EDDIE VAN HALEN: FRANKENSTRAT

Designed, built and modified to revolutionise the guitar

The electric guitar’s inventors had little idea what they were unleashing on the world. Leo Fender could not have foreseen the noises Hendrix or Tom Morello would extract from his designs. Eddie Van Halen, though, knew exactly how he was going to use Frankie, making it perhaps the first purpose-built instrument of the rock era.

Eddie had originally played a Les Paul, but switched to a Strat because he loved the tremolo arm. His band, however, hated his Strat tone, and Eddie set about combining the tone of a Gibson with the playability of a Strat. He bought a body from Wayne Charvel for $50, a factory reject because it had a knot in the wood, and a Mighty Mite neck. The pickup was nicked from the neck position of a Gibson ES-335, while the original tremolo system came from a 1958 Stratocaster – not a valuable guitar at the time. Eddie originally striped it in just black and white, as seen on the cover of debut album, Van Halen.

Eddie never did build a guitar with Gibson tone and Fender playability. A humbucker-equipped Strat doesn’t sound anything like a Les Paul; it’s less fat and has more immediate attack. Serendipitously, this was exactly what Van Halen needed. Frankie’s pickup is a legend in itself. Eddie got more sparkle and harmonics than most humbucker players; experts like Bare Knuckle’s Tim Mills believe one coil was hotter than the other. Because a Fender bridge is wider than a Gibson’s, Eddie angled the pickup to make the polepieces line up with the strings, and this also contributed to the tone. He experimented with Dimarzio Super Distortion pickups, but he is on record saying he didn’t like them because they didn’t clean up as well.

Eddie made a second Frankenstein, the Bumblebee, but never liked it as much so he revisited Frankie in the early 80s,

adding the iconic red paint as well as the Floyd Rose tremolo he helped develop. The pickup was rewound by Seymour Duncan with more output too. This became the definitive 80s metal design and the inspiration for Superstrats by Charvel, Jackson, Kramer, Ibanez and pretty much anyone who was building shred guitars. Eddie had found ways of keeping a Strat trem useably in tune while divebombing, but the Floyd Rose meant a legion of copyists could use his techniques. Eddie had invented both a new style of playing and the perfect guitar for doing it.