The Story Behind Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein Guitar

Although opinions vary, it is said that the famed Frankenstrat was created in 1974, making it’s debut on the first Van Halen show at The Whiskey in ‘76.

Unable to choose between the fuller sound of his Les Paul and the tremolo bar enabled versatility of his ‘61 Strat, driven by his love of invention, Eddie elected to go his own way and craft a hybrid guitar, combining the best Fender and Gibson based elements into one ‘super-guitar’.

Eddie acquired a factory-second ash strat style body coupled with a two piece maple neck which had the thickness and fret size of the Gibsons he loved. He then carved out extra routing in order to mount the PAF humbucker from his Gibson ES-335 in the bridge position. The pickup needed to be angled to accommodate for the narrower string spacing afforded by the strat bridge and nut. Eddie also dipped the pickup in wax to reduce the unwanted feedback he experienced at high volume.

To satisfy Eddie’s whammy bar needs, he added the bridge and tremolo from a ‘58 strat; later to be replaced by the first incarnation of the Floyd Rose system.

As the Godfather and pioneer of modern rock guitar, it is no surprise that Eddie Van Halen also produced the spec and initial design for the guitar style favoured by hard rocking shredders to this day.

The combination of bridge humbucker and single coils, plus the later inclusion of locking nut and ubiquitous Floyd Rose on an S type guitar body has become the symbol of the modern superstrat.

Eddie also opted for a wide, super thin neck with larger frets; an original combination which was later adopted by superstrat giants such as Charvel, Kramer and Ibanez to deliver super fast playability. Although it is said that the neck was frequently swapped, before refitting the original sometime during the 2000s.

That famous original black & white finish was achieved by painting the body black, attaching strips of tape and then applying a second coat of white paint to give that, now infamous, EVH trademark look. What was later replaced with a regular scratch plate was originally fashioned, by Eddie, from a slice of vinyl record.

Perhaps influenced by the ‘61 strat of Eddie’s, which featured a missing volume control, leaving the remaining two tone pots, the Frankenstrat sports a single volume control - oddly marked ‘Tone’.

In 1979 Eddie gave the original guitar a new paint job using some readily available red bicycle paint. This time creating the additional white stripes from the original top coat. He is cited as stating that this was due to players already ‘copying’ this new style of guitar and it was time for a change. The middle position telecaster pickup was also removed, leaving the empty cavity and exposed wiring which became so recognisable.