The Axology of Edward Van Halen

By Michael McGuire  2007
 

Eddie’s most famous guitars &the albums
for which they are known. 

Van Halen 1

Obviously the guitar best well known for this album is the original Black and White Frankenstrat. This heavily valued guitar started out life as a $130.00, factory second, fire wood, neck and body which Eddie bought from a company called Boogie Bodies. He took it home and immediately sprayed it black with a can of Schwinn bicycle paint. He also made a pickguard for it. Eddie loved the sound of an old PAF. humbucker, so he chiseled a hunk of wood out of the body so the pickup could fit. He also liked the strat tremolo but had trouble keeping it in tune. He installed a brass nut, had to keep it lubricated, and turned the ball end of the string in sync with the turning of the machine head as he tuned the instrument. The guitar ended up getting the stripe pattern as he masked off the guitar and sprayed white, keeping only what he wanted to be black. 

Today's Pickup manufacturers all offer some type of pickup that they call their EVH Clone. Ed Roman has done extensive research on this and offers several different versions with his kits.

Interesting Footnote: The CBS strat headstock has a Gibson logo, and the very fine black stripes are actually electrical tape.  Today Eddie's pickups are custom wound. Contact Ed Roman for Custom Wound duplicates or get the special Tom Holmes pickups that emulate the 50's PAF.

Van Halen II

This guitar was featured in the artwork of the second album. It was finished and delivered just in time for the photo shoot. Although Eddie used this guitar live during the tour, he never really used it again unlike most of the other guitars. 

Not venturing far from the first guitar, it features a single humbucker pickup, one volume control, maple neck and a tremolo. This guitar did have one new feature, the locking tremolo which was developed by Floyd Rose. Soon, almost every guitar he had will use this system.

Interesting Footnote: This guitar was made famous again when Eddie laid the guitar to rest with the late Dimebag Darrell.  

      Contact Ed Roman For Pricing On This

Women & Children First   (The Shark Guitar)

This guitar was used on many of the recordings of the first three albums. Anytime you don’t hear a dive-bomb or tremolo, chances are that Eddie was using this guitar. He loved it. The guitar was originally an Ibanez Destroyer which was only made for a few years. Our sue happy corporate friends at Gibson Sued for design infringements.

Features include two humbuckers, two volumes, and a selector switch which Eddie used for another little trick. Just listen to “You Really Got Me” and you’ll know what I’m talking about. As you can probably assume, Eddie couldn’t leave this one alone either.

 Armed with a saw, he transformed the original shape into something resembling a shark’s jaw. Hence the nickname, “Shark”. He then proceeded to stripe and paint the guitar with silver and red metallic colors.  May people assume it is white & red. It is actually silver.

Exact copies of this guitar are rarely available because they are hard to make and you have to destroy an Ibanez very expensive korina guitar for it to be exact.  However they are available from Ed Roman.    Ed Prides himself in having all the impossible to get models.

Ed will even make you a body that is made from Korina if you like.

   Interesting footnote:
 Three of the tuners are chrome and the other three are gold.  

This is what Eddie started with an Original 70's Ibanez Destroyer
Today these guitars will easily bring more money than most Gibson's
The Ibanez guitars were much better made and they sounded far better

Ed Roman has made several copies of this and "The Shark" in neck through body versions
You can buy the entire body core assembled or buy it as a kit
Contact Ed Roman's Custom Shop

Fair Warning                 (Unchained)

Eddie only used this guitar live for the song Unchained. He needed a guitar that was already tuned to “Drop D” since it is difficult to do so live with a locking tremolo. The alluring features of this guitar are the various circles and the fact that it has not been well photographed. I guess Eddie was getting tired of just the stripes so he decided to go with a rather bizarre look for this one.  Otherwise it is a pretty standard Eddie guitar with all of the right ingredients.

This guitar is available Contact Ed Roman.

Interesting Footnote: Eddie has patented a device that instantly drops the low E string to a D for locking tremolos aptly name the “D tuna.

Currently this guitar is in stock and available to ship instantly.  

1984
 “Frankenstrat” 
This is the most famous & recognizable guitar Eddie ever made. What can I say about this guitar. It’s the shit!!!

