Edward Van Halen RIP
Put some respect on his name
The Boy Who Never Grew Up was the master of the mysterious “brown sound” emitted from his amp
Life is a finite series of notes, wrung from a precarious position
For the past 46 years, guitarists around the world have tried to replicate the tones they’ve heard coming out the speaker cabinets of Edward Van Halen’s overdriven amp. Edward referred to his tone as the brown sound, and for nearly half a century, a debate has raged among guitarists about how best to emulate it. Where does this tone come from? Some say it’s the amp. Some say it’s the pickups. Others argue about tone woods, about trem blocks, about pedals and the batteries in those pedals. The truth is that it’s everything: the strings and the pickups; the guitar’s neck, body, hardware, and appointments; the cable that connects the instrument to the amplifier; the effects pedals and the amp and the tubes in the amp and how it’s EQ’d; the speakers in the cabinet that the amp runs through and the room the amp’s played in; the furniture in that room and the human bodies that absorb, dampen, or redirect the soundwaves. Edward, the undisputed king of tone worship, said the brown sound came …
