EVH "Brown" Sound

are you kiddin'?! google it and you'll have enough read for about 3 years nonstop.

 

Eddie finally found a way to hit the "brown" note!!!

 

It had more to do with his amp than his guitar.

 

It's just a term that stuck somehow. Maybe there are stories to it's origin but I haven't heard them.

 

This same query has kept me awake at night for years.

 

Brown Sound... Imagine an old roadhouse at the edge of town. Because it was at the end of the local power lines. The voltage that came out of the wall was substantially lower than in town. It made the amps sound different. More of a saturated sound then at full voltage. EVH used a variac for the same effect by lowering the line voltage to his amp.

 

Ed dubbed his sound on "Fair Warning" as the "brown sound".
He meant that that it was a angrier sound compared to his previous sound.

 

Okay, from his interviews he always said brown referred to warm sounding. You know like when you "brown" something in the oven. Like hash browns. Eddie likes hash and he likes brown.

 

I've got a bunch of old Guitar World magazines with EVH in them, and here's a quote from the January 1981 issue...this is in regards to "Fair Warning" and the origins of the "brown sound"...

"What was I thinking? I don't have a clue. The whole album, Fair Warning, was kind of a dark period and that's why it sounds like it does. I don't know whether it was fueled by anger or whatever but I ended up doing most of the guitar stuff at four o'clock in the morning. Nothing was really being done in the during the day so I'd go back down at night and do it."

I'll keep looking through my collection for something more definitive/specific.

 

I have no idea what the brown sound was....Eddie's tone varied a lot on those early albums. At times I found it VERY harsh.

 

He stole the term from his brother, Alex used to use brown to describe what he was looking for in his snare tone - brown, like hitting a heavy piece of wood
Ed used it to describe a heavy tone with cut but easier on the ears

 

Vh1

 

It's the opposite of Beano tone...I always thought it meant dark and warm, like poop.

 

This is how I took it too. Like "brownouts" where the voltage drops because of heavy usage and your lights dim down.

 

Bingo! Thats what I have read.

 

That's the one! ^^^^^^

 

It was a brown dirty sound, with a phase 90 & echoplex mixed in for extra brown color.

 

plus it was the tone he used when he could make his amp squeel in a club without people putting their hands over their ears