 Normal people look at this thing and have to think it is the ugliest thing they have ever seen. Guitarists look at it and think the exact opposite.

Eddie has played this on every tour & it has the battle scars to prove it.

Eddie broke the original neck which led him to replace it a handful of times.

Version 1	Version 2	Version 3

Kits are available for any version you like

 
Most of the guitar doesn’t even work! The neck pickup is dead and disconnected. The selector switch is not doing any switching. And the pickguard is not guarding any picks. Probably the most useful thing on the guitar is the 1971 quarter place under the bridge as to keep it from pulling backwards. And to top it all off, Eddie put truck reflectors on the back of the guitar.'

Why?? Because he thought it looked cool.  Ed Roman just purchased 1000 of these reflectors, They are available in any of the kits.

Interesting Footnote: At one point the guitar had a Hockey stick or “Banana” headstock neck which was originally designed by J. Frog.  Kramer made it famous.  Gibson tried to sue for rights to the headstock but J Frog had a 24 year headstart at the time.

J. Frog, is the designer genius from the early 80's who built George Lynch's Skull N' Bones guitar. He also built several other famous signature guitars check it out.

These J Frog Guitars are also available in kits.   But there are numerous royalties paid so the prices aren't as good as the rest of our kits.

5150

Probably the second most well known of Eddie’s guitars is the 5150. This became his main stage guitar after he retired the Frankenstrat. The guitar was actually a backup on the 1984 tour. Eddie seemed to demote and promote guitars regularly, but never lost interest in what was suitable for him. Built much like the other guitars, the 5150 was made by a little known company called Kramer. Eddie and Kramer built many 5150 style guitars that were either used by Eddie, or given away to friends or contests. The only really interesting features on the guitar are the “Space Tape” numbers and stars.

Interesting Footnote: Eddie split the headstock at the sixth tuner and had Ernie Ball fix it. The company put a Music Man logo over the Kramer logo. (Real Slimeballs)

(Note from Ed)
That was a really slimy thing to do. I never liked the people at Ernie Ball. Kinda like, what ESP did to J Frog for the Dokken Videos. ESP also removed and therefore ruined all of George Lynch's original Kramers by taking off the original necks and replacing them with imported ESP Necks. The people at ESP also blatantly ripped off the George Lynch Skull N' Bones and to top it off it was probably one of the worst made ESP guitars I have ever seen.

Honorable mention: The “1984” guitar has all of the same features with a slightly different stripe pattern. This was used as a backup to the 5150.

OU812

Definitely, one of Eddie’s most bizarre guitars. Eddie always likes new and interesting things. The Steinberger caught his attention. The features on this guitar were very futuristic; Active EMG humbuckers, Fiberglass neck and body, no headstock, and a tremolo that seemed nearly impossible to comprehend.

The Trans Trem system is unique in that it transposes and locks the strings so that it is still in tune. Eddie loved it. But there was still something missing. The Red, White & Black stripes.

When I saw Eddie the first time he played these (He had several of them.

Eddie was a huge fan of headless guitars, during that era the band was traveling a lot and the headless guitars are known for better stability and control when the weather & climate affect the tuning and the neck.

Eddie favored the small ones although he told Ed Roman that he would have preferred a wooden body.  Ed made a beautiful LSR headless guitar for Eddie and delivered it to him personally in 1998.

Interesting Footnote:
 Eddie made it cool to play a Steinberger or any Headless Guitar. 
 

Note from Ed

This of course is nowhere near all of Eddie's Guitars, He has lots of really cool and interesting guitars. some old 79 Dean V's a lot of Steinbergers, He has LSR number 2,  I built it for him in the mid nineties.

The guitars in this article are the signature guitars that made him famous. I personally have a copy of every one of them in my collection.  And I know where  some of the original high quality copies are. Contact me directly if you are looking for any particular model. I have a line on most of them.

The Ernie Ball, Peavey & Charvel Guitars were cut from a totally different cloth. Don't get me wrong, some of them are pretty good. But they don't qualify as the real deal.

