Van Bonta's Guitar Collection

My Classic Frankenstein (Frankenstrat)

2012-02-08T17:58:00.002-05:00

In 1984, Van Halen was the most popular rock band in the world. Not only had Eddie secured himself a legendary reputation as one of the most important guitarists of all time, but he had also secured a legendary design with his red, black & white striped Frankenstein of a guitar. In 1983, the legend of that stripe design was further cemented into pop culture by his endorsement relationship with Kramer guitars. It was during this time that Ed replaced the Fender Strat neck that he had previously used on the Frankenstein, with a Kramer Pacer neck. The official Frankenstein replica, built by Fender, contains a replica of the original Fender Strat neck, of course. I chose to make my replica with the Kramer Pacer neck, because I feel that it represents a more historic moment in the history of this legendary guitar.

I started with an ash body I found on Ebay that was routed to the exact routes of the original:

Sealed and primed with Black

Masking for the first set of stripes

(My son helping his obsessed father by spraying the coat of white)

First set of stripes after peeling the first mask

Second masking - FRONT

Second masking - BACK & SIDE

Red coat, after peeling mask - FRONT

Red coat, after peeling mask - BACK & SIDE

Reliced, BACK & SIDE

"Relicing", the act of making something look old and abused, was something new for me, and was a lot of fun! My relics aren't perfect, by any means, but they are close in location and shape!

Reliced, FRONT

Installed single coil pickup and 3-way switch in routes..

I bought this uncirculated 1971 quarter from the Littleton Coin Company

EVH Frankenstein Pickup, Floyd Rose from an 80's Kramer, and the '71 quarter mounted in trem-stopping position

Found these reflectors on Ebay. Broke one in half and left shaped residue

Kramer Pacer Neck with original 80's Floyd Rose locking nut

Original Schaller Tuners

Note the relicing on the headstock..

Added the correctly numbered neckplate, and spring formation, white duct tape under the springs

AND THE FINAL COMPARISON! LOOKS PRETTY GOOD TO ME!

Ed playing his Frankenstein...

Me playing my Frankenstein

After this project, I learned firsthand that the type of wood you use in an electric guitar really DOES make a difference in tone! The ash body makes this guitar sound like a Monster! For more history on this legendary guitar, click HERE

Next up, I'm going to try my hand at carving the Dragonsnake! (This one is going to be tough!)

My Little Les Paul

2011-07-15T17:01:00.038-04:00

On April 14, 1982, Van Halen released their fifth album, Diver Down. Unlike the previous album which was all original music and very dark, this one was chock full of covers and much more upbeat. At this time, Ed's interest in bizarre guitars led him to pick up and customize some 1/4 scale Les Pauls, and made them famous via tracks 8 & 9 titled "Little Guitars".

To recreate this guitar, I purchased a 1/4 scale Les Paul style from a website called smallguitars.com for $170.00. These guitars are made for travel or children, but the quality of the workmanship is much better than any "First Act" toy you could find at Walmart. This is what the guitar looked like before the modifications:

It was already pretty close to the original, so I only had to make a few modifications:

1) Change the paint job
2) Change the pickups
3) Reduce the tone/volume controls from 4 to 2
4) Change the fret markers from dots to standard LP trapezoids
5) Change the nut and pickup rings from black to ivory
6) Add the VH logo decal to the headstock
7) Add the 1/4 scale pickguard

I sanded down the original paint job enough to cover it with a good sealer/primer job. I protected the pickup routes with tape, and filled in the two control knob holes with wood filler, sanded flush with the surface.

After masking off the one corner stripe, the red coat went on followed by 2 cans of gloss, wet sanding down flush, and another 2 cans of gloss lightly wet sanded between coats to give a semi-mirror finish.

Meanwhile, I scaled and drew 8 trapezoids and a VH logo to be scanned for "reflective white" decals. The decals were made by D & J Graphics. You may or may not notice that the VH logo decal is larger than the original. I got lazy & didn't want to sand down and repaint a perfectly good black gloss finish on the headstock so I made the decal large enough to cover the original brand name.

I replaced the nut and black pickup rings with ivory ones and replaced the pickups with real Gibson Les Paul chrome humbuckers, 490R (neck) and 490T (bridge). All of these items were purchased on Ebay. Tone and volume for each pickup were wired into one control knob each & patched through the Rhythm/Treble switch. I also purchased a white LP pickguard and gold LP pickguard bracket from Ebay. I cut the pickguard down to scale, and had to trim the long end of the bracket to get the pickguard in the proper position.

