I met Eddie once in the 80's..He went missing from the party only to be found playing an electric guitar without amp in the dark in the club's kitchen. To hear his iconic playing stripped down like that was something I'll never forget. This was around 4am. Fill in the blanks. ;)
I know that everyone obsesses over every little detail of EVH’s guitars and gear, but I’ve got some REAL bad news for y’all: it ain’t the car, it’s the driver.
There is an interview with steve vai he said he played through eddies rig and it sounded like him steve vai not eddie its all in the hands nearly impossivpe but robert you the man still such a great video man love your vids too good long live eddie great job man
My best eddie story is when I saw him in concert in Seattle WA in the mid 1980's. I was right up front, could hardly breathe...my arms pinned to my sides. Eddie finishes a solo then flicks the pick out to the audience and I felt it hit me in the eye...I clamped down my eyebrow muscles and pinched that pick in my eye socket until I could get outta there. Well...I have that pick to this day...it has his signature and OU812 tour written on it. pretty cool!
of course it had been talked about but 90% of the fans don't know that. I talked to Eddie about it in 77, at a Pasadena party . Still, i forgot a lot of it by now. I'm an old fucker as well.. Kudos to the video guy who got of his ass and did something cool not just talk and correct everything..lol
When the Fender Frankenstrat came out, Edward did an interview with one of the guitar magazines promoting it and he finally confessed that a lot of the "secret stuff" he talked about in old interviews (late 70s and early 80s) to get his sound (wax, boiling strings, using esoteric parts etc) was bs to confuse manufacturers and players chasing his sound and tone. He said he tried some of the things he talked about, but never committed them to the guitar used for recording. He said his tone came from his amp and fingers and that he can pick up any strat and sound like himself. Psychological Warfare at its finest. lol
I don't think it was so much to intentionally throw anyone off, it was more of a sarcastic answer to a stupid question. Assuming that some modification to his guitar is what makes him good? He worked hard for a long time to sound like that. There was no youtube, no internet tab, There wasn't even good loopers and jam tracks. Like if he was a painter and made amazing paintings and then everyone asked "You paint so well, what's the secret to your brushes?" Eddie would have been like "The only good bristles come from the anus of an elephant." Just to watch people shave elephant butts.
@@JC-fj7oo right, and he only turned his back to the crowd during some licks so that we could get a better view of his back. Are you really under the impression that eddie doesn't know the difference between being asked about his sound/ tone ( gear) and being asked about his technique/ playing? Of course he lied to INTENTIONALLY throw people and create a false sense of mystery ( common in rock marketing at the time and still is) . He knew how a variac works and how he was using it, so the whole " use it to boost power to the amp" bit was a willfull lie man, not a mistake, not a joke. That said, to imply gear does not contribute and shape sound as well as impacts playing style is absurd. All in the fingers? That's why all amps are made the same and sound the same, because all the tone/ sound comes from fingers and style of playing. That's why guitar players dont have favorite amps, pickups, wood combinations etc.? Because those things have no impact on sound.... or maybe eddie is as full of crap as most of his legend. Eddie did what every generation of musicians does. He watched others, took their ideas and ran with em so that was not unique. If gear didnt matter he would have had no reason to mod his guitars and amps or use very specific effects, as many before him and after him have. Eddie just beat yngwie to claiming he invented it all hahaha.
@@rowdyjohnson6026 god I fucking hate yngwie what a trash heap. eVeRyOnE lOoK hOW fASt I cAn pLaY sCaLeS. There was hardly ever "music" in his "music". Just a bunch of fancy techniques and using simple music theory to put the right scales at the right times, and just play them fast. I never once listened to him and was like "wow I can't even picture what notes he was playing I've never heard that before ( like Eddie and Jimmie Hendrix still do to me this day ) it's just like "Hmm that was impressively fast and clean but man I can't stand how it sounds" Like most youtube metal players, just playing the same baritone guitar with the same overdrive tone as everyone else, over double bass pedal drummer, with really fast scales and tapping. Wow what a rant
@@quistador7 It might be a rant but it's spot on lol! There are some 'TH-cam' guys who have the right kind of swing and feel though (I'm looking at you Pete Thorn), actually I have both of Pete's albums and none of Yngwie's :-). I'd like to see Rob do a video on George Lynch too, I've listened to Dokken over the years but only recently put the Lynchmob album 'Wicked Sensation' on and it instantly dropped into my top three 80's style metal albums (actually it did come out in 1990 tbh).
RIP to the absolute KING of electric rock guitar. I like what Gene Simmons said after Eddie passed away. He said, "If there was a God of rock guitar, Hendrix would be his left hand, and Eddie would be his right". That really sums it all up. Those two players are literally the milestones of rock n roll guitar innovation. Hendrix changed guitar playing from 1965 to 1978, and then EVH changed it again from 1978 to at least 1990.
When they completed the replicas, they brought three for four to Eddie to evaluate. He couldn't tell the difference between them, and he freaked out. Once he figured out which one was the original, he wrote on the back of the headstock in sharpie so he could tell his from the replicas.
