How to get the "Brown sound" with the Kemper...

    After this tutorial i fuckin love my kemper amp :)


    Now i have the sound i ever wanted! (Sort of the sound on Marilyn Mansons Golden Age of Grotesque or any other Tim Skold Stuff)

    Quote from jeddie

    My point was that it's an awesome video, but how they heck do I figure that out on my own. ha!


    Although I'm pretty much in the camp of "get a profile of the right amp and call it a day" I think I can say how I would have figured that out.


    It's about knowing how the sound was done originally, knowing the characteristics and how to mimic them.


    In this case the integral part is the treble booster. A '68 JTM Marshall like the one Eddie used is brighter and has more gain than a JTM45. A treble booster does compensate for this. It makes the JTM - well, errrh, brighter and gainier ;) Everything else is polish and done to taste.


    What strikes me really odd is the fact he is boosting @160Hz with a grafic EQ before the amp and cuts precisly that frequency with another EQ after the amp section. That doesn't make much sense to me and I would never come up with that idea myself.


    What I find very interesting is his phaser setup:
    I recently tried to match my script logo phase 90 with the Kemper and settled pretty much for the same values as shown in this video. It didn't sound 100% identical but it was reasonable close, in fact much closer than most phase 90 clones I know (analog or digital).


    So if you are after the Phase 90 "script logo" sound, copy the settings from that video and you are done.

    Quote from Garrincha

    What strikes me really odd is the fact he is boosting @160Hz with a grafic EQ before the amp and cuts precisly that frequency with another EQ after the amp section. That doesn't make much sense to me and I would never come up with that idea myself.


    I guess that by pushing that freq into the amp, the distortion will produce a series of overtones that will color the sound nicely, and then remove the unnatural 160Hz peak afterwards while retaining it's overtones.

    I also believe that this type of videos are very interisting in general and it's very good that was done and thought by Kemper Amp directly, it's for sure a great idea :thumbup:


    Just a question: how he did that sound, in the video, on 4:11-4:14, and repeat for example at 4:28? Is it more in his hands, or a special setting of the phaser !??!?! really I would like to understand better, can someone help me??? ?(


    Thanks!

    Quote from Garrincha

    What strikes me really odd is the fact he is boosting @160Hz with a grafic EQ before the amp and cuts precisly that frequency with another EQ after the amp section. That doesn't make much sense to me and I would never come up with that idea myself.


    I've watched it again and he actually explains his pre-amp EQ setting (I sould have paid attention on what he says rather than the settings only ;) ). He says it's to match his guitar to the Ibanez Destroyer that Eddie used on the first record.THAT makes perfect sense of course. He uses an all-mahogany guitar and the Destroyer is from Korina and would sound substantially brighter than a LP Special type of guitar he is using.


    That doesn't work for me though. Without the grafic EQ stomps I get very close to his tone in the video with my Les Paul. My guitar is a bit brighter still and the PUs have a bit more gain, but I'm at least in the ballpark and I can always dial back the treble boosters tone and the gain. But with the EQ my Les Paul sounds like utter shit with that rig ;)


    That's probably another lesson to learn about the Kemper: The profiling is so accurate that the guitar matters very much.

    Sorry OT a bit...


    Garrincha, you ever consider making a "guitar and Amp blog"? your knowledge of all these things is outstanding.
    serious Ive learned so much about some amps and guitars than i never knew (and even owned) from talking to you and reading some of your posts.
    you need to go into the commercial world of knowledge and make a book! lol


    Ok back OT:

    The Brown sound was orginally created putting a voltage in front of the amp is that right? So why dont somebody upload just a real Brown Sound profile?


    2. What do you think about the brownsound pedals? (wampler pinnacle and so on)


    This was a very good starting point but im noth there where i want to. Need to have mor chunk in the Palm mutes but dont wanna increase the presence since it get harsh then.


    (again im not searching for the Eddie Van Halen brown sound - im searching for the Skold / Marilyn Manson 2003 brown sound :) )


    I love this tone ... so much highs but nothing harsh.. for me its simply the PERFECT guitar tone.


    Example:
    http://www.tape.tv/vid/7592

    Quote from and44

    Sorry OT a bit...


    Garrincha, you ever consider making a "guitar and Amp blog"? your knowledge of all these things is outstanding.
    serious Ive learned so much about some amps and guitars than i never knew (and even owned) from talking to you and reading some of your posts.
    you need to go into the commercial world of knowledge and make a book! lol


    Ok back OT:


    Thanks for the nice complements but this thread is a good example of how I get my informations. I never knew EVH played an Ibanez Destroyer, I've learned that from this very video here. So that's nothing I've researched and I don't want to pretend I knew that sort of things.


    I do know the guitar however as they used to be the go-to Explorer copies in the 70s. When I grew up in the 80s they were considered used japanese knock offs and were going really cheap. I remember the local music shop had three of those hanging on the wall that we kids used to drool over.


    But I checked recently and it seems the original 70s ones ain't cheap anymore ;)

    Quote from Nacht

    The Brown sound was orginally created putting a voltage in front of the amp is that right?


    Not quite. The Marshall EVH used had a built in variac (a device that reduces the power supply voltage). That was not original to the amp and a modification done probably to reduce the volume (this was before the advent of "master volume").


    There has been many myth's and discussions over the years about that variac and what it did in the amp and how it contributed to the brown sound and if the amp was further modified or stock.


    Recently over at another forum I've read that Dave Friedman had the amp in for service and took the opportunity to check the circuit and everything. It turned out that the amp was a bone stock '68 Super Lead. It had two odd parts compared to the majority of SLs from that year, but they seemed to be stock nevertheless. The amps back then weren't always exactely identical, they sometimes would use different parts and circuit tweaks.


