THE BROWN SOUND | The Secret of the VAN HALEN Guitar Tone! 

The words of EVH: "I used to work at a music store delivering pianos and organs and one day a Marshall amp comes in and I’d only seen pictures of these, only Eric Clapton and God’s play these! I said I gotta have that amp, and so I worked all summer to buy that amp and we were already too loud as it was and now I had a 100-watt Marshall! It was so dam loud I did everything from facing it backwards to facing it down to the floor … I was just too damn loud! So I saw an ad in the paper for another Marshall amp and thought “maybe this one will be different”, well it certainly was cuz when it showed up I plugged it in and it didn’t work … but, I left it on and what I didn’t realize was this thing was from England and it was 220-volt, and I plugged it in and I didn’t look at the back and see it was set on 220; it took a long time for it to warm up at half voltage, and when I picked up my guitar I was like “it sounds incredible!” … but incredibly quiet. It dawned on me “I could control the volume of the amp with the voltage, so I proceeded to hook it onto the light dimmer of the house, and blew it out and so on. So finally I went to this place called Dial Radio and asked “do you have any kind of like an industrial variable voltage transformer that I can use like a light dimmer” and he said “yea I got this thing called a Variac”, I said “ok cool”, and I take it home and plug the amp into it and I’d lower the voltage from like 110 slowly down to 100 and ... the lowest I ever went was like 60. Depending on the room we were playing I’d set it anywhere between 60 and 100 because the only way the amp sounded good was with everything all the way up, so that became my volume knob. If we were playing little bars I’d set it to like 60 volts; somewhere a little bit bigger I’d crank it to 80 and for recording the sweet spot seemed to be 89-volts."

To ME, the secret to Eddie's tone was lack of money ! So he had to invent ways of doing things from the variac to the Frankenstrat. He was very curious and his insticts were always right. Sometimes NOT having money is the mother of invention.

Reminds me when Steve Vai said that he met with Eddie at his house and gave him his Ibanez to try it. Eddie started to play and it sounded like Eddie not Steve Vai.

WARNING: The red variac (actually an autotransformer, as Variac is trademarked name) shown does not output a regulated voltage. The variac's specifications shown @ 1:45 states: "INPUT 110VAC". With that info, dialing in the variac to the 120 volt setting while inputting 123VAC will yield approximately 134VAC output! The variac fed 123VAC dialed to the 100 volt mark will output approximately 109VAC. The variac fed 123VAC dialed to the 89 volt mark will output approximately 97VAC. The only way to tell how much ACTUAL voltage is coming from the variac is by testing the voltages directly at the variac's output socket with a voltmeter. In this video, whether the variac's voltage output was tested at the output sockets is not clear.

“That’s funny, because people took that whole ‘brown sound’ thing totally out of context,” he said. “I was never talking about my guitar tone. I was talking about Alex’s snare drum. I’ve always thought Alex’s snare drum sounds like he’s beating on a log. It’s very organic. So it wasn’t my brown sound. It was Alex’s.” Klosterman then asked how the confusion originally occurred. “It happened years ago. People would ask me about his drumming, and the only way I could explain it was that it had a very brown sound,” Van Halen noted. “I’m glad you brought this up, actually, so people can finally understand what I was talking about.”

"The first thing we are going to do is try to recreate the Brown Sound..." said every guitarist since 1978

I definitely heard the difference in “runnin with the devil” when it hit 89. I have no idea why I enjoy these tech videos...I don’t play, so most of it goes over my head, but somehow I like it anyway 🤔

Ed was referring to AL's snare drum tone when he first spoke of this "Brown sound" He described it as a warm, woody tone like a really old big red wood tree type of thing. For me the "Brown sound" is when i hear anything on VH II guitar tone wise. That record is pure Brown sound!

Guitarists messing with electricity. What could go wrong?

I shut my eyes and listened to them back to back, for the life of me I can't tell a single difference. Oh well.

I’ve been playing since ‘88 and I couldn’t hear any difference when I closed my eyes. It’s so minimal. Not to mention, wouldn’t you want to rebias the tubes for the lower variac setting? Love your channel Rick

To get it even closer; Ed's Plexiglas was a transitional 12xxx series with lower value filtering caps of the earlier Marshall super leads. . Replace the 32x32's with 16x16's UF caps and the amp gets even sweeter and more loose at 90 volts. You guys nailed it, the EVH sound revolves around the sag and spongy character that responds to the player the harder you dig into it. The amp is its own instrument. Awesome stuff!