@@Phreddyfoophred Yea, he was still in bad shape at that time. If you listen to the interviewer, he asks Ed about putting the guitar together, and Ed either didn't hear the question right, or something else popped into his head and he started talking about the paint job, lol. Yes, they did a great job on the replicas, but 25K for one? Yea, no thanks!
The Floyd rose in Frankie was never meant to float. Dive bombs only. There’s a video of him playing a strat and laughing like a child at the sound it makes when he pulls up on the tremolo. RIP King Edward.
blackcamelify - Wildly inaccurate, there were top mounted floating Floyd Rose Kramer guitars loooong before there were flush mount tremolo Ibanez guitars & those Jems with extra routing for pulling up. Steve only innovated the extra routing for pulling up more than a usual Floyd setup, but Floyd style tremolos were as a rule always floating. Even the original Fender Strat trems can be set to float for a half step pull up.
@@j_freed Floyd roses are always floating? Are you nuts dude? I literally own a Kramer Barretta w/ a Floyd, and it’s flush with the body. All EVH guitars are non-floating Floyd’s. The initial comment was correct, it was Vai and Satriani that popularized a full float.
ihate names I don’t think he meant it in an attacking sort of way, I think what he meant to say was that Eddie drew influence from Clapton in using that idea. Eddie was a huge Clapton fan after all.
What makes the Frankenstrat so funny is people nowadays are so obsessed with "tone wood" and making everything perfect when one of the most recognizable and influential instruments of all time was basically a cobbled together piece of sh*t with leftover parts and whatever Eddie could afford at the time. Goes to show it's the musician, not the instrument.
Different woods do contribute to different sounds but it’s only noticeable in acoustic guitar. You can only hear it in an electric if you’re lying about it.
@@WeDontWantYourWar Steve vai and Joe satriani both tried , I think Brian Mays guitar.. and guess what… they did not sound anything close to Brian May. Just goes to show . Music comes from the fingers , the individual. Not the gear
EVH's frankenstrat is one of the most legendary and important pieces of guitar history! While looking incredibly a mess, it had some innovative gear setups. Awesome work here!
Almost a exactly a year after this video was made, the Legend became just that... We will all miss our master but he lives on in every guy with a guitar....
Eddie didn't invent wax potting, it's been used in radio electronics for as long as the field existed. Fender were potting the pickups on early telecasters because of experience working with radios. Asking any electrical engineer or technician how to fix microphonic pickups would have yielded a similar answer. Gibson were incredibly late to the party and Eddie was just doing Gibson's quality control for them. The easiest source of paraffin wax is candle wax, it's not particularly special or exotic, although a wax that doesn't shrink when it cools is better. There are paraffin wax based commercial potting compounds available, but amateur luthiers often use a beeswax and paraffin wax blend which doesn't shrink as much.
There are a lot of things that Eddie didn't invent that he still gets credit for. That's because he brought it all to the masses. Potting was one of the many things. Just like how he gets all this credit for the hammer ons and pull offs...he didn't invent it but VH brought it to the mainstream.
I looked at the comments to see if anyone mentioned this. I worked @ Ernie Ball/Music Man in the early 90s at the time they were working with Ed to develop their signature guitar for him. The engineers were puzzled as to why they couldn't duplicate the sound of Ed's Frankenstrat. Investigating, they were getting odd electrical resistance readings through the pickup and Ed gave them permission to investigate. They found there was a clean break in the middle of the winding which obviously contributed to the Frankenstrat's unique sound. I remember it was a pretty big WTF moment for everyone. Music Man then reproduced the pickups for the guitars with the same anomaly. I don't know how top secret that was but we weren't allowed to talk about it at the time.
Brian Mason years ago, Guitar World magazine did a piece on Eddies Frankenstrat and they mentioned something similar, however if I recall correctly (and it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong...it’s been years and years ago) it was the Fender Custom shops who discovered something similar when they had Eddies guitar in to be taken apart and measured and poured over so they could begin the process of making the replicas. If memory serves, they mentioned that the pickup basically functioned as a single coil due to the damage or broken wire or something like that. Again, it’s been at least 15-odd years ago or so, so I may have part of that messed up. But your reply definitely rung a bell. :-)
I saw a beautiful comment about Eddie the other day, "One of the greatest of all time, but not to be copied." I think that basically means, no matter how anyone tries, Eddie will never be copied. Even if you can play his licks perfectly, nobody has his soul or his ear for music. Eddie was a true innovator and an absolute legend.
If you play the song exactly as it was recorded. While still impressive. It’s not getting anything new in terms of soul. So make mistakes add your own soul
Amen that's exactly what Eddie Van Halen said Eddie Van Halen didn't play the parts right didn't play the guitar right he played his way one of the most important things to remember about honey Van Halen cuz he said you play it your way Everyone's an individual the same Riff to be played a million different ways as long as it's your way
Yeah, I'm guilty of not playing a song perfectly. I can get the basics within a few minutes but more importantly is how you sound like you and not someone else.
people get really angry whenever you dont play something exactly the way the original artists played it. Cover master of puppets by alternate picking and you will get lots of angry butthurt purists telling you its all down strums.
