Eddie Van Halen "Frankenstein" Arguable rock's most distintive and precious guitar, Eddie Van Halen made this "Frankenstein" with whatever guitar parts he coud find. "There's really no secret. The reason I use what I use is through trial and error,"-EVH Before the recording of Van Halen's first album in 1977, Eddie tried several types of guitars before settling on his home made "Frankenstrat": Gibson ES-335 ( "the band said,'You're rock'n roll, you ain't Roy Orbison. Either get some dark glasses or get rid of the guitar!'") Gibson Les Paul ("…to me was just the clichéd guitar- the 'rock'n roll' guitar. I liked the sound but it didn't fit my body.") Fender Stratocaster ( "The guys said.'Don't use that guitar. It sounds too thin.'") Finally Edward decided to create a guitar that featured the "best of both worlds" when he routed out the bridge pick-up cavity of a '61 Strat and popped in a Gibson P.A.F. (Patent Applied For) late 50's model humbucker. He was almost there. Edward bought the ash body from Linn Ellsworth in 1975 for fifty dollars and the neck(also a cast-off) for eighty dollars. Originally, the body came with single-coil bridge, neck, and middle pickup positions pre-routed and Van Halen, with a chisel, excavated a hole to house a humbucker in the bridge position. "It was a second,"recalls Ed."I gave the guy $50 for the body and got a neck for $80. I picked up the two and slapped them together." That’s right folks, the guitar that Eddie Van Halen used to create some of the most incredible rock riffs ever with (including the immortal "Eruption") cost it's owner a whole 180 bucks! "It was neat. I really felt I was on to something when I built that guitar, because you couldn't buy anything like it at the time." He placed in this chisled hole a P.A.F. from a 1961 Gibson ES-335("Which I had ruined". The pickup was also "ruined" but sounded good so it's what he used. The single-coil neck pick-up was completely disengaged.The guitar was first sprayed with black and then white Scwinn acrylic lacquer bicycle paint and mounted a black strat-style pickguard (also home-made) eventually only covering the two front(electronics) routings. The Guitar was eventually repainted with red, black and white stripes and orange truck refelectors added to the back of the guitar.. This red-Frankenstrat first appeared as the black and white guitar pictured on the debut VH album The nut was brass and the tailpiece unit was from a 1961 Fender Stratocaster. This guitar was Edward's main instrument for the first several albums and tours. During the band's second world wide stampede Van Halen replaced the original tremelo with then-prototype Floyd Rose. A quarter was attached just under the top-back side of the floyd Rose to keep it from rising up.That first Linn Ellsworth neck was broken by the guitarist's rigourous stage antics and replaced with whatever was handy(including a Danelectro at one point). The Ellsworth neck sported Gibson jumbo frets("I put those in with the help of some Crazy Glue"-EVH). The tuning heads were Schallers. Ed usually strung his guitars with .09 to .42 strings tuned down a half step from standard to Eb ( Eddie has stated that he would often just pick up his guitar and have Mike tune to him, which accounts for the 1/4 step down tuning of "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love"). The humbucker was dipped in paraffin wax to help reduce unwanted feedback.