Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen built his first guitar himself. "Some people call it Frankenstein... I call it my baby."

When asked by Guitar World about building the original Frankenstein, he said that it was built in "'74, I think? I was looking' through... if you notice in old pictures it had a Gibson sticker on it... that was the perfect thing. What I was trying to do was cross... cross-pollenate a Gibson with a Fender. This was way before Floyd... I didn't have the money! The guitar I wanted to play didn't exist. It was that simple... the body cost me $50, and the neck cost me $80."

The source link is the first of a series of videos in which Eddie details his experiences with the original "Frankenstein" and its replicas, the latter of which were designed by Chip Ellis of Fender.

Used extensively since the early 70's until the 90's, when Peavey started making signature 5150 heads. All the knobs were usually cranked up on 10 except the reverb.Usually used 100 watts, and the 50 watts were backups.

First, he used an Ohmite Variac, a variable transformer that could lower or raise the voltage going into the amplifier (see photo for what a typical Variac looks like). Edward set the variac to approximately 90 volts, thereby reducing the amount of input voltage going to the amplifier (see the Marshall Super Lead article for more information about variacs and attenuators) and allowing the amp to run more reliably. A key element often not considered today when running vintage Marshall amplifiers is that many that were made for export to the U.S. were designed to run at 110 volts and current U.S. outlets run at 120 volts. As a result, while there has been much talk about the dangers of using a variac, in many applications, it obviously serves a benefit.

Mentioned in The Van Halen Encyclopedia by C.J. Chivers.

Effects: A Roland DC30; an original Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face purchased from Dan Martin sometimes between 1982 and 1984; a Roland Echo box used during live performances of 'Hot for Teacher' a Roland SDE-3000 Delay; a Rockman Smart Gate used for recording; a Boss OC-2 Octave; Boss SD-1 Overdrive; a Lexicon PCM-70 used for live performances of "Cathedral."

(...) For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour (1991-92)

(...) Edward's live rig consisted of three Peavey 5150 cabinets, each housing four 12-inch speakers at 75-watts. One cabinet amplified a dry signal and the other two ran stereo effects. The speakers in the dry cabinet differed from the two effected cabinets in that they featured a lower efficiency coil form, which promoted a natural breakup and a more desirable tone. This cabinet fed a Palmer Speaker Simulator with a line level out to a Bradshaw switching system that controlled an Eventide H-3000 Harmonizer, two Roland SDE-3000s, a Lexicon PCM-70, an MXR Phase 90, a Boss SD-1, a Cry Baby Wah Wah, and a Boss OC-2.

(...) Right Here, Right Now Tour (1993)

(...) Edward's live rig consisted of three Peavey 4-by-12 cabinets: one dry and two with effects. Each effected cabinet was paired with an SDE-3000 digital delay, with the delay time on one set to one-half the delay time on the other to created a layered echo. An Evantide H3000 fed both effected cabinets along with a Lexicon PCM-70 digital reverb, which was used during his unaccompanied solo for "Cathedral." All remaining effects were handled with effects pedals patched in via a Bob Bradshaw footswitching system. The Bradshaw unit featured four presets: one was a SDE-3000/H3000 combination, a second added a BOSS OC-2 octave divider, the third featured an MXR Phase 90 phaser, and the fourth added a Dunlop Crybaby Wah-Wah, which was always kept in the ON position. On stages that required extra-long cable runs, Edward added a BOSS SD-1 Super Overdrive pedal to boost the signal to the wah (which occurred at approximately 10 shows throughout the tour). A Rockman noise gate was used with Ed's Sony wireless unit which sent a clean signal to his Peavey 5150 head. The signal was fed through a Palmer speaker simulator and an H&H power amp before hitting the speaker cabinets. The entire rig was capped off with Furman power conditioners keeping control of the AC voltage.

On pedal manufacturer Dunlop's page, which lists several of their pedals Eddie has used (some of which have been recreated with presets for settings he used on the previous versions), the MXR Smart Gate Noise Gate pedal is seen on the far right of his list.