As a guitar player for some 35 years .... i can't hear the difference with any of this. The Marshall sounded like a Marshall, and the Fender like a fender, i could hear absolutely no difference in sound, at all. but that's just me :)

Now I need a Variac sim for my Amp sim 🤘😜

This is genuinely one of the best videos you’ve ever done. This sharing of insight and experience on how to obtain “tones” is really useful. I hope you do many more.

Man this channel is just amazing. I started off on the wrong video, and honestly would love to spend 30 minutes with Rick and just talk about drum n' bass sound design and engineering, but with every single video I realize this guy is a window to real music business, but without the money. God's work.

Me: same thing every time, right? Them: definitely more saggy, sweeter, tighter, compressed... Me: erm... sure, sure!

That Hendrix "Angel" riff was soooo good

As a guitar player of 40 years ,I heard minimal difference

Awesome video and great playing! It's really fun hearing this stuff demonstrated. I think these videos might slowly be passing the WMTSG series as my favorites. Thanks for spending the time and effort to produce these videos!

EVH is a legend that changed guitar for the better. One of the all time greats!

7:10 Hendrix "Angel" in case anyone's wondering. Doubt many are as we're likely all deep lovers of great guitar music.

Rick, I've seen a few of your vids now, and I just wanted to say that I think it's very magnanimous of someone with your resources to take the time and effort to exposit upon subjects musical for the benefit of so many others as you have...thank you very much.

Thanks for the vid! Very interesting stuff. As a studio drummer, it never ceases to amaze me how apparently small changes in sounds can suddenly add up to a huge difference in the mix.

All the EVH purist will come out of the wood works and I'm one of them ;) So you almost had it right. 89 on the variac but its well documented that Ed used the bright input only, not jumped and every knob was on 10. Then from the board, he adjusted the channels 3 band EQ for each mic with a slight dip in the mids. Also his Echoplex that was in front of his amp gave him a slight boost to the front end. Dunlop EP101 Echoplex preamp simulates this.

Now we know exactly that the Variac accounted for just 1% of EVH's tone

That Park Amp & Head sounds killer!!! It's amazing how a change in voltage changes the sound. Keep up the great videos.

One thing that should be mentioned Rick is that EVH, while he would variac his voltage to 89 he would also have his tubes rebiased back to where they should be. When I'm playing live I also tend to rebias my tubes based on wall voltage to get optimal sound. Mind you I am using Two-Rock amps which make biasing quite simple along with a blackface super that i had bias test points added so that can be biased on the fly as well.

I'm living for all the videos people are making about Eddie at the moment. It's so great to see he had the same impact on other people as he had on me. He made us all brothers in that way.

*literally can't hear a difference*. *watches anyway*

been down medically for awhile now and have caught most of your episodes i fkn love it keep up the good work

The problem with this test is: It's void because you changed more than one variable at a time. Yes, there will be a difference in an audio circuit if you run it way below the operating voltage that the circuit designer made it for. But all of those devices are manufactured and with manufacturing comes tolerance. Power inside homes is not the fixed value of 115 or 230 that the public is familiar with. It depends on the wiring inside the house, the area wiring, and sometimes even the power company itself. Those old amps are all designed for either 115V or 230v, the markings just represent the average home voltage in the area in which they were produced. Increasing or decrasing by less than 10% of the designed operating voltage will NOT affect the tone whatsover. That is definitive, because if amps where designed for exactly 110V only, and expect only a variation of 1 or 2V, then every amp would sound totally different when plugging it in in different rooms, or even different circuits in bigger venues. You would go broke as a manufacturer because your device would be totally unstable. For a deliberately "mis-dialed" voltage to affect a device you definitely need to exceed the 10% margin, because otherwise it would be still normal "operating conditions". You should have recorded one, single take of that Van Halen riff, and then send that same audio through the amps at 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120V. Instead you had him play each setting again, which is naturally a different sound and you made only 2 distinct changes to the voltage. The very first recording had a very dominant scratching noise from the way he played it, which got less and less with each new performance. The Marshall 110 and 100 V are literally the same tone, there is no objective difference to be heard, especially since they are all different performances. Then you took it way out of being a reliable test by changing guitars. If you kept the same, single performance through all the amps and settings, there might have been something worth noting. I get that this was a test specific only to the "Van Halen 89V tone", but you missed a great opportunity for a real educational demonstration from which many of your fans could have learned a lot. ;) You could have expanded from the 89V idea and do the above mentioned steps with one audio sample.

In the words of the imortal Jessie Pinkman, "Science, Yo -- Awesome!"

