One of the most distinctive electric guitars is back as another replica, but this time it’s missing its main visual identifier. Double-cut eruption or paint job disruption?
Hands up if you’ve ever tinkered with guitar mods. We’d wager that at some point or other we’ve all singed our fingers trying to replace a scratchy pot, turned the air blue as the spring from a pickup screw flies across the room for the third time, or gingerly winced as we make a twist of the Allen key. The late Eddie Van Halen was one such tinkerer, except his ‘bitsa’ mongrel became his implement for dropping jaws and raising the bar, permanently.
As such, you’re most likely already very familiar with the Frankenstein, a guitar that completed Eddie’s jigsaw of mind-melting lead work, telepathic rhythm abilities and groundbreaking manipulation of the instrument itself. Plus, it looked damn cool. “It wasn’t a tape finish, I used tape to paint it that way,” Eddie told us when we had the pleasure of visiting his 5150 studio in 2016. “I have no idea what possessed me to do that! I wish I did, but it’s just one of those things. I have no fucking idea… and now I have a registered trademark on it.”
The finish was just one element of the S-style guitar that Eddie was toting. Loaded with a single humbucker in the bridge position, there’s been plenty of speculation as to what the original pickup actually was.
“It’s from a [Gibson ES-] 335. I painted [the 335] white because, of course, I fucked with that, too. But yeah, I yanked it out of there. I took the rear pickup out and it was really hard. I mean, I pretty much destroyed that guitar because you had the f-holes to get to the electronics. Man! Talk about a pain in the ass!”
Following years of homebrew replications by fans to incorporate the Frankenstein’s many design points (‘dummy’ pickup, cavity-mounted switch, Floyd Rose, D-Tuna and so on), in 2007 Eddie teamed up with Fender’s Custom Shop to build the first EVH
