Friedman Jose Arredondo Tribute Amplifier - Why have one mod when you can have them all?

[tbonesullivan]

This was talked about a bit in the JEL-50 thread, but Friedman had been working on a Jose Arrendondo "tribute" amplifier, and had actually brought the family in, and had Jose's daughter Marisol with him at NAMM, talking about all the stuff that her dad did in terms of mods. She had helped out at the shop so she knew quite a bit about the different pieces of equipment he worked on, which were not just Marshall amps. Anyway, Dave Friedman had known Jose, and actually purchased a Modded amp directly from him when he was 18 or something, and also has worked on a lot of Jose modded amps. He pretty much found out all the mods that Jose did, and put them all into ONE AMP based on a Marshall 4 input Super Lead, using a more modern implementation than Jose did.

It's got two different presence knobs, so you can have the original presence, as well as the Jose style one which is almost more like a negative feedback control. It's also got two different master volumes, the various different gain mods that Jose did, and so forth. While it doesn't have the word "Marshall" on it, it does have Jose's Face and signature. There are no "official" demos yet, just some videos from NAMM, but if someone was after the "ultimate modded 80s Marshall", this might be it.

This one has some good playing in the beginning.:

 

This one has the most straight out playing that I've seen, but whoever was holding the camera must have downed wayyyy too much coffee.
 

 

This one gets pretty technical:

 

[RobB]

Seems pretty cool. I’m good with my two higainers. What like about my Splawn is the ability to select between gain stages, era and solo boost. Nice that Dave is helping out the Arredondos, though. 

[scottcald]

I do think it's cool he's getting it blessed by the family and I'm assuming giving them some of the profits.   It's also cool that it just flat out has Jose's name and image on it, truly giving him the credit he deserves.  

[Hamer95USA]

This amp will be a true " bucket list" 100 watt amp head to own with all of the Jose Arredondo mods installed. If you're a high gain amp head fan, this will be on your radar! I'm happy that the Arredondo family has given Friedman their blessing to move forward with it, share the profits from the amp, and letting their father's legacy live on as one of the master amp models of his time. I wished that EVH had given Jose the support of his modified amp builds before his death than going with Soldano amp purchase, or Peavey amp endorsement, but it is what it is. 

 

[RobB]

3 hours ago, Hamer95USA said:

I wished that EVH had given Jose the support of his modified amp builds before his death than going with Soldano amp purchase, or Peavey amp endorsement, but it is what it is. 

I don’t know if Arredondo was interested in becoming an amp manufacturer. Once the word got out about his amp/pedal mods for EVH, his business grew to where he was turning away customers. He did just fine from his association with Edward. 

Edited February 2 by RobB

[Cboss]

I don't know what page it's on, but it's in there, in Eruption (the book) evh says that all of his amps were always stock, he just said that to give his friend some business.. that is more or less the quote from the book

[LucSulla]

On 1/28/2025 at 2:01 PM, RobB said:

Seems pretty cool. I’m good with my two higainers. What like about my Splawn is the ability to select between gain stages, era and solo boost. Nice that Dave is helping out the Arredondos, though. 

Same. I can't imagine this being a marked improvement over my Quickrod, so I'm personally not that interested, but I think it is very a cool project in general. The Plex is a really good amp though, so I imagine this one will deliver well on what it is advertising if you are looking for this flavored amp in your collection. 

[LucSulla]

9 minutes ago, Cboss said:

I don't know what page it's on, but it's in there, in Eruption (the book) evh says that all of his amps were always stock, he just said that to give his friend some business.. that is more or less the quote from the book

I was looking up something else and came across this bit of lore from an old post on the Splawn forum. 
 

Quote

Jose was a famous friend of Eddie Van Halen’s, and when the buzz started to get really big around Van Halen, every guitarist wanted to know how to cop Eddie’s guitar tone. Eddie started telling journalists that Jose worked on his amps, generating his friend a lot of business. While Eddie’s #1 amp was actually mostly original inside, Jose did add a JCM800 style master volume to the back of the amp – this was later removed, and can be seen covered up in photos of the amp with a large screw.

https://splawnfans.proboards.com/thread/7676/amp-mods

[Cboss]

44 minutes ago, LucSulla said:

I was looking up something else and came across this bit of lore from an old post on the Splawn forum. 
 

https://splawnfans.proboards.com/thread/7676/amp-mods

There is so much hearsay about all of this, but also in eruption, in several different interviews they say that the only way they got a manageable volume out of that stack was using the variac as a volume control, and it actually sounded better, fatter at reduced voltage.

That's how VH1 was recorded (according to same source)..68 volts I think for rhythm parts for the sag, 130 volts for lead, "tubes melting". If they had a master volume control none of that would have been necessary.. who knows, but it sure sounds good

Edited February 2 by Cboss

[LucSulla]

6 minutes ago, Cboss said:

There is so much hearsay about all of this, but also in eruption, in several different interviews they say that the only way they got a manageable volume out of that stack was using the variac as a volume control, and it actually sounded better, fatter at reduced voltage.

That's how VH1 was recorded (according to same source)..68 volts I think for rhythm parts for the sag, 130 volts for lead, "tubes melting". If they had a master volume control none of that would have been necessary.. who knows, but it sure sounds good

I think this is as close as anyone is going to get to something definitive. 
 

 

[RobB]

10 minutes ago, Cboss said:

That's how VH1 was recorded..68 volts I think for rhymes parts for the sag, 130 volts for lead, "tubes melting". If they had a master volume control none of that would have been necessary.. who knows, but it sure sounds good

That's interesting. There were plenty of MV amps out at that time (JMPs, Boogie, et al). I imagine Edward probably played through many JMPs. I can only speculate that stock MVs didn't float his boat. Easy enough to install a PPIMV in a plexi. Maybe it didn't have the sound he liked?

The above video link is very educational. Dave, when asked about the EVH sound said, "pretty much a stock plexi." I don't think there's any magic in the circuit.

Edited February 2 by RobB

[Cboss]

5 minutes ago, RobB said:

That's interesting. There were plenty of MV amps out at that time (JMPs, Boogie, et al). I imagine Edward probably played through many JMPs. I can only speculate that stock MVs didn't float his boat. Easy enough to install a PPIMV in a plexi. Maybe it didn't have the sound he liked?

The above video link is very educational. Dave, when asked about the EVH sound said, "pretty much a stock plexi." I don't think there's any magic in the circuit.

About to watch that video.. that is a really good book by the way, eruption, according to that again he got that one super lead stack originally, and that was the one, that was his sound, he just dimed everything, until he found out about the variac and tried it.  

[RobB]

4 minutes ago, Cboss said:

About to watch that video.. that is a really good book by the way, eruption, according to that again he got that one super lead stack originally, and that was the one, that was his sound, he just dimed everything, until he found out about the variac and tried it.  

[LucSulla]

1 hour ago, RobB said:

That is one seriously cool Charvel. 

[RobB]

9 minutes ago, LucSulla said:

That is one seriously cool Charvel. 

Tanx! It's got the tone. I have a Piranha White in currently. It has that almost Stratty "spank" on VH1, not a high-gain pickup at all. I'm gonna install a zebra, "Black", soon. It's supposed to drive the front end a little harder.