My favorite VH album is Women and Children First. The energy is incredible

Rick is so INFORMATIVE!! NO BULL! and such a PLEASANT TEACHER for us music gurus/musicians!! 💙

I love watching/listening to your videos. I'm not a musician, I can't even play an instrument but I have an ear for sound and find what you do so very interesting.♥️

Who else has been waiting FOREVER for Rick to do this video!! 👇

Generally, under-driving the tubes causes them to break up /distort earlier. On amps with tube rectifiers, they're going to sag more at lower input voltages than SS rectifiers as well. That's the loss of attack. If you under-drive the tubes too much, too long, it can cause cathode stripping; the effect literally rips electrons right out of the emission enhancing coating instead of the electron cloud created at rated voltage. Some tubes suffer the effect worse than others, depending on the cathode surface. Pure tungsten (brilliant white) generally don't suffer it.Thoriated tungsten (bright yellow) are somewhat susceptible. Oxide-coated (orange/red, say 6L6, EL34s ), quite susceptible to cathode stripping. Just don't run your tube amp at around 50-ish% design voltage for long periods of time. FWIW, I have an 1st generation Music Man HD130 head with Hi/Lo setting that changes the transformer tap for just this effect - it runs the amp at lhalf voltage for better distortion w/o ear bleeding volume. On this version, "Lo" drops the plate & filament voltage - long term use of the low setting can cause problems. Later versions were designed so the low setting only reduced the plate (B+), but left the filaments at 6.3v precisely to avoid premature tube failure.

Man just the production quality of your video's sound so epic . Very refreshing compared to like 95 % of the audio output on RU-vid videos in general .

I am not a musician, but I can't stop looking at your videos and watching your explanations and techniques. You are a master at your craft and make music even more enjoyable, showing all the technique and hard work that goes into it. I love your channel and videos.

The thing you missed about using the variac with the plexi, per Dave Friedman - the voltage is lowered, but EVH had his tubes biased so hot they would have popped at 120v in an instant. I feel like this is probably the most important thing in making that amp sound so on fire all the time

I’ve heard that the term ”Brown sound” originally was used to describe Alex’s snare sound!

I'm so impressed with the topics you guys come up with

I adjusted the voltage on my hearing aid and damn, you're right. Big difference. Brilliant work fellas. Simply fun to watch y'all nerd out.

Personally, I couldn't really hear the difference. I think it's one of those things people swear by but at the end they barely contribute to the sound at all. The thing with EVH's sound is that he sounds like himself even if he played through a belt-clip-style amp. On the other hand, you could give me his exact rig and I would still sound nothing like him.

Eddie went on to say “the brown sound” was not even his thing, his tone was his tone but that the “brown sound” was actually a drum sound that Alex was after...

Turns out what the "secret" was not the variac alone. Ed, according to Jose Arrendando, used a sort of "load box" to bring the speaker output all the way down to 64ish ohms so it basically became a preamp at line level to send into whatever he wanted, be it a power amp or another Marshall. This allowed him a variety of different tone possibilities. Every early VH album had a different sound with the same head but different amp he was sending it into. So when we say "Brown Sound" or we're trying to condense his early tones into one thing, it really can't be done. You'd have to focus on a particular album.

Excellent video! Bedroom guitarist here, so the alchemical science of amp modding continues, always searching for that elusive tone is like turning lead into gold when you find the sweet spot.

The last few notes of the 89 volt setting gave me chills it was so close to the album tone to my ear.

Whew, thought for a second you were trying to achieve the brown note...... *wipes forehead*

After lowering the voltage, you need to rebias the amp. That's the mod.

Wow!!! The variac really smooth the apps out. I'm going to buy one now and always use it. Thanks for making this video.

I still think 95% of Eddie's sound was in his hands.. Steve Vai said when Ed played through his gear it sounded like Eddie..Ted Nugent played through Ed's gear one time and he said it just sounded like him playing someone else's rig. He was surprised he thought Ed's sound came from his gear.

Fricking Cool RU-vids experment with EVH Brown Sound Theory! All you boys were missing were a white lab coat, cig in guitar and some pounder beers laying all over studio! Nice JOB! SO COOL THAT LES AND EDDIE WERE SOUND/GUITAR MAD SCIENTESTS BEYOND THE TIMES! RIP BOYS!!!!

Love it! Thank you Rick... a most interesting exercise for sure! I've always wanted to hear that, growing up with early Van Halen 🤟

Eddie could play a squire through a champ and sound Amazing

Just between us geeks, in 1982 my best friend a guitar player and holder of a 1st class radio-telephone engineer license made a voltage regulator that he placed between a tube preamp that he also constructed and a Fender Twin. I had the Telecaster and he was experimenting. The amp was head/cab . We were trying to find the Tom Sholz tone and smoked the 2 JBL speakers. Thank you for the memory. You both rock!🎸🔥

Oh, I thought that Eddie was using the variac so that he could still set his amp at ten, but reduce the speaker volume in smaller venues.

