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The Frankenstrat

Instantly recognizable, lovingly emulated, crassly copied.

It's safe to say that the Frankenstrat is the most famous single guitar in the world. Yeah Clapton had The Fool; Jimi had that poor Strat at Monterey; Prince had a bunch of really cool guitars; Angus and his SGs are forever associated with one another; maybe SRV's "Number One" could give the Frankie a run for the money.

Frankie 1 - 1975

The Frankenstrat is like the ship of Theseus (or the Vision): over its life it was changed, repainted, taken apart, reassembled, until practically no original piece was left from the monochrome thing that Eddie cobbled together in 1975. 

And, as I looked into it, the Frankenstrat is the center of an almost Kabbalistic level of interpretation, reconstruction, and historiography.

Seriously. Some people have an obsession with this guitar that borders  on the unhealthy. 

There's a guy who checked VH tour schedule against the LA area weather reports to try and figure out what day EXACTLY did Eddie add the red to the previously black and white guitar. He'll tell you it wasn't March 26th 1978 !!! It wasn't rainy that day and Eddie said he painted it on a day with rain. 

On Ebay, dudes sell packages of reliced hardware (no - does not mean 'had lice added to it again' but to turn into a relic ie. stuff they've rusted and dipped into muriatic acid to age to make look 'authentic') so when you build a replica, you can have everything just like, well, a version of the guitar at some point.

People build replica Frankies and burn down cigarettes on the headstock between the tuners to get 'authentic' scorch marks. I saw one guy on a forum ask what brand of cigarettes Eddie smoked so he could nail that detail too. Considering EVH died of a recurrence of throat cancer, maybe we should not celebrate that aspect....

The best are the people who will sell you a 1971 quarter (gotta be from the Denver mint, man, none of that Philly shit)  so you can shim it under your whammy bar just like Eddie did. How much will that quarter set you back? Just $13 before shipping.

When I was deep in my model plane building obsession, I really did sweat the details and tried to make the most spot-on replicas I could. There was one F-16 in particular that on top of a $40 kit I bought aftermarket decals for another $20 and an in depth history of the Israeli Defense Force that set me back another $60 so that I could make that sucker perfect. Dropped like $120 on that hunk of plastic all told.

As I thought about it, I don't want an exact replica of the Frankie - for one thing, you can just buy those which would be the cheaper faster easier option honestly - if you bought all the same hardware, you'd wind up spending just about as much AND have to do all the work AND probably (nah assuredly)  not put it together as well as a luthier.

So, I'm not gonna yuck anybody's yum. 

You want to get the exact same Schwinn bicycle paint that Eddie used for your loving replica? Go nuts (though you're out of luck since they don't make that shade anymore - don't ask me why I know this). 

You want to throw in the same type of pickup in the neck position that Eddie himself couldn't figure out how to wire up but left in anyway just to fuck with people? You do you.

So the idea is, find a cheap guitar that plays ok, take it all apart and give it a paint job that's an homage to EVH. Throw away shitty parts and get proper replacements (not boutique, but nice solid pickups, real pots, etc) and then add some details (functional and otherwise) that I don't have on my two main guitars. 

Found a likely subject on the Honolulu Craigslist. $200 and a trip to Pearl City later, let me introduce you to the victim:

NEXT: Disassembly and paint prep

On this day

Important day, March 23. 

 On this day 79 years ago my dad was born. Called him up to wish him a happy birthday before I went down to the basement to do emails and next fiscal year's budget, since I don't go into work to, you know, work now. Socially distanced and unable to have a real get-together way over there in Arizona, my dad's birthday pretty much consisted of going to Costco and getting a mocha freeze. 

Fortunately, my dad appreciates the simple things in life: he even gave me another phone call later in the day to let me know that he was enjoying that sweet chocolaty coffee goodness. 

But more germane to this blog post is that on this day 42 years ago Van Halen II was released. 

I've been playing a lot of guitar during the COVID work from home regime, way more than I had in probably 30 years and VH II has been in very heavy rotation during the lockdown / pandemic. Which is interesting (at least to me) because I had never really listened to it very much. It came out before I had started listening to anything but pop and disco music and long before I ever touched a guitar.