{click on image to enlarge}

Because of the smaller scale, thicker strings are needed to help stabilize the sensitive tuning. Ed also tuned his up a step and a half, so it's like a capo on the 3rd fret. With those Gibson pickups, this guitar really rocks, and it's amazing to hear such rage coming out of such a small package!

My Unchained "See Ya" Guitar

2011-03-11T21:02:00.043-05:00

In 1981, Van Halen's "Fair Warning" was released. This fourth album was much darker, and contained more complex guitar arrangements than previous albums. Many of the songs on this album, including the Van Halen Anthem song "Unchained", were recorded in "Drop D" tuning, in which the low E string on the guitar was tuned a step down to D. To play these songs on tour, Ed needed to keep a guitar tuned to "Drop D". That was this guitar...

I bought this kit guitar, unfinished, on Ebay for $170. BUYER BEWARE: The hardware on these kit guitars is garbage, and the fret edges need to be filed down because they press them in the neck before the wood is dry. The body is decent, however, and you can't beat the price for a Floyd Rose Body & Neck. The first thing I did was cut a hole for the face jack, and fill the hole for the side jack.

This guitar came with a light coat of clear sealer on it, so I went straight to the white paint; about 6 light coats, and then onto the taping. I used a cutting compass for the circles. Note: cut the circles on wax paper or something, not on the guitar itself. The "lady shape" and the "yin-yang" was cut directly on the guitar with an exacto.

After the tape, about 4 light coats of black.

I waited about 5 minutes after the last coat before I started peeling the tape, and I got little to zero bleed.

I built up to 20 or 30 coats of clear gloss, lightly wet sanding between coats, and then I did a deep wet sand to bring all the surfaces level. Then I clear glossed another dozen coats or so, lightly wet sanding in between again. I cut & pasted the "Bye See Ya Later" from the original image and had decals made (special thanks to D.S. for making the decals)

I discarded the garbage hardware that came with the kit guitar, and loaded it up with real hardware, including an original Floyd Rose with fine tuners, and a white Seymour Duncan '78 without the SD logo, that I purchased from "Busy Pete's Music" on Ebay. I actually already owned a strap that matched (or is at least very similar to) the one Ed used for this guitar.

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Lesson Learned: Don't buy kit guitars! In the end, this guitar came out very nice & plays very well, but only after a lot of fighting with it! I could have saved a lot of headaches if I bought the body & neck separate, and it would have only cost me another $50 or so.

WACF Hybrid Charvel/Dano Star

2010-10-11T20:10:00.051-04:00

Taking his guitar customizing to a new level, Eddie Van Halen sported this odd guitar during the 1980 Invasion tour. Pairing a Charvel Star body with a Danelectro neck was an "interesting" (for lack of a better word) choice. It seems that he didn't play this guitar for very long, and is much more obscure than some of his others. The paint job, however, was much more artistic. This guitar was featured on a rare television performance of "And The Cradle Will Rock", and can be seen on Youtube videos of old performances of "Take Your Whiskey Home".

I bought this guitar on Ebay for $290. A Charvel Star body with a custom neck and the "paint job" on it was pretty lame. The black "squiggles" on the white background were actually permanent marker, not paint!

After sanding, I filled the neck humbucker hole with wood filler, and sanded flush. I taped the back (inside) of the switch hole so I could fill it from the front and sand it flush.

About 4 coats of Kilz sealer, sanding lightly between coats, left a textured surface.

Masking this guitar was the most enjoyable yet. Rather than simple stripes and simple designs, the mask had to be trimmed into many different patterns and "pictures". It took me about 6 hours, and I did it all in one afternoon.

I could find no pictures of the back of the original, so I had to design my own. My intention was to sign the "ribbon" design on the back, and then seal over the signature, but I wound up forgetting to sign it before I sealed!

Click on any image to enlarge view
I sprayed 4 very light coats of black, giving each coat about a minute to dry. Then I used an exacto-knife to start the removal of each piece of mask. Considering how small some of the pieces were, I really thought that I would have a lot of bleed, but it turned out with the least amount of bleed I've had yet! I think the multiple light coats and the extra drying time helped control it.

You may notice in the original pictures that the headstock did not drop below the neck at an angle like this one does. This is a Danelectro "reissue" neck, so I had to build a large shim to place under it. (Special thanks to E.S. for fabricating this aluminum shim for me). The shim is tapered to absorb the headstock angle and leave a level surface for the locking nut to sit on. If I ever run across an original Danelectro neck with the straight headstock, I may swap this out and dump the shim.

