Eruption – Electric guitar pedal – EVH Overdrive, Distortion, Variac tone

Eruption is a Distorsion Pedal designed and developed with the strong inspiration of recreating the guitar sound of the first 6 Van Halen* albums, the one Eddie Van Halen* used to call the brown sound.

In fact, he recorded all the first 6 albums 6 albums of the band, the most important in his discography, with the same amp, and you can easily understand why on it hovers a multitude of stories and legends that still survive today.

The truth is a blend of determination, chance, luck and skills. The famous ’68 Plexi, bought second hand from England, was a very regular Marshall 1959 Super Lead head. The legends about the esoteric modifications made to this amp stem more from the fact that, after buying it, he did not realize he should have set the head to operate at 110V, the voltage of the American mains which is exactly half the European one. To solve the problem of too low volume caused by the reduced voltage, a Variac transformer was added in order to regulate the power supply, finding that he could even take it up to 140V without compromising the tubes. A dummy load between the head and the cabinet allowed him to play with all the controls at maximum and still have a manageable volume. This is, in short, the secret of the under-powered amp that gave birth to one of the most epic rock sounds.

Talking about secrets is, however, very simplistic as reliable sources state that Eddie Van Halen* was very jealous of his secrets and very often he could be seen playing live giving his back to the public just to keep his guitar tricks hidden. More than once he was also seen covering his equipment with blankets. In respect of this well-known jealousy of the late guitarist, the study and realization of the Eruption took place mainly by carefully using the ear and developing an absolutely original electronic circuit as the phenomenon of an under-powered amplifier remains impossible to reproduce in a pedal, however, it’s possible to recreate its particular effect.

Eruption is therefore a dual function pedal: those who are fond of the original Plexi sound can keep the Variac control down and get the typical Marshall historic sound (managing the amount of extra distortion as desired); those who want to recreate the brown sound of Eddie Van Halen* have the possibility to choose the amount of virtual voltage drop thus generating the typical harmonic response that takes you back to 1978.

Eruption is not a clone of other effects on the market, its unique design has been fully invented by us, it’s not even intended to replicate a specific device; it’s simply a distortion pedal capable of evoking these iconic guitar tones without the need for huge, cumbersome and prohibitively expensive equipment.

The knobs
4 simple controls:

Gain: sets the amount of distortion;

Middle: sets the boost or cut of middle frequencies;

Tone: sets the focus of the equalization, lower settings for a darker and fat tone, higher settings for more bite and brilliance,

Volume: sets the overall output.

*Colombo Audio Electronics is in no way affiliated with Eddie Van Halen and related trademarks.