I build guitars one at a time, completing around 10 per year.Eddie Van Halen’s primary instrument from 1977 to 1983, known by such common monikers as ‘Frankenstrat’, ‘Frankenstein’, or, simply, ‘Ed’s Baby’, is perhaps the most iconic and valuable electric guitar in modern history. In my shop, every step from selecting materials to finishing and set-up is done by one person me. The archtop guitar is an instrument that is difficult to build in a factory-type setting, but rather demands hands-on treatment and a keen sense of intuition.This page is a collection of all history of the guitar, accepted/established and theorized alike, from its first days in Van Halen’s LA club gigs to its final live show on at Van Halen’s legendary ‘US Festival’ concert.Most guitarists know of Tom and his reputation as a world class guitar designer and builder. Neck swaps, pickup swaps, and bridge swaps were common, and sometimes even occured on a day-to-day basis. Unlike the latter contenders, the Frankenstrat was a true experiment that Ed personally modified and incrementally improved constantly over its 6 year use as his primary guitar, and even beyond its permanent retirement.
![]() Ed inquires about the body, to which (presumably) Wayne responds that it is a ‘second’. However, this was a temporary and last ditch attempt to modify this guitar before something very important would happen.The story, as Ed tells it, involved him hanging around Wayne Charvel’s shop, as usual, and spotting an Ash Strat style body down on the floor. As we enter February, Ed takes his 1961 Sunburst Strat and sprays white lacquer right over the existing nitrocellulose finish. This platform was an immediate success for Ed, and would become the basis for all of his primary instruments for the remainder of his life – A tremolo, bridge humbucker, and master volume everything else was secondary.Ed had recently painted his Ibanez Destroyer, another mainstay instrument of his collection, white and was itching to customize his other instruments to try to carve out an identity for himself as attention was growing around Van Halen. Edward has been playing a modified 1961 Stratocaster for some time, likely purchased from Wayne Charvel in 1976, equipped with a few humbuckers over it’s tenure, wired directly to the master volume and out to the jack. Ed took notice of this while attending some club gigs in LA while on break after his tour concluded, only to see no-name guitarists sporting his flare. This could have been a great opportunity for Grover to secure an endorsement from the young Ed, but all chances of that went bust when Grover would go ahead and make more copies for sale at Charvel without Ed’s consent. This “upgrade” was the next step in Ed’s experiment.Upon receiving the body, he would proceed to cut his own single humbucker pickguard from a black plastic sheet, and cannibalize his 1961 Stratocaster in order to bring to life, for the first time, the FrankenstratWith a grueling first World Tour under Ed’s belt, Edward now had an image: A young, flamboyant guitar prodigy with a visually striking guitar.Near the end of the first world tour, in the Fall of 1978, Charvel, now under the direction of Grover Jackson who would finalize on his acquisition of the company by November 1978, built Ed a yellow and black copy of his Frankenstrat as a gift to him. Ed, unphased by the blemish, purchased the body for a reported $50 ($225 in 2021, adjusted for inflation), where the catalog price for a non-blemish body was $89.95 ($405 in 2021, adjusted for inflation).The body itself, a ~5-1/2 lb Northern Ash ‘Boogie Bodies’ branded Strat clone, made by Wayne Charvel and Dave Schecter – *using Schecter’s templates* – in a batch of 100 Ash bodies in 1976, was advertised by Charvel to have “improved tonal properties” as a result of the “heavy ash body”. Free download ashampoo burning studioIt is evident that 2 of the 6 saddles – G and high E – are not chromed and appear to be of the earlier pre-CBS stamped steel variety, with the high E saddle missing one of it’s 2 height screws and therefore sitting at an angle on the plate. That is to say, the tremolo block doesn’t screw to the plate, like on a normal tremolo, but the two are made from one piece of metal. This bizarre CBS era tremolo construction saw the sustain block and the tremolo plate made as a single piece of cast metal , which was then chrome plated. This began a grudge that may have never been reconciled, and led Ed to toy with the idea of making permanent changes to his guitar to avoid association with the Charvel clones.A new bridge is also installed at this time a 1970s Fender ‘cast’ tremolo. This is clear, because tracks without trem use exhibit HUGE bends that are really only possible on the shorter 24-3/4″ scale of a Destroyer, and tracks with tremolo use clearly exhibit evidence of a Floyd Rose – stock Fender trems cannot dive as drastically as a Floyd, and Ed even talked about the fact that he was able to achieve specific sounds on the record using his “new Floyd Rose tremolo” in a now-deleted Steve Rosen audio interview. It is also evident from interviews at the time, as well as some logical analysis, that Ed used the Bumblebee and the borrowed Chris Holmes Destroyer in late 1979 and early 1980 to track ‘Women and Children First’, meaning the Frankenstrat saw very little, if any, use on that album. Below is an example of one of the 70s Fender tremolos in question.1980 begins with the Frankenstrat mostly in the background – This is a continued trend from 1979, where the Bumblebee saw more use than the Frank on the 1979 World tour. Therefore, this trem seen on the Frankenstrat may have been the Bee’s original trem, albeit with 2 replaced saddles. The Bee was not pictured around this time, and later emerged with a Floyd Rose FRT-1 prototype. This would ultimately come to a head at an ill-fated encounter between Ed and Grover at a NAMM show in 1980, leading to Ed disassembling the Bee and never using it again.There are two no-logo Floyd Rose FRT-5 prototypes seen during this time: One on the Frankenstrat, and one on the Rasta (Unchained) guitar, which is taken off and put on the “Kramer ad” guitar shortly afterward.The Floyd Rose FRT-5 is the “final” design of the fine tuning Floyd Rose. However, he wasn’t thrilled with the Bumblebee overall, particularly in regards to growing tensions with Grover Jackson over making unlicensed Bumblebee copies without Ed’s consent and selling them for a relative fortune $1,000.00 USD, which is over $4,000.00 adjusted for inflation to 2021. This means that Ed only owned ONE guitar with a Floyd Rose at the time of the tracking of ‘Women and Children First’, and it was the Bee.Ed slowly began to rely on the Floyd Rose trem and incorporate it into his style of playing. The revenant movie downloadFloyd Rose was contracted out with Fernandes Japan during this time and supposedly had a factory in Kyoto, Japan fabricate many of his Floyd parts. The first showing of the tremolo is circa September 1982 during the “Hide Your Sheep” tour and was sported on the Rasta (Unchained) guitar before being put on the “Kramer ad” guitar in approximately November 1982.The Frankenstrat, however, featured it’s own FRT-5 prototype version in November/December 1982.
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