![]() The origin of the Frankenstein guitar arguably begins in August 1969, when Ed and his brother Alex went with their father, Jan Van Halen, to Music for Everyone in Sierra Madre, California. After that period, Ed frequently swapped necks, pickups and hardware in his ongoing quest to build the perfect beast and stay several steps ahead of his imitators.Īs the catalyst and prototype for the “super Strat,” the most popular electric guitar design to emerge since the Gibson Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster designs of the Fifties, Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein was indeed a monster of a guitar. What follows is the background, development and evolution of Ed’s Frankenstein guitar up until and including the period just after he applied red paint to it in 1979. His meticulous, scholarly research and fastidious analysis are truly commendable, and he has proven to be an excellent resource for those of us seeking the truth and facts. Guitar World readers may already recognize Burgess as the builder of the hockey stick and stop sign guitars featured in the It Might Get Weird column back in 20. Shannon’s photos showed several angles of the guitar in much sharper focus and detail. In addition to the 1977 Whisky photo, the video also featured photos taken by Bo Shannon in 1977 of Ed playing the bare body guitar. However, as I searched for more details about that photo, I came across a YouTube video posted May 2020 by Johnny B Guitars titled “Bare Body Frankenstrat Mysteries Revealed” that led me far deeper down the rabbit hole than I could have dreamed. My efforts to track down the person behind Inertia Graphics to see if he or she could remember a more precise date or provide a hi-res version of the photo (or additional photos) were a dead end. ![]() Directly below the volume knob is a notch that’s identical in shape and placement to the notch seen in numerous photos of the Frankenstein when it had the black-and-white striped finish.Īlthough the photo is not particularly sharp, close examination of the body’s wood grain also reveals features consistent with those of a factory second, which is an attribute that Ed and others consistently mentioned about the body he bought from Charvel. The most convincing detail that suggested that the guitar body in the photo was Ed’s Frankenstein was the black pickguard. (Image credit: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
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