Top Jimi "Brown Sound" Pack for the Kemper Profiling Amplifier
Seeking to recreate the "Brown" sound heard on the early Van Halen recordings
Speakers Used During the Profiling Process: 1967 Celestion 20W Greenback, Celestion Vintage 30 (paired with Greenback for VH I profiles)
Gain Range (Scale: 0 to 10): 6 to 7
Profile Type: Studio (7 profiles) and Merged (7 profiles)
Jim's Comments: "These profiles capture Eddie's "Brown Sound" heard on the early Van Halen records, from Van Halen I up to 1984. The Brown Sound has always been my favorite guitar tone, and I've been working to capture it for about 20 years. We recreated his rig as best we possibly could, with the exception of the JBL speaker mixed with the Celestion on the VH I album. The JBL just didn't sound right, so we substituted a Vintage 30 instead, which worked great. We tweaked the rig and created separate profiles to account for the differences in guitar tone on each album. The Kemper Phaser, Flanger and Delay do an admirable job recreating the old analog effects used in Eddie's rig. The profiles have Phaser, Flanger, Delay and Reverb presets as appropriate for each album. This pack is my personal favorite!"
Please Note: Obviously, the guitar is a very important part of the signal chain, and differences between guitars will affect the tone. We used Jimi's Les Paul Standard as a neutral reference to build the profiles. If your guitar has a fuller tone, we recommend increasing the Treble and Presence together. Try increasing them both by 0.3 and see how that sounds. If your guitar is bright, try reducing the Treble and Presence by 0.3 and go from there.
Signal Path: Guitar --> Vintage MXR 10-Band EQ --> 1968 Marshall Super Lead using a Variac set to 90V --> Ultimate Attenuator (resistive attenuator + solid state power amp) --> Marshall 4x12 loaded with '67 Celestion 20W Greenback
Profile Naming Decoder:
VH I = Van Halen I
VH II = Van Halen II
WACF = Women and Children First
FW = Fair Warning
DD = Diver Down
1984 = well, 1984
Customer Audio Demo:
Customer Demo Videos:
Jimi using these profiles live:
Top Jimi Enterprises, LLC is in no way affiliated with Marshall Amplification, Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc. (MXR), Celestion International Ltd., Harman International (JBL), or Magus Innovations LLC (Ultimate Attenuator). Any mention of "Marshall", "Super Lead", "MXR", "Celestion", "Greenback", "Vintage 30", "JBL" or "Ultimate Attenuator" is strictly for comparison or descriptive purposes.