    Anyway it turned out that the variac didn't do much it just lowered the voltage and Ed used it as a master volume. He recently confessed he lied about the variac in that famous Guitarplayer interview in the 80s and pretending he actually raised the voltage to 140 volt. People were blowing their amps when they tried to copy that setup. What he did was actually lower the voltage to play clubs at a reasonable volume and save the wear on tubes. It doesn't do anything else.


    So basically the brown sound is a stock '68 100 Watt Marshall with an early script logo phase 90 and a delay kicked in for Eruption ;) No other pedals, no mods and the variac is merely a mastervolume.


    Here is the link to a gigantic thread containing the post about Friedmans findings:
    http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=746279


    And here's Eddie talking about the variac and his lie:
    http://ultimateclassicrock.com…-reveals-his-biggest-lie/

    Thx for your answer. I came for it because as i mentioned i love the sound of skold and on a dvd of him he said that he uses a variac too (or voltage dont even know the difference im a noob in such things) "it is no secret because EVH did this while creating the brown sound" So i think the voltage have to do something? Have you listend the video i posted (manson - mobscene) it is some sort of brown sound isnt it?

    Edited once, last by Nacht ().

    Quote from Nacht


    Thx for your answer. I came for it because as i mentioned i love the sound of skold and on a dvd of him he said that he uses a variac too (or voltage dont even know the difference im a noob in such things) "it is noch secret because EVH did this while creating the brown sound" So i think the voltage have to do something? Have you listend the video i posted (manson - mobscene) it is some sort of brown sound isnt it?


    I'm at the office right now and can't check the video as those are blocked here. I'll check tonight when I get home.


    But regarding the variac:
    It's pretty much the same as the recent "powerscaling" circuits in certain boutique amps and some recent Marshalls (the YJM for example or the AFD100). They basically reduce the voltage of the (power)tubes. The variac would reduce all voltages (from the preamp valves as well). All in all it will change the character and the amount of the distortion a tiny bit but there is also a reason why these powerscaling circuits are said to be the best "Mastervolume" solution since they retain most of the character of an amp. Much more than a typical attenuator does.


    So it's pretty much a great way to get the cranked amp sound at a lower volume which is why Eddie used it. I can imagine that even in the 70s nobody could crank a 100 Watt Marshall in a club. That variac thing is more about getting the brown sound at lower volumes than getting the brown sound at all.

    Quote from Garrincha

    I'm at the office right now and can't check the video as those are blocked here. I'll check tonight when I get home.


    But regarding the variac:
    It's pretty much the same as the recent "powerscaling" circuits in certain boutique amps and some recent Marshalls (the YJM for example or the AFD100). They basically reduce the voltage of the (power)tubes. The variac would reduce all voltages (from the preamp valves as well). All in all it will change the character and the amount of the distortion a tiny bit but there is also a reason why these powerscaling circuits are said to be the best "Mastervolume" solution since they retain most of the character of an amp. Much more than a typical attenuator does.


    So it's pretty much a great way to get the cranked amp sound at a lower volume which is why Eddie used it. I can imagine that even in the 70s nobody could crank a 100 Watt Marshall in a club. That variac thing is more about getting the brown sound at lower volumes than getting the brown sound at all.

    make sense :) Thank you!
    looking forward to your thoughts if im on the right way gettin that tone :)

    the evh brownsound has been flogged to death on TGP and metroamp, people there get soooo obsessive with it, here its been fairly casual. its a really informative video, and a good evh-esque sound.
    if someone actually profiled a 'rockstah' marshall amp that would be a nifty profile. he was on a quest for that sound and pretty much nailed it in a normal amp

    Quote from clarkydaz

    the evh brownsound has been flogged to death on TGP and metroamp, people there get soooo obsessive with it, here its been fairly casual. its a really informative video, and a good evh-esque sound.
    if someone actually profiled a 'rockstah' marshall amp that would be a nifty profile. he was on a quest for that sound and pretty much nailed it in a normal amp


    True and what I find really interesting is that there actually is not much of a secret to this sound. All the time people thought about possible mods and what the variac does and whatever. And in the end Friedman found out it was a bone stock 100 Watter and the variac doesn't do much anyway ;)


    As for the rockstah thing: We do have Gilmours Hiwatt and I must admit playing that profile gives me goosebumps everytime.


    This doesn't sound like a cranked vintage Marshall to me. It's more of a modern highgain sound. Quite different frequency response and a bit scooped in the mids. I don't think you get there with the ingredients of the EVH brown sound. If it's a Marshall it's probably one of the recent high-gain range or it's something completely different like Diezel, Bogner oder Mesa Rectifier.

    Quote from Garrincha

    This doesn't sound like a cranked vintage Marshall to me. It's more of a modern highgain sound. Quite different frequency response and a bit scooped in the mids. I don't think you get there with the ingredients of the EVH brown sound. If it's a Marshall it's probably one of the recent high-gain range or it's something completely different like Diezel, Bogner oder Mesa Rectifier.

    hm i think it sounds nothing like the normal metal sound mesa diezel and so on produces. There are those BIG, Fat highs (almost sounds as there were no cab) but not harsh or cutting at all and i never heard them anywhere else except van halen or manson/skold. I know Skold plays a Marshall 1959SL. it could also be a framus dragon or a marshall JCM800/900. And as i saw this video it was the first time i was close to this sound.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MNrMUI1I3I


    another example of skolds sound (poor quality) . And i dont think its exactly the EVH sound but the same direction.. more gain and more modern. Really think this is the false direction?

    Edited 2 times, last by Nacht ().