Joe Satriani Has A Special Ampli To Replication Eddie Van Halen's Guitar Sound

Joe Satriani (Instagram @joesariani)

JAKARTA - In an interview with the Australian Musician, Joe Satriani said that he had a special amplification to imitate Eddie Van Halen's iconic guitar sound.

As previously reported, Satriani will play the role of Eddie Van Halen on the upcoming summer tour of 2024 alongside vocalist Sammy totaling, bassist Michael Anthony, and drummer Jason Bonham.

On the Sammy total solo tour, this formation will focus on Van Halen's songs. They first announced this tour in an appearance at The Howard Stern Show.

Now, Satriani revealed that the concert plan was seen from the point of view of "tones".

"Yes, there are a few things you can note. This is one of the guitars I used during 'The Howard Stern Show'. This guitar was set to D-standard, which is very low, and the strings 11. Those were my first two big mistakes. [Obviously] Because I couldn't play 11 strings. And set it to D, I'm not used to it. Sammy and friends, they've been doing it for years, but it turns out to be foreign to me, so a lot of things don't happen.

'Eddie plays at 440 and then E flat, and he plays light strings. He plays nine and sometimes even lower strings are lighter,' explains Joe.

"Every time I talk about Eddie, I finish it by saying 'in addition to the fact that he's a genius.' You have to always add that, because he's amazing - the point. Because every time he takes the guitar, no matter what it is, it's amazing. He has hands and heart, everything. I just catch up."

"What I learned from 'The Howard Stern Show', besides that it's still important to practice and you can't do performances without training... But what, confirmed is a few things I think about, namely that Eddie has a gear specific thing he really does," continued Satriani.

"He doesn't play with the equipment I use or Steve Vai or Slash or Tom Morello or the rest of his people. He actually has very specific settings. And you ask yourself, 'Why?' Well, that's because, apart from being a genius, as we know, he knows that in order for him to play those roles, his equipment must be adjusted in a certain way; otherwise it won't work."

"So, like when you play the early part of 'Mean Street', if your setting doesn't allow those harmonics to come out, it's going to sound like you didn't hit it. You have to make the settings right."

"If you refer to the first one... Let's say, if you look at [the video of the 1986 Van Halen concert] 'Live Without A Net' or those things, even the initial period, the period '5150', from [David Lee] Roth to the early status period where he was still using Marshall, when he did something like that, it was a success."

"Every time he hits a harmonic, boom, it's him. And his voice is low, large integer fidelity, still sounds organic. You go fast for live at the Tokyo Dome ['Tokyo Dome Live in Concert' 2015], it's a very different thing. He plays completely different amplIES. When he does those things, he gets very clear harmonic information, but he also gets a lot of sound and none of the bodies are part of the previous voice. "

"Now I know it because of the two [EVH] amps that were there. I got it back when Alex [Van Halen] and Dave called and asked me to do an Eddie tribute tour [which seems to be abandoned], and I thought, 'Well, I have to think about this.' So the first thing I did was to get some of them and I thought, 'Wow, this is great. You got all the harmonics, but my friends, it sounds very small. It's like for modern music...' If I were 20 years old and I was playing modern rock, it would be the best amplion ever. But it wasn't, and I still want to hear a kind of guitar body and I want to hear a more dynamical mix. So I started to think, 'What's the part of Van Halen's favorite?' And I found that period in 86. I spoke a little with Sam about it and he said, yes, the first 5150, he still used Marshalls. In Sammy's view, the favorite sound that Eddie once made. It wasn't small and then it was centralized. So I contacted Dylana Scott on Power amplifier 3rd, and he woke me what we believe would be an amplifier who was able to do it...