Edward Van Halen's Guitars
Frankenstrat (Original State)
This has been Eds main axe from 1975 to 1984. He stopped using it because of how worn out it was. but he still owns it. The guitar was assembled by Edward himself.
The strat style body is a Lynn Ellisworth Boogie Body with a Charvel Neck. He got a charvel body instead of a fender because fender wood is cheap. The Ellisworth body is thicker and made from better wood. Ed says that the whole guitar is charvel but he says that because Lynn Ellisworth worked at the Charvel company when he made bodies. The body was originally routed for three single coil pickups. Since Ed wanted to put a single humbucker in it, he chisled out the bridge pickup cavity.
As for the orignal neck, it had been ruined and worn out during tours so he had replaced it several times. It went through about 4 or 5 necks until he stuck with a kramer classoc style neck then a Kramer banana style neck. At the moment the guitar has a unmarked strat style neck again with a rosewood fingerboard even know ed prefers maple. Ed prefers unfinished maple necks and fingerboards because he doesnt like his fingers so slide around when he sweats or when he tries to bend a string, he also like the feel of the wood. Im sure the rosewood just a replacement for the photo shoot for the best of both worlds album.
The pickup is a '59 Gibson P.A.F Humbucker out of an ES-335. Ed put this pickup in his strat style guitar because he likes the sound of a Gibson but the tremolo on a Gibson is weak and he liked the strat tremolo better. The tremolo and controls are out of '59 strat that he owned. he originally put the P.A.F in the '59 strat because strat single coils are thin sounding. But he didnt like the tone of the wood. The pickguard is a thin piece of black plastic that ed cut out him self for the one humbucker one volume control.
Ed painted the guitar with black and white Schwinn bycycle paint. he made the stripe design by taping it with masking tape and spraying over.
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