 Eddie's Most Famous Guitars

Interesting Footnote: The OU812 Steinberger was used on 5150,  You can hear the trans trem

You can own a complete set of replica Van Halen Guitars. Buy the whole collection for $25,000.00 

I am looking for other people who would like to contribute to this website in a positive way. So I am publishing this short little gem of information from Mike McGuire.

Michael McGuire (Hey Mikey) has been a long time Van Halen Phreak, He used to come into the store with his dad when he was just a kid. He would order special parts made up so he could build copies of these fabulous guitars that he loves so much. eventually he came to work at the store and became one of our prodigy builders, He caught on quickly and was soon building much better than average guitars. My opinion is that a guitar has to be loved from it's inception to be more than just a block of wood with strings on it.
People like Mikey, have a real passion for this. Mike studies every scratch & ding, on all of Eddie's guitars and has built numerous awesome instruments. Today he can no longer make these copies due to legal ramifications between Kramer, EVH, Charvel, J Frog, Steinberger and anyone else who had any design input into the original guitars of Eddie Van Halen.  The only two exceptions are the ones least sought after. The Shark &  Unchained.  No one ever bothered to trademark those two. So they are still available,   I hope you liked Mike's article

BTW, there are hundreds of crappie copies out there.  most of them are made on cheap plywood imported Kramers and most of them are pretty cheesy.  We usually have knowledge of used ones floating around.

Here's The Deal   Serious buyers please call with question's (Don't Email)

With any in stock "Body Core" purchase. We will sell you your parts package for an incredibly low price!!!!!   read on    

Not only will we be discounting the in stock body cores lower than we ever have.  We have put together this "Killer Deal" on a parts package for you.

Parts Package List Priced at $650.00 for only   $295.00  read on    

2 Seymour Duncan 59' premium pickups 
1 Tun- A matic fully adjustable Bridge (Or Equivalent)
1 Tun- A matic Tailpiece (Or Equivalent)
6 Original Grover or Kluson Tuners
3 Potentiometers
3 Knobs
1 Toggle switch
We will also throw in a real nice fully padded $18.00 wide guitar strap for free & a lower cost economy gig bag that we are also overstocked on.

If you need any other special parts we will discount them accordingly.
Call the Custom Shop with questions we will be running this deal for a while but the people who move quick will get the best selection and the best deals.

Obviously if you want more or fancy items added,  it will cost more,  we have attempted to put together an affordable package so that we can get people into a real quality USA made instrument and lower our overstock.

Complete Kits are Available for these Jackson Made Schon Guitars

 All Schon's have ebony fingerboards with bound neck & headstocks
They are made of 100% Maple and are "Neck Thru The Body."
These were all made by Jackson in the 80's

When we run out of the Schon body cores Abstract Guitars will be  offering  this guitar it will be called
 "The Journeyman"

Schon Original

Schon Original

 Journeyman Model  June 2008

 We can make bodies from 42 different kinds of Wood

24 fret RG Style Kit
Please call for more available kitsA

Custom Made Body & Neck Made for Jason Rosul.  Jason basically threw away his Ibanez stock 7 string.
We built this for him using the Ibanez Piezo Bridge.

Ed Roman can build absolutely any body shape you can think of in a 7 String design

A custom made Korina tone wood body made to retrofit on Albert May's Ibanez Petrucci Guitar.  When Albert rebuilt his Petrucci guitar he used his original neck and my shop made him this wonderfully resonant Korina Body. The tonal difference was so incredible that a even a beginner could immediately hear the difference.   These are currently in stock.

Notice the step routed pickup cavity.  This allows the replacement pickups to mount directly to the body instead of floating on springs. This factor makes the pickups and guitar resonate together. More gain before feedback and significantly clearer highs and tighter lows.

We compared the original Dimarzio pickups (Stock) against the Seymour Duncan Black/Backs TM and we were astounded by the difference. The Dimarzio's distorted horribly on the low end compared to the Duncan's.

The other comparison of note was the Tremolo.  We compared the Stock Ibanez Tremolo against the real Original Floyd Rose The tonal difference was again immediately apparent. The original Floyd Rose is made to extremely close tolerances. The steel is hardened to 60 Rockwell. Not only did the guitar hold tune better it sounded better and was much more responsive than the original Ibanez model.  The Ibanez Original performed adequately however.