From what I could tell in old pictures, the strap that Ed used was similar to the yellow & black striped strap for his BumbleBee; only this one was white & black. I bought an EVH style black leather strap from Axcessories.com. This strap is inexpensive (about $19), but I don't like the plastic clips, so I replaced them with steel. I used white duct tape for the white stripes.

And here is the finished product. Click on either pick to enlarge the view. Charvel Star body, Danelectro neck, non-fine tuning original Floyd Rose tremolo, white Seymour Duncan 78 pickup. The tuning machines are incorrect for this replica, but I just couldn't find the originals, and got tired of waiting to finish this guitar. I am still searching for them; and if I do find them I will update the blog with new pictures.

My VH Shark

2010-05-08T20:46:00.072-04:00

One of the strangest guitars in Rock and Roll history is Van Halen's "Shark" guitar, featured on the covers of their third album "Women and Children First". This guitar was once an Ibanez Destroyer (Gibson Explorer style guitar) that Eddie hacked up into a strange shape, painted, and customized to either look like a shark; or to look like a shark took a bite out of it. This guitar was used for tracks on VH1 that didn't require a tremolo bar, like "Running with the Devil", "You Really Got Me", "Jamie's Cryin", and "On Fire".

I started with a Hamer Slammer (explorer style guitar) that I found on Ebay for $150.00.

After removing the paint, I marked the body for special cuts.

I drilled 15 holes along the long side of the cut, and 7 holes along the short side. I used a 1/2" drill bit, but realized after the fact that I should have used a 3/8" to create a thicker "tooth". Then I cut straight through the center of the holes, creating "teeth". Unfortunately, this wood was a bit porous and the cuts opened up some of those pores - I used wood filler to close them up.

Primed

For the silver base coat, I used "metallic aluminum". I lightly sanded the base coat, and covered it with Minwax Polycrylic semi-gloss to put a barrier between the "metallic" paint and the gloss red that was going over it. The Minwax is a high quality acrylic that won't pop or crack gloss finishes like cheaper acrylic paints. I use the expensive acrylic only as a barrier between the cheaper acrylics to save money.

Next came the masking...

I really enjoyed masking the stripes on this guitar. It was a bit more artistic than the stripes on the previous guitars that I've replicated.

I sprayed another coat of the Minwax Polycrylic to seal the edges of the tape, and then sprayed the red.

I discovered that there are very few, if any, options for a cherry or apple red in a flat color. So, since I had to use gloss and couldn't really sand the red color into the silver stripes, the Minwax Polycrylic saved the day again. I put several coats, sanding lightly between, to create a stable barrier before I went back to the inexpensive full gloss.

After about 20 wet-sanded coats of gloss I added the turnbuckles...

And then I painted the headstock and neck using the same process

During reassembly, I wired both humbuckers EVH style, eliminating the middle pot. I replaced the original pickups with VEH pickups from Guitarfetish.com. I also mismatched 2 sets of tuning machines to get the chrome/gold mix.

{Click on image to enlarge}

In the movie "Better Off Dead", this hamburger played "Everybody wants some" on the Shark

VHII Bumble Bee

2010-03-04T09:13:00.095-05:00

In 1979 Van Halen released their second album, Van Halen II, and Ed unveiled a new guitar with a paint job similar to the VH1 Frankenstein. This guitar holds a lot of history. It started out as a Charvel with a standard Fender tremolo bridge, and then came Floyd D. Rose. Mr. Rose was an accomplished machinist and an amateur guitarist who favored an aggressive style of play with lots of tremolo bar use. In the late 1970's, he became unhappy with standard Fender tremolos, and applied his engineering skills to develop a his own style of tremolo bridge. Hence, the Floyd Rose Tremolo was born. Although the first prototypes were installed on his own Gibson Les Paul, in late 1979 the first finished model of the Floyd Rose Tremolo was given as a promotional gift to Eddie, who installed it on this Charvel; THE first guitar to hold a Floyd Rose Tremolo.

(Above, the Charvel before the Floyd Rose)

When the Floyd Rose was installed, Eddie removed the neck and replaced it with the neck of the VH1 Frankenstein, which he had modified to accept the Floyd Rose locking nut. For much, if not all, of the 1979 World Tour, Eddie played the guitar with this neck installed.

The original VHII Bumble Bee was buried with Darrell "Dimebag" Abbot, formerly of Pantera, who was murdered in December of 2004 while performing with his band Damageplan.

(Left: The Charvel hybrid with the Floyd Rose)

I started with a Charvel style body made of poplar and a maple Musikraft neck with a Charvel style headstock. Both items found on Ebay.

I sealed both with Kilz sealer...

