In this episode I run thru the ways EVH used to run his rigs from mid 80’s to around 91. He was working with Bob Bradshaw at the time. They started out running a Marshall Plexi maxed out into a static load box feeding signal to his stereo effects. Later they figured out that the speakers impacted how the amp sounds, so they started to bring sealed up speaker boxes to load the amps with instead. I use my Yamaha SPX-90 for the detune, Roland SRV-2000 for reverb, and SDE-330 for stereo delays.

One day Bradshaw tried to use to use a real speaker cab as a center dry cab. He got excited and took the idea to Eddie. Eddie hated it at first. Turns out his crew had changed out the speakers in his cabs. Eddie told them to put the old speakers back. After hearing the huge sound of 3 4×12 cabs on stage he decided to go with it. He still run a similar setup today.

This is the original way to run a W/D/W setup. Other guys like Lukather had same types of rigs, but with more effect units. It is basically just a regular stereo rig with an added dry channel. think of it as the front of a surround system. You have most of the dialog (Guitar) in center but there is also dialog in the left/right speakers.

Later guys tried to come up with a way to run only effects in the wet cabs. But the complexity of the signal path of the effects made it impossible to do in a practical way. Some guys had all the units 100% and in parallel, but then you lost the coloration of the modulation etc on the delay repeats.

The best solution was the way Mike Landau ended up running his system. He used a single Lexicon MPX-1 for delays and reverb only. next video in this series will be about that. Hope you enjoy the content.

Regards
Kjetil A Nesheim

Here is the video if you have not seen it.