“I’ll go back to Eddie Van Halen. I remember reading one time about how Ted Nugent was perplexed by Ed’s sound. The story goes that he went over and plugged into Eddie’s **** to see what kind of secret stuff he had in his rig, and when he started playing he just sounded like Ted Nugent. I had the exact same experience.
“Once in a while at a soundcheck, I would plug into his amp and I sounded like Jerry Cantrell. In turn, Eddie would play through my **** and sound like Eddie Van Halen. It’s in the ****ing hands. It’s in your flesh. You can mess with gear and it will give you a little bit of color, but it’s really in the flesh.”