Tips for the Brown Sound
1 article by Steve Henning, 1 article by John Hamulak
By '83-84 Jose Arredondo had perfected amp modifications and was no longer using the variac. He added several preamp gain stages to my amp and did some things to change the voltage level the amp was runnning at (like the variac did, but all internal). Ed's amps, which I saw in the shop, were modified exactly the same way. He also added pre-gain controls for the preamp and a push-pull master volume. Pulled out, it cut out a couple of the output tubes so you had like a half-power deal. Pushed in was a full power 100 watt Marshall. Jose was not going to hand out any schematics (probably never even developed any) because the amp mod business became his bread and butter. It wouldn't be too difficult to figure out exactly what had been done if you could get a hold of one of his hot-rodded amps. Unfortunately, I sold mine long ago when I stopped playing the L.A. clubs. The amp sounded unbelievable, an exact match for Ed's early sound. Unfortunately, you payed the price though. In order to keep the amp sounding good and reliable, I had to re-bias and re-tube every month!!! Whatever he did with the voltages ate tubes very quickly.

Another thing was that Jose did not do active effects loop mods and I had problems with my pro audio level effects (Roland SDE-3000 delay, etc.) because the preamp signal was too weak. I had to go to Lee Jackson's Metaltronix to get an active effects loop put in. After that, everything was great because I got adequate signal to my effects. Total cost was $900.00 for an old plexi Marshall 100 watt head, $500.00 for the Jose mod, and $500.00 for the effects loop mod. I just paid less than that for a Soldano SLO-100! I get all the sounds I am looking for (including early-Ed), the tubes last a year or more, and I have a lifetime warranty - much better deal in my opinion. 

Lee Jackson has his own page on the web, access it here Check it out. He has a video for doing the Jose mod (or close to it) to your Marshall. This guy knows amps and worked on many of Jose's hot-rodded amps when Metaltronix was hot (including mine as mentioned above). You might drop him an email and ask whether the mod described on his video is close to the Jose mod, or what the differences are. Tell him you are looking for that early Ed tone. He has been very responsive when I've emailed him. This may be your best bet for getting the sounds you are looking for. Another thing you could do is put a wanted ad in the Recycler (www.recycler.com). Say you are looking for a Marshall head modified by Jose Arredondo. The Recycler is L.A.-based and I bet you would get responses. Most people will ship C.O.D. If the amp was modifed in '83 or later, it will have the push pull master volume (looks like a normal Marshall knob) which is a Jose inovations, I never saw any other amps with this.Jose passed away a few years ago. When I met him he was in his eighties. He was based in the South San Fernando Valley in CA. His business was called Arrco Electronics and they did everthing from fix your toaster to the Eddie amp mods - anything to do with electronics. The place was a tiny little dive in a typical LA strip mall. Can't remember the exact city. The only other thing I know about him is that he was originally based in the Pasadena area, which is where Ed met him. 


Killer mod for JCM 800 heads.
It uses another preamp tube that is activated by one of the inputs (the other input is then just like the regular high sensitivity input). This way, it makes the JCM 800 sort of a two channel amp allowing KILLER distortion and the original tone. It will range from a nice fat clean to AC/DC type distortion with the regular input. With the modified input, you can get VERY saturated (ala Mesa/Boogie) distortion tones. It is actually more of a boost than a separate channel, because it doesn't have separate controls, but is still different than just turning up the gain. It is very doable by someone with decent electronics skills, but is not recommended for total novices. I can dig it up if you really want it. I think the parts will cost less than $50 if you go top-shelf on all the stuff. Some benefits of this mod are: -Able to switch "channels" with an A/B selector switch, which IMO is better than one input and an internal switch because if you have a multi switch (like the ones from Uptown) with many selections, you can switch between these two "channels" (because each has its own separate input and is thus like a separate amp in relation to a selector) AND other amps using only one selector... very cool indeed. -JCM 800 heads are nice/solid tube amps to begin with, were mass produced, and cost is low due to the release of the JCM 900 a few years ago. -people won't know how you get such awesome distortion from a JCM 800. -the mod is not gimmicky, but a very popular mod from a very popular company.