Unchained ...Did EVH use a flanger ?

[SKYDOGS]

It's commonly thought That the Swoosh sound on the palm
mute between the opening chords is a flanger. Did anybody see Eddie live useing a flange? I found by scraping the E
string w/t the edge of you pick during the palm mute will
yeild the same effect. He employes the same technique at the
start of the craddle will rock solo. Furthermore trying to set a flanger to cycle at the exact time seems imposiable
to me ? So my ? is Does Eddie do this by hand (like I think)
or is it all flange? I know he used a flanger back in the day, But i think it was more to color his sound and NOT for
swoosh effects. attached is a sound clip of me doing it by
hand tell me what you think ?

[Mondy]

Hi there,

Well, he certainly did use a flanger to get "that" sound. If you notice, it swooshes up one time, then down the other time. He definitely used an MXR Flanger. There's loads of interviews with him saying that.

If you get an MXR Flanger, then apparently you just get the sound straight away with all of the settings set to 12 o'clock.

As for your technique, I can see what you are trying to achieve, but that's gonna take some impeccable control, and at the end of the day, you are making harmonics ring out, and that is not what comes across in the song.

It's just good old healthy chugging on a dropped D with loads of flange chucked in !!!

I woulda thought he has some techie guy who worries about activating and deactivating it when he plays live, so it's not his concern. When you're one of the most influential guitarists in the world, you're not gonna bother with having to stomp on stomp boxes when you're playing live...

Pay someone else to do it !!!

[img]images/smilies/icon_thumb.gif[/img]

[CanyonCarver]

When I play this I step on and off the flanger for the effect. It works wonders. [img]images/smilies/rock.gif[/img]

[Mondy]

That's what I thought was obvious ? [img]images/smilies/headscratch.gif[/img]

That's why I said that Eddie wouldn't stomp on the boxes himself when he is playing live. He'd get someone else to do it. I was implying that the stomp box has to be activated and deactivated during the palm muting stage...

I'm pretty sure that Dweezil Zappa asked him how the hell he managed to activate it and deactivate "just" on the up and downs of each cycle, and he just shrugged...

As well as being talented, he's bloody lucky !!!

[img]images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif[/img]

[classalpha]

[ QUOTE ]
mondola said:
That's what I thought was obvious ? [img]images/smilies/headscratch.gif[/img]

That's why I said that Eddie wouldn't stomp on the boxes himself when he is playing live. He'd get someone else to do it. I was implying that the stomp box has to be activated and deactivated during the palm muting stage...

I'm pretty sure that Dweezil Zappa asked him how the hell he managed to activate it and deactivate "just" on the up and downs of each cycle, and he just shrugged...

As well as being talented, he's bloody lucky !!!

[img]images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

My educated guess/theory on the flanger sweep being so "cued in" on the beats, is that Ed (or Ted) recorded the Marshall track dry, then patched the flanger in through the analog mixing board's FX send/insert during final mixdown, manually punching in the effect on the board.


If you notice there is a cycle to the sweep rate which is "synced" to the tempo of the song. If he left the effect on with the rate cycling in tempo, he could manually punch in the effect on the board *itself* keeping the flange sweep up on the first riff, down on the second- so on and so forth because it's always on and cycling during the process. The effect would always be on "time" because the flanger's rate doesn't stop sweeping.

I've never heard Ed duplicate that same flanger sweep playing "Unchained" live, turning the pedal off and on as he stepped on it, so my theory is possible.

It'd be a lot of work to set up, but I suppose if you patch a flanger in a loop on a pedalboard and left it on, you can duplicate that same cued sweep just clicking the effect in and out of the loop. [img]images/smilies/headscratch.gif[/img]