In this photo of Eddie Van Halen's 5150 home studio circa 1986, two Eventide model H910 Harmonizers are seen among the outboard effects. Also confirmed in this report.

In this photo, Eddie Van Halen can be seen in front of two Soldano SLO 100s.

This is one of the less know guitars of Eddie’s from the early years. He got it in mid ’78, but it was mostly seen during the 1980 Invasion tour.

Eddie bought the body from Charvel, and installed a neck from an old Danelectro (this exact same neck was seen on some other guitars prior, including a white strat-shaped Charvel with a Telecaster pickup in the bridge, which he supposedly used on “Women In Love”). He painted the whole body white, installed a Gibson PAF pickup, and Floyd Rose tremolo/locking nut.

Sometime in 1980 Eddie painted the guitar once again, this time going for the look similar to the one he had on the original Frankenstein. 

In this January 10, 2012 Facebook post, a photo of Van Halen's pedalboard used for his "Café Wha?" gig can be seen. The blue MXR Analog Chorus can be spotted in the upper-left-hand corner of the photo (lower-right-hand from Eddie's prespective), the post is captioned:

"EVH pedalboard from last weeks Cafe Wah gig. Thought you folks would like to see this."

"— with Eduardo Acosta and Fer Lopez."

In this photo, we can see Van Halen preforming live with a '57 Les Paul Goldtop. This Guitar appears to have the neck pickup gutted with only the bridge humbucker left in the body and aspite the neck pickup being removed the controls seem to be unaltered, however Van Halen might have disconnected some of the knobs (with a single volume pot being the bare minimum) and left them in for looks.

In this photo, Eddie Van Halen is seen with his guitar collection, which includes the Charvel Hydra.

Eddie Van Halen is seen with a Gibson Les Paul Junior on the cover of Van Halen's debut album, as documented by Vintagekramer in their feature on his guitars.

In this pictures, you can see a guitar collection of Eddie Van Halen which include Telecaster hanging on his studios.

I’ve never used or owned a distortion pedal. It was just the guitar and cable straight to the amp” – EVH

That being said, Eddie did use a couple of other effects in his chain. He used a MXR Phase 90 and MXR 6-Band EQ at the beginning of the chain, and some other effects like Echoplex EP-3 Delay, MXR Flanger, and Univox EC-80 Tape Echo closer to the end of the chain.

These days Eddie uses somewhat different rig. He has a couple of his own signature pedals from MXR/Dunlop in the chain – like the EVH117 Flanger, Phase 90, and the EVH95 Signature Wah – and some other pedals like the Boss OC-3 Super Octave, Digitech Whammy, and MXR M234 Analog Chorus.

Eddie used heavy string early on tuned half a step down.  He used heavier bottom strings with light top strings, but that ended up not working very well, so he switched to regular gauged set.

These battles over creativity, keyboards, and Eddie’s status as a guitar hero continued into the 1980s. The guitarist penned some songs from 1981’s ‘Fair Warning,’ like “Hear About It Later,” on piano, even though he’d play them on guitar on the album. He did, however, sell the band and Templeman on an evil-sounding instrumental called ‘Sunday Afternoon in the Park,’ which saw Van Halen utilize an Electro-Harmonix Micro-Synthesizer for the track.

A pair of Boss pedals—an OC-3 Super Octave and CE-5 Chorus Ensemble—complete his onstage stomp box selection." Normally I use chorus for ‘Pretty Woman,’ but we’re not playing that song this time,” says Van Halen. “On this tour I use it for ‘Drop Dead Legs,’ and I also use the octave pedal for the outro riff on that song."

From a interview from Eddie discussing his live rig for the 2015 tour.

Throughout the years, Van Halen also used Gibson Les Paul Customs. Most notable is the one photographed, which is completely white, with pickguard removed.