 

Fair Warning has always been the VH album for me. It was dark, moody, no cover songs....definitely the least pop record of all the Dave albums (apparently there were a couple singers after DLR left....hmm...who knew?). 

But after Eddie died (and my coworker... and Chadwick Boseman....  and my dog... and those half a million Americans and untold others around the world - just fuck 2020 already), I started going back through the VH catalogue and listening to the albums that I hadn't paid as much attention to.

And man, VH II is a blast. 

Sure it has a cover but I really like their take on "You're No Good" (plus there's that Tucson / Linda Ronstadt connection) and yeah, "Dance The Night Away" is likely to induce a diabetic shock but goddamn is it catchy (Jacob says it's his favorite VH song...and he's heard a lot these past few months).  "Somebody Get Me a Doctor", "Outta Love Again", and  "Light Up the Sky" are just badass rock songs and "Beautiful Girls" is (chef's kiss) the perfect self-deprecating goofy-ass Dave song all driven by that sick RIFF. And if you spend some time (and have a delay and a chorus) "Women In Love" is fun too.

FLASHBACK

I first started playing guitar in the summer of 1986. Within a week I was playing hours a day. By the fall I somehow convinced a friend at college to let me play one song with their band in the lobby of our dorm (eternal thanks, Jimmy Bi). 

First public musical performance? 

My take on the VH cover of "You Really Got Me".  At that point the VH version of the song had only been out about 8 years, which makes my head spin now. 

I can still picture it all these years later. Wore a shirt with a Swiss flag on it and blue medical scrub pants....I guess I thought that was the most EVH outfit available to me.

I was terrible, timing was horrendous, basically sounded like I had only been playing for a couple months (well, true) but man was it fun. 

In those early days, I would go through four guitarists in a sort of cycle, spend a couple weeks on each, learning songs, and trying to get those sounds. 

Angus....Eddie....Jimi....Stevie Ray....rinse and repeat. For years. Years. 

I played along with the albums and tried to cop their sounds with the only guitar that I had.

Sure, I listened to others and loved to learn and play Zeppelin and the Clash and Clapton and Jeff Beck and Redd Kross and the Fluid and Velvet Underground and on and on, but those were the four that I would return to again and again.

But Eddie's stuff was always beyond reach....my guitar didn't have a tremolo so couldn't do all the crazy dive bombs, didn't have money for pedals, but more importantly I just couldn't muster the discipline to really nail the hardest fastest stuff. Yeah, I could fake it...play a few measures of recognizable parts of "Eruption" (natch) or the main riffs of "Panama" or "Hot For Teacher" or "Unchained" but note for note? No way.

That was fine, there was always AC/DC - no effects required, just guitar and loudness....

FLASHFORWARD

Not a poor college student anymore and also a bit more open-minded, I started to collect effect pedals. By the time COVID hit I had a board with a wah, flanger, phaser, delay, overdrive, distortion, a couple stunt pedals that make your guitar sound like organs and synthesizes (omfg they are so much fun), a looper, a switcher to keep them all working together, and even a fricking CHORUS (80's me would've been SO disappointed). Also by now I had a Strat (which I got in the mid 90's) so the Jimi and Stevie sounds were a bit easier to try and emulate. Plus a couple amps to play all those pedals in stereo. Super fun.

I'd given five instruments to Lily and Jacob (this is the Lilyandjacoblog - had to work them in here somehow) in the last 8 years (if you count basses, which some people do) but I had successfully resisted guitar acquisition syndrome for myself for decades. Actually had only ever bought myself guitars in Tucson, Arizona....

I had what I needed and all was well.

But since last October when Eddie died, I started to think....Frankenstrat....

I should totally build a Frankenstrat.....

TO BE CONTINUED

Nine years later.....

Second Obama administration.... Kim gets a new job.... first kid goes to high school.... Brad gets a new job (same place though)... Kim gets another new job... *trump*... second kid goes to high school.... first kid graduates high school and goes to college... global pandemic.... Sally Sparkle dies.... second kid applying to colleges...