for each of the others albums. The first album really is kind of the anomaly in the Van Halen catalog when it comes to the guitar sound. Ed’s tone changed rather substantially after the first album as he had more say in things. Me, I may take down the distortion, throw on some chorus, I might take the reverb and delay down, or add a pitch shifter or something depending. I also got a few ideas from that video too that I tried last tonight in tweaking a couple of my covers.

**sinners__swing** · 11.30.20, 07:08 AM

Originally Posted by Brett

Yeah I do the same thing with Guitar Rig 5. I have one preset that I use for Van Halen I and then I tweak it for each of the others albums. The first album really is kind of the anomaly in the Van Halen catalog when it comes to the guitar sound. Ed’s tone changed rather substantially after the first album as he had more say in things. Me, I may take down the distortion, throw on some chorus, I might take the reverb and delay down, or add a pitch shifter or something depending. I also got a few ideas from that video too that I tried last tonight in tweaking a couple of my covers.

I always thought Ed started using some chorus (at least where it's noticeable) on his distorted tone around 5150. But, I listened to the isolated track of Mean Street a while back and he definitely has some chorus on that track. I never noticed it before. I always liked his tone on VHII the best, it's on the dry side. I think Dave Friedman said in a recent podcast that his favorite Ed tone was from VHII as well. But that's all opinion. He had a great a tone on many of the albums. A lot of people like his Fair Warning tone the best, a lot like the first album's tone.