Not a bad cover at all. Were you just doing your own interpretation, or actually trying to replicate the sound of the original? If you were going for a replication, here's a few suggestions:

1) The original was done on an Oberheim OB-Xa. There's a couple of sample sets out there of varying quality, but the only decent OB-X VI I've ever seen is the OP-X Pro II, which I literally just found out is finally available for Mac (previously, you could only get it as a Reaktor module on the Mac and it sucked). The Reaktor version sounded a little more like an actual OB-X, and it sounds like they tweaked the AU/VST version a bit -- the "Halen Jump" patch on the AU/VST sounds like they put a bit of reverb or delay on it and maybe a little chorus to get it to sound more like the finished sound on the album. You can also do a fair emulation on a Roland Juno-106 and a couple of the latter-day Korg synths, like the WAVESTATION (my hardware Korg X5-D also comes pretty close). Now for the weird part:

2) All the synths were actually recorded in mono like guitars. They mic'd a Marshall cabinet like a guitar cab and ran the OB-Xa out of that, which is where it gets that bright, larger-than-life sound. When I was a kid, I always thought it was in stereo -- it wasn't until I was a lot older that I realized most of the synths were mono and panned halfway to the left, except for the high strings, which were panned right to counter the main keyboard sound. In fact, even the guitars were panned halfway to the left (Van Halen didn't do doubled guitar tracks until 5150), which is the only issue I have with the original from a technical standpoint. I think they were placing everybody where they would actually be on stage, so they panned almost all of Eddie's instruments to the same spot, although it would've made more sense to have the guitars panned opposite the keyboards to balance out the mix.

3) Try using a MusicLab RealLPC for the guitars. It takes a while to properly figure out the ins and outs, but it's worth it, especially on the solos. And either NI Guitar Rig or Amplitude for guitar processing, as both of them do a fair imitation of EVH's old-school rig.

4) My Yamaha Black drum kit in my East West "Ministry of Rock" VI is the closest I've ever heard to Alex Van Halen's kit pre-5150. It's very woody with minimal room sound or reverb, but not totally dry. Not sure what comes closest in EZ Drummer, maybe the Classic 4-Mic (the fully-mic'd kit, not the 4-mic version).

5) You might also be interested in this:

 

Last edited: Jul 20, 2018

Good fun hearing this! Thanks!

 

Good mixing! That guitar solo sounds a little anemic, but everything else is A1!!!!