It's Alive!

The Frankenstrat is alive! Thanks to a bunch of reference material on the Intertubes, I pieced my own together.

The hardest part was taking the paint back off for the relic effect after painstakingly trying to get it right in the first place. It plays surprisingly well for a homemade. I had to smoke a cigarette for the first time in 25 years to get the burn marks on the headstock. I'd forgotten how long cigarettes stay with you after you smoke one.

And, here's the back with the reflectors.

Overall, I'm happy with it. It's playable and sounds good.

Frankenstrat Mark I

After finishing the black and white paint work for the Frankenstrat, I decided to build two. One in the original form from the Van Halen I era.

This was the guitar that Eddie eventually painted red and turned in to the Frankenstrat. I ordered a black pickguard and installed it.

The end result came out like this.

Not too shabby for a first build.

Frankenstrat Black & White Edition

After masking off the black base coat with painters tape, I sprayed on the white coat. If you want really precise lines, go to your local auto parts store and buy some pinstriping tape. In my case, I just cut the painters tape to size.

Using the template picture from the previous post, this is what it looked like after peeling off the masking tape.

Now, to be honest, I'm a little torn. This one looks really cool and I wouldn't mind keeping it this way. Aha, I've got a solution, I'll build two of them!

First round of paint

Here's the first round of paint. Start with solid black lacquer (that's what Eddie used). You might have a hard time finding lacquer paint; auto parts stores are a good place to look.

After the black, it's time to tape it off for the white coat.

I layed down the thick pieces first and then cut the fine pieces and added them.

Here's the image I used as a template. This is the Frankenstrat in it's original form before Eddie added the red paint.

As a lifelong fan of Eddie Van Halen, I've decided to build a Frankenstrat replica. I've always wanted one of these and, in my early years, copied his ideas by masking off and painting stripes on my candy apple red Ibanez Destroyer (my first real guitar). There are official remakes of Eddie's original but I'd rather make my own in the spirit of EVH.

There are tons of tutorials and images out there that you can use for reference. A quick google for Frankenstrat will turn up bunches of them. I figured I'd add to the reference info by showing how I'm building mine.

Eddie's version was a Boogie Body which was a copy of a vintage Strat with three single coil pickups. He opened up the bridge cavity to accomodate a humbucker and had to widen the middle position as well since he decided to stuff the 5-way switch down in there. The original body was Swamp Ash which is what I ordered from byoguitar.com.

You can see where the bridge has been set up for a standard strat tremolo. Since Eddie used a Floyd Rose, I need to fill those holes before the first coat of paint. In keeping with the do it yourself vibe, I took some skewers that we use for making shish-ka-bob and filled the holes in with those and a little bit of wood filler.

The last part before painting is to widen the original pickup cutouts to match the Frankenstrat. Eddie used a hammer and chisel which is why they look so gouged up on his original. In my case, I used a handy dandy router to speed up the process.

You'll want to recreate the angle of the bridge position because EVH tilted the humbucker a bit when he installed it. He also opened up the middle position since that's where he eventually installed the 5-way switch.