Eddie Van Halen used an EMG 81 Active Ceramic Humbucker as the bridge pickup in his Steinberger 5150 guitar, as detailed by Chris Airey on Project EVH.

in this page of evhs guitars you can notice he has a rasta frankenstrat and handed it down to dweezil zappa

This was Eddie’s first guitar. He initially bought a pair of drums when he came to the US, but during the time he was working around neighborhood delivering paper in order to pay for the drum set, his brother Alex would sneak into his room and practice himself. Eddie saw that Alex was getting better and better, so he decided to switch to an electric guitar instead. He bought a Teisco Del Ray for $110 from Sears with four pickups –  which made a huge impression on a high-school boy. At that time, he didn’t have money to buy ad amp, so he would play with his guitar on the table – which made it louder since it would resonate through the wood..

Teisco guitars were made in Japan and imported to the US under various names such as Silvertone and Beltone. Eddie’s particular model was probably from 1965-66, and it was based on the Ibanez 3904 featuring nearly identical body shape and similar pickup layout. 

Guessing he bought the guitar when he was around 16 years old, or in 1971, he had around three years to practice on it before he switched to the Frankenstrat. It is possible that he played some other guitars during those three years, but we haven’t been able to found anything that would implicate that. 

Used in the early days. He would boil the strings so they would stretch and he used that set for the night. Next day he would put new strings on and go through the same process again.

Eddie used a 1976 Ibanez Destroyer during the early years of Van Halen and this guitar became the customized guitar known as "The Shark" These modifications were done by Eddie himself. [http://www.vhnd.com/2011/06/02/search-and-destroy/]

In this photo, Van Halen can be seen with his replica '78 Frankenstrat.

Eddie Van Halen switched allegiance in the mid-'90s, starting afresh with Peavey as his deal with Music Man ended. (Music Man continued to make the Axis, very similar to the Van Halen signature model.) Ed had already teamed up with Peavey to produce his 5150 amp and cabs in 1992 and a combo version in '95. Jim DeCola was supervisor of guitar design engineering at Peavey, where he'd been since 1988. He'd worked on Peavey's Steve Cropper signature model, introduced in '95, along with a number of regular instruments for the product line. Jim first met Ed back when Peavey was courting the Van Halen guitarist for the amp deal, at which time Jim made a guitar—a one-humbucker Strat-style with a Floyd—to show what they could do in that department. In fact, when Ed visited the plant in 1990 to talk amps, the guitar he seemed more taken with was the firm's new Peavey Odyssey, a sort of hybrid Tele–Les Paul model. Anyway, the idea went no further because, as we've seen, Ed decided to go with Music Man for his first signature guitar. Come 1995, however, with the Music Man deal at an end, Jim made a copy of the Music Man to show they were capable of producing an instrument at the quality level Ed would expect. In March 1995, he showed Ed this guitar during rehearsals in Florida for Van Halen's Balance tour. Ed agreed to go ahead with Peavey on a new signature guitar. Jim went back to the Peavey plant and mulled over the various ideas he wanted to incorporate in his design and present to Ed for approval. They began to-ing and fro-ing on the details, a process that lasted most of '95 as Ed took protos out on the road to test proposed features. An early decision was to continue with a basswood body but to make the maple top contoured, in contrast to the flat, thin Music Man top (and perhaps harking back to that carved maple–mahogany Odyssey that Ed had liked). "Basswood does sound great," Jim tells me, "but sometimes it can be a little lackluster, and I think the hybrid basswood–maple really shined."

Jim made the body shape somewhat more asymmetrical, which meant the neck could be pushed a little deeper into the body, in turn improving balance. "It didn't neck-dive as much as the Music Man, because the tip of the horn was closer to the 12th fret," he says. "And because the neck was deeper into the body, when you're reaching for an open E or an F chord, it didn't feel as far out. It almost felt like a shorter-scale guitar, but it was still a full twenty-five-and-a-half."