I’m guessing Eddie’s Humbucker in his Franken strat would’ve been hotter than a typical Les Paul bridge pickup. That extra push would take it further into the brown zone.

Great stuff and great fun as always. I do think I appreciate a difference and I think it would be more profound to feel it while playing

Rick; I have done the Van Halen Variac trick with my plexi for years. 2 things.... you gotta have it all on 10.. except Volume 2. The presence has to be on 10. Its almost like another gain control. The other thing; if you are lowering the voltage to 89-90volts, you have to rebias the tubes to compensate. Dave Friedman has been on that kick for years now. You guys were close. But man... all on 10! Rebias!

Using a variac is very important in so many electronic applications. Always check the output of the variac with a Fluke DVM. Just because the variac dial says 115 VAC doesn't guarantee that is the VAC output. I always check output VAC at all the companies I have worked at. When you need to calibrate sensitive electronic devices, having the correct voltages are crucial. I have seen 95 VAC up to 128 VAC all over the USA. In Florida the VAC power is always going up and down do to lightning storms knocking out transformers and power lines. Also check the Hertz.. Should be running at 60 Hz.. I have seen 48 Hz to 64 Hz...!!! YIKES

I am commenting on the comments that some folks "could not hear a difference" and would like to use that as an opportunity to mention that I probably would not be able to hear the difference were it not for getting into home recording in 1995 (Cakewalk). Recording myself and others has been hands down the best method of "ear tuning" I have ever done. You always hear that musicians make the worst sound guys, so I hope I can be more helpful to the sound guys when I play live because of doing this. Rick, love your channel! I hit the like button & save every video to my "Rick Beato" folder. You remind me of some of the best teachers I've ever had & some of the best players I've ever played with. I'm 65 4/25/24 and have a You Tube channel (with some music friends around the country, & one in St. Petersburg, Russia) & just love the whole You Tube experience.

Riffs, beards and gear had Mike Soldano on 3 weeks ago. Soldano retubed the 'brown sound'-Marshall himself, Eddie asked him to do so, so he had the chance to test it out himself and he explains how the brown sound comes to life... also worth checking out.

This is cool! I happen to own a Marshall plexi head that was formally owned by Eddie and it sounds so good you can get that exact tone!

Eddie's mom: Edward, why do you have to make that 'high crying noise'? Eddie: Because it bought you a house, Mom!

mr.Beano , again all your stuff is great ! and so much fun, ( you trying stuff that not so many of us could afford to do) having you do it is close to doing it ourselves ! ) thanks , best regards ! cheers !

Nice video, Rick & Rhett. Eddie's tones on the "1984" album were his best early ones, for me. The Wide Sky into the Park sounds amazing!

Your best bet is to measure the heater voltage. Most amps I’ve messed with sound better when it’s right at 6.3v. You’re gonna get the most tube life too. I built a high power buck converter out of a 12A filament transformer to run my Tweed/Brown/Black amps on. It’s a bit safer than a VariAC because it’s got two safe settings, not a wide range of severe under and over voltage.

I know it's probably been brought up before, but Eddie has said the "Brown Sound" was the sound of Alex's snare. Like he was beating on a brown log.

Its subtle this is the stuff that keeps us guitarists buying crap instead of playing. (completely quilty myself) Played live infront of fans, they wouldn't notice anything. Only a person in thier studio/room would, obsessing.

Nice work on this one! Loved it.

A Variac. is a Variable transformer I am an Engineer come on guys, that was the only way he could use the English made Marshall head or amp he just bought which is rated at @240Volts, and he had to plug it in to !20Volts U.S.

I've read that you should re-bias after lowering the voltage. That might also effect the tone if the tubes are running at the correct bias at each voltage.

Great subject! Chasing those mystical tones is what makes the difference between good sound and great sound. It's always in the details.

That was a really cool test!! Thanks for putting this together as it was great to get an A/B test of how this works. I am curious though, could you potentially get similar results dialing the gain back on the amp, but using low to medium amounts of an Overdrive pedal in front of it to shape the breakup? One thing I wanted to mention if you've never heard of them. If you're ever battling power line noise in your studio, check out the Equitech products (the Q and Son Of Q specifically). They convert the incoming power to a perfectly balanced output of 120, and they clean up virtually all line noise in the process for some of the cleanest power possible!! Not just great for guitar amps, but also for getting more headroom out of your monitors as they no longer are wasting resources dealing with line noise. The test I love to show people is how with nothing playing, I would max out my volume, and hear nothing coming from the monitors!! No little bits of static or fuzz or anything, just dead quiet! :)

The brown sound pertains to Alex Van Halens drums witch sounded warm. That's what Eddie said in an interview. Eddie said he thought his guitar tone was rather bright.