...sanded down the sealer, and put 3 coats of flat Florescent Yellow on the body and flat black on the headstock and back of the neck...

Then came the fun part... masking. At first I used 3/4", 1/2", 1/4", and 1/8" electrical tape.

Unfortunately, the first paint job had alot of bleed on the smaller lines, so I stripped the paint, sanded down and started again. This time I still used 3/4" and 1/2" electrical tape, but for the 1/4" and 1/8" stripes I used auto-body "fine-line" tape . It was $9 a roll, but the second job came out much cleaner.

I learned that the trick to reducing the bleed is to take a card edge (or your fingernail) and snug the edges down where two pieces of tape overlap. This will close up the opening caused by the overlap so paint cannot get in there during the spray.

Next was 3 coats of flat black on the body...

...and peeling the mask.

The body, headstock, and back of the neck received 35 coats of clear gloss, wet-sanded in between each coat. Then I joined the neck and the body with this 1980's Charvel neckplate found on Ebay

I drilled and recessed holes through the back of the neck to install the Floyd Rose locking nut, and added an 80's Charvel decal on the headstock, sealing it in with 6 coats of clear gloss, and added the Gotoh tuning machines from a 1980 Kramer that I bought on Ebay for the First Edition Floyd Rose that it had. The First Edition Floyd did not have fine tuners, and are a bit rare. I really lucked out finding this 1980 Kramer, and this F.E. Floyd is worth more by itself that I paid for the entire guitar.

(Below: My First Edition Floyd Rose)

When I first installed the tremolo and strung it up, it would not stay in tune after using it, even with the locking nut. The blades of the bridge seemed to be getting hung up in about 5 different positions between flat and sharp. I did some research and found that on old tremolos like this: decay, corrosion or damage to the blades or the anchors will cause this to happen. Upon inspection, I found some minor corrosion on all the points of contact, but mostly on one anchor I found the chrome beginning to peel off. So I sanded off as much of the chrome as I could, dipped both anchors in Slick 50 Engine Treatment, and baked them in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. This baked a teflon-like coating onto the anchors. I then reassembled the tremolo and spread some powdered graphite lubricant around the blades. After the working the tremolo about a dozen or so times, the bridge settled into the proper position, and the guitar stopped going out of tune.

To add the finishing touch to this guitar, I had to build a replica strap. Eddie's strap was 2" black leather with yellow stripes and included his signature dog-clip and eyebolt locking system. You'll notice in one of the pictures above that he also had a button-style pin attached to this strap.

My replica is 2" black leather with florescent yellow duct tape stripes and dog clips. I hand peened the rivets to close the ends of the strap myself. I was unable to identify the button-style pin that Eddie wore, so I used this 1979 World Tour (VHII tour) pin that I found on Ebay.

(Click on either image to enlarge)

My Bumble Bee is a one of a kind for a few differences: (1) Ed's Bumble Bee had the black Charvel neck before the Floyd Rose and a natural color neck after the Floyd Rose. Mine has the black Charvel neck with the Floyd Rose; (2) not just yellow, FLORESCENT yellow... (it really pops!), and (3) you may or may not have noticed that I..., er..., um... I missed a stripe. heh.

VH1 Frankenstein

2010-01-13T19:09:00.031-05:00

I remember hearing my first Van Halen song on the radio - "Ain't talkin bout love", from Van Halen I. That song was made famous with this guitar, and this guitar was made famous the instant the album hit the music stores with that "red blurred" picture of Eddie holding it up. At the time, I'm sure only a few music producers had enough vision to realize that this iconic guitar, with its crazy paint job, would mark a turning point in rock history, and the expected sound of an electric guitar. Beginning with this guitar, Van Halen's music, album after album, bridged musical gaps between heavy metal, dance, and pop music. As well as inspiring countless generations of young people to save up their money to buy an electric guitar and to learn to play it like Eddie.

My replica of the VH1 Frankenstein cost me less than $200 in materials, including paint.

Here's where I started. This was a strat style body I scoffed off a cheap strat style guitar that I picked up with a nice Fender amp for only $40!

I painted the black base coat...

...and masked it off for the black stripes. This masking job was a bit different than the 5150 guitar. The 3/4" tape is actually ONE LONG PIECE of tape that keeps wrapping around and around the guitar.

...and after painting the white coat and peeling the tape.

This is the neck that I found on Ebay for $35

There are plenty of replicas of this guitar out there. Some are better than mine, some not as good. However, there are only a few that also replicated the nasty guitar strap that went with it! Here's my version:

I started with a 2 inch strip of leather, a bag of 100 cone studs, leather rivets, a peening tool and anvil.