Peavey continued with a maple neck, too, adding carbon fiber reinforcement rods, which Jim had tried already on a couple of Peavey basses. "I thought it had a lot of virtue," Jim says, "benefitting the feel and tone of the wood with the added harmonic potential and sustain of the carbon fiber, as well as extra stability. I put the rods in the first prototype I sent to Eddie, and he liked it, so we ended up keeping that feature." Ed wanted a small version of a Flying V head, but Jim told him that was impossible, because it still counted as a copy of the Gibson original. Jim remembered a three-and-three staggered headstock on a guitar he'd built for himself, so he shrunk that a little, added a Peavey-like tip, and showed a rough to Ed. "Hmm," said Ed. "I see where you're going—but I still like the V." Jim repeated his Gibson warning. Ed then made a drawing of a sort of V-notch idea, which Jim said was too close to a Washburn '70s style. Another drawing. Any good? Nope, too Dean-like. Then Jim told Ed to give him a few minutes while he went off to the workbench. "I took my headstock I'd done, which had a black-painted face, went out to a spindle sander, and sanded a scoop into the tip of the headstock. I took it back to him, said why don't we do that? It had the V shape he was thinking about, and the scoop thing, and it still had the Peavey profile on the outside. And he's like, 'Oh yeah, I kinda like that.' We tried to honor Eddie's vision while keeping the Peavey identity."

In the music video for Van Halen's Jump, Eddie Van Halen can be seen [at 2:34] playing the Oberheim OB-Xa. According to this Keyboard magazine feature, he played the OB-Xa on "1984", "Jump" and "I'll Wait" on the 1984 album. On the former two songs, the OB-Xa was recorded direct in stereo, while on the latter the synth was run through a pair of Music Man amplifiers to make it sound nastier. Eddie Van Halen did his own programming on the OB-Xa: "I just know that if I twist the knobs enough, I'll hear what I like".

Live, the OB-Xa had to be replaced by the newer OB-8:

When we were getting ready to tour [for the 1984 album], I went out to buy four or five OB-Xas, because you need backups in case something breaks down. That's when I found out they didn't make the OB-Xa anymore. I didn't even know they made the OB-8, but I got a couple of them instead and tried to reprogram them. Now I only use my own programs.

Pictured in photo on Frankenstrat Wikipedia page. As well as many other pictures of Van Halens early Stratocaster guitars.

Premier Guitar's third photo of Van Halen's setup at Bridgestone Arena in 2012 is captioned as such: "Eddieys [sic] two main racks feature[...] two Shure UR4D+ wireless receivers[...]"

Eddie got this guitar most likely sometime in 1977, prior to the recording of the first album. Originally, the guitar had natural finish, but it appears that Eddie painted the whole guitar white at some point according to a couple of photos from around that time. Eddie speaks of the guitar as a “Korina” Ibanez, although it was most likely made of Sen – which is an asian wood very similar to ash, but finished in such way that it looked like Korina.

Eddie eventually went for the stripes, and rolled masking tape around the body painting the rest of it in red – a process he practiced previously on the Frankenstrat. He also removed a big chunk of wood from the body using a chainsaw, which made the guitar look like some sort of a crossover between a Flying V and an Explorer.  The cut wasn’t clean, and the small chunks sort of resembled teeth – therefore the guitar’s nickname “The Shark”.

This modification ended up being a bad decision, and Eddie commented on how the guitar just didn’t sound the same anymore, since the body didn’t resonate as well as it did before – so he gradually stopped using the guitar.

Other mods included new electronics (supposedly Gibson PAF in the bridge), removal of the pickguard, and replacing the knobs with ones from a Les Paul.

Eddie used the Destroyer on the first album on “You Really Got Me”, and some other songs that didn’t require tremolo. It is unclear if he ever used the guitar in the future, but logical answer seems to be no. 

In this photograph from 1976, Eddie Van Halen is seen playing a Fender Stratocaster. This guitar, famously known as the "Frankenstrat," began as a Sunburst Stratocaster. Eddie later modified it extensively, painting it black, adding stripes, replacing the neck, painting it white, and installing a new pickguard.