Surely any electrical device has conditioning circuitry to cope with the fact that the wall voltage varies across the country? I couldn't hear an ounce of difference between Rhett's versions of the riffs with the variac. I suspect this needs blind testing - your expectations that the variac will make a certain difference is affecting how you perceive the sound. Someone else needs to control the variac, so you cannot see it.

The strat into the super reverb sounded amazing

It only works if the tubes are biased for the plate voltage after the variac is set to whatever input voltage is written on the amp compared to the line voltage in the room or building, you are in, initially EVH bought the Variac because he had bought a European /English Marshall Amp,s Head rated@249Volts Ohms Law V=IxR(ohms),when he plugged in the amplifier took 1/2 hour to warm up because US. volts are running at 110-120V rms.

I read in an interview with Ed that David Lee Roth told Ed to tell folks that he was turning up ( increasing the voltage ) of the Variac instead of what he was really doing which was turning it down. This was to throw people of his trail. However, in hindsight he was giving you a hint by calling it his "brown sound". Like a "brown out" when the voltage drops.

Dave Friedman stated that when the wall voltage was lowered,the bias current to the output tubes was increased on Eddie's Marshall...As you turn down the wall voltage via the variac it can also thin out the overall tone.

This was a really cool idea for video, thank for doing, excellent work

Great 👍, it's so sweet. Can't believe it's such a simple change yet so very different output

"It is so fun" You guys are always fun, always a pleasure to watch your videos.

Dear Rick, I swear there's very little to no audible difference in any of the comparisons. Please make a follow up vid, where you include images of the soundwaves of each recording, also a proper blind test. Cheers

Rick Beato, I know that you know this but you didn't explain EVH's reason for the variac. He only used the variac to CONTROL THE VOLUME. Looking at Mickey Flappi's quote, I heard those exct words form EVH's mouth in an interview. I am an electronics technician by trade and have been involved with sound systems and music for years. Essentially EVH was creating his own "brown out". He had all his amp cranked up which gave it the tone he wanted but it was way too loud so, hence the variac, he dialed down the voltage and there you go. It would have been great if you would have done it like EVH and did turn the amp WIDE OPEN and you have the tone EVH was looking for but there you are in the room with the speaker plugging your ears because it was too loud then hook up the variac to get the volume down. Keep up the great work Rick! I love your channel.

I used a Bugera 1960 with a Variac at 90 volts ac and it was awesome used it with my Marshall Vintage Modern cab

Lol ill never get over the trademark Rick Beato casual name drops of musical giants Also the Fender clean with the Variac was immaculate

I have always heard that Eddie primarily used the lower voltage just to reduce the volume slightly. Honestly, I preferred the original tone. The Plexi seemed to lose bite as the lower plate voltage reduced the headroom. FWIW - My Mesa Boogie has a "Tweed Power" switch which drops the plate voltage by reducing the incoming current to 90 volts.

Wow! Fascinating! Thanks for an amazing video!!

Couple things you missed along with the Plexi and Variac: MXR 12 Band EQ and Echoplex Delay. Eddie used the EQ to boost the front of the amp

Eddie said he had everything on 10 on the first record.

"Eddie did not start using a Variac to make his amp sound better, he did it because the amp was too darn loud! ... Depending on the room we were playing I'd set it anywhere between 60 and 100 because the only way the amp sounded good was with everything all the way up, so that became my volume knob." From " The TRUE Story of Eddie Van Halen Using A Variac" If you turned the amp UP as you turned the Variac DOWN, it would be a better test!

Great playing Rhett.. Sounded just like Ed... Love your RU-vid channel too.. And Rick another amazing video.. I met you at the namm show years ago You are the nicest person.. I would get your beato books.. But I studied with a guy named Jimmy Wyble.. It was like your book.. pretty awesome..

my god that strat thru the super reverb sounded BEAUTIFUL!!

7:11 "Angel", nice!

Please tell me I wasn't the only one who thought Rick was going to talk about the "brown note" 😂

Sounds like the sound gets warmer and fuller as you dial down the voltage. I like how the lower voltage sounded better in all set ups.

Very Interesting Sounds with The Variac...I like The Bell-Sounds! Thanks-4 Sharing n I SHALL pass this-On...