I set and peened each stud one at a time; about 4-5 hours of work for almost 100 studs.

2 feet of 5/16" twist-link chain and a couple of leash clips later...

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One of the next two pictures is the original, from a Japanese magazine article. The other is my replica, placed onto the same magazine article. Can you tell which is which?

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Ok, so if you haven't already figured it out, my replica is the first picture. When I took this picture, I had a Seymour Duncan Humbucker installed. Since then, I bought and installed an EVH Frankenstein pickup for it (Well worth the money!). This guitar also has a ground down Danelectro aluminum nut (awesome sustain), Wilkinson Schaller-style tuners, and a standard strat tremolo w/3 springs setup in "A" formation. After first assembling this guitar, the action was way high and the tremolo pivot screws had stripped the wood. Every time I would use the trem I would lose the tuning. I did some research on how Ed would keep the tuning after divebombing with the trem and I learned that he would mix graphite dust (from a pencil) with vaseline and place it in the nut. This would allow the strings to move around the nut without "catching". To fix my guitar, I shimmed under the neck w/ a piece of sandpaper, reamed out the trem pivot holes, filled with hardening wood filler, and re-drilled the pivot holes. I also tried the graphite/vaseline thing. Action is perfect now, and I can divebomb through 2-3 songs before I start to lose the tuning.

1985 Kramer Baretta 5150

2010-01-02T19:20:00.028-05:00

So this guitar started out as a white 1985 Kramer Baretta that I found on Ebay:

These pictures show disassembly and masking off the white (after sanding and repainting white, of course). I had to 'reverse engineer' the location of each individual stripe, and laying the mask was very labor intensive!

These pics show the red paint, and the peeling of the mask. You have to peel while the paint is still wet to get clean lines.

After the red paint dried, it was time to mask off most of the body to paint just a few black lines. Believe it or not, this was even more difficult than laying the mask for all those white stripes!

Here are some pics of the painting of the headstock

...and with black stripes and some decals

Viola! Ze feeneeshed produkt! {Click on any image to enlarge}

Maple neck and fretboard, double locking Floyd Rose trem (reconfigured springs EVH style), I originally put a "VEH" humbucking pickup from guitarfetish.com (VEH = "Vintage Extra Hot"), but have since replaced that pickup with a Seymour Duncan 78 (same pickup as an EVH Frankenstein). I replaced the Kramer vol knob with an MXR, and the finishing touch is the clip and eyehook leather strap system from Mean Street guitars. This guitar cooks!

So here's the thing that makes my Kramer 5150 original: When I was shopping on Ebay I couldn't find a Kramer Baretta with a squared pickup rout, like in the original 5150 (below, left). But I like the paint design of the 5150 better than the paint design of the other Baretta (below, right) which has the diagonal rout like mine. I also like the painted banana headstock and the chrome trem of the 5150 better than the headstock and trem on the other Baretta.

So I decided that my Kramer 5150 would be original in that it would represent (for me, anyway) all of those similarly painted guitars. To see more of those guitars and more extensive information on EVH's guitar collection click here.

1984, Eddie playing the newly built 5150 before he named it (notice no decal and look how clean it is).

1985, Ed (after losing a fight with a lawnmower) names the guitar 5150 after his studio (notice the decal now present). 5150 is the California police code for a lunatic escaped from an asylum. It is also the name of the album released about the same time as he named this guitar.

Here, with a fresh batch of hair, Ed is playing the well used 5150. Notice the worn and faded paint. He doesn't finish his guitars so that the wood will naturally age and provide better tone over time.

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1966 Silvertone 1457

2010-01-02T13:46:00.025-05:00

{Click on any image to enlarge}

I paid $20 at a yard sale for this collector's item. I repainted the pickguard back to it's original white, and replaced a missing stack knob with a matching Danelectro from allparts.com. I found the matching amp-in-case on Ebay for $150.00; replaced the speaker and restored the configuration of the case hardware. This guitar is made of "masonite", or today it's called "hardboard". It's basically a very hard pressed cardboard, which makes it very lightweight. It has 2 lipstick pickups, individually controlled, an aluminum nut and, of course, a headstock that looks like the sail on a Polynesian boat. It has terrific tone and a very bluesy playability. For some history on this guitar set click here.

.....Jagger and EVH with their 1457's.....

Silvertone 1457 in the movie "That Thing You Do" with Tom Hanks

And here it is in the 1966 Sears Catalog (bottom left)

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2010-01-02T00:00:00.001-05:00