@@ashleyjohansson230 and THOSE people can go shit in a hat. If you're looking to play something perfect like it was recorded, great. If not who gives a fuck? I don't
The quarter was for tuning purposes. When you restring a trem you slide the quarter under the trem and slightly tighten the screws on the claw. When you have the guitar tuned you loosen the claw until the quarter roles out from under the trem. There is also a secret he taught me about how to tune a fender trem and not need a locking nut that was passed from JH's guitar tech.
I saw VAN HALEN in 1977 when they supported BLACK SABBATH at the Glasgow Apollo, tripping out of my skull!! I have a very vivid memory of Eddie VH with his black and white stripped Strat firing off crazy lick after crazy lick!! At the time I had no idea who they were or who Eddie was, but it was as obvious that this guy was doing something real special!
When Ed said he used to twist the string as he wound it, I didn't understand it at first either. Then one day it came to me... Those old Strat sustain blocks had very shallow holes for the ball end or bullet end of the string to rest in. IOWs, the ball/ bullet end was right near the surface. So as he tightened the tuner with his left hand, he could twist the ball end or bullet end(he liked Fender 9-40 back then) with his right hand. Of course, on modern Fender tremolos and most aftermarket trems, this is impossible to do since the string end sits deep in the sustain block. So there you have it. (You're welcome btw. I know it sure ate at me until I finally figured it out). I enjoy your vids btw, please keep em coming.
Tarrell Freeze if you turn the ball end while you’re winding the tension, it’s just going to unwind eventually I would think. I never tried it though. You could put a pin through the ball end somehow and that would keep everything wound up and taught
Ed didn't hold the ball end still, that would CREATE a twist. He turned the ball end as he wound the string to try to avoid any twisting. The theory is, if a string was under twisted tension and he did a dive bomb, the string(& ball end) could untwist a bit and the string would then be a hair flat. FWIW, He doesn't sound sure it even helped. He was just trying everything he could think of. That's why Floyd Rose was such a God send. He removed the problems on both the nut side and tremolo side. Plus, Ed decked his Floyd. That makes it sound more like a fat, sustainy hardtail. It also does away with the whole Floyd balancing act and if you pop a string, you can still finish the song. I've played a decked Floyd for around 35 yrs and I wouldn't trade it for gold. I'm always in the tune and my bands have loved me for it.
@@blazelarson1427 Sorry, I just reread your message. I see you do get that Ed was turning the ball end. Bottom line, Ed obviously noticed that when he wound a string, it also caused twisting of the string. When he turned the ball end, he wasn't forcing it to twist, just the opposite... He was letting/helping the string untwist.
I was doing the same experimentation with guitars around the same time in the 70's. I never became a great guitar player but I did become a luthier. lol
Eddie recorded most of the rhythm tracks on the 1st album with his stock Ibanez destroyer, which he said he ruined when he cut it up to make the Woman & Children First Shark guitar... That’s why you hear him using a toggle switch on “You really got me” ... so his 1st album which blew all of us away back then wasn’t his strat at all, it was a wicked Ibanez destroyer. That’s why Van Halen ll’s guitars sound so clean. All the albums are brilliant regardless.
Thank you for remembering that. He said the guitar sounded like shit after that mod which makes me wonder why anybody would buy the new evh model in that shape for 900 bucks
LOL... I know right? When it comes down to it, Eddie was a prick, misleading everyone about his guitar and gear. I remember being like 13 and boiling the shit out of my strings, he could of said, “put your guitar in the freezer” and I would of asked, “how long?” Young guitar players now would be lost lifting the needle up 100x to get 3 notes. We might’ve all played it a different way, but damnit, it sounded JUST LIKE the album. It was a very special time to be a guitarist man.
Nice Vid. The thing about the quarter was due to the neck angle. I had an old Circus mag with an article about EVH and his guitars, where he states he had to make a last minute neck change cause he wore out the frets, which is why he uses stainless steel frets now, so when he put in the neck the angle was off and the action was too low. To correct this he had to raise the floyd to make up for that, which left the it in an upward angle and bar too high, thats when put in the quarter to level out the floyd, It was used that way for one show and was corrected later but left the quarter on the body.
The pickup was a genuine PAF that came out of his '62 ES-335. Eddie also rewound the pickup himself and according to him really didn't know what he was doing. So much so, it was amazing the PU worked at all let alone produced so much power.
Ed bought the body, which was a second, from Wayne Charvel for $50. He bought a boogie bodies neck from Wayne for $80. He chiseled out the space for the humbucker in the San Dimas Charvel shop floor.
Gary Thomas there’s a lot of evidence to challenge this statement. Eddie always lied about his gear in the early days to throw people off. There’s a pretty solid theory that the Frankie was originally a black strat routed for a humbucker (lots of pictures etc.)
@@charlesperry671 very true. But, Wayne Charvel and Ed were friends in this era, and Charvel was doing lots of early custom works for up and coming guitar players like David Gilmour and Alan Holdsworth to name a few. Karl Sandoval was also a friend of Ed's at the time and painted the later bumble bee Charvel for Ed. I actually bought one of the batch circa 1980 bumble bee Charvels in mid 1981 before Ed and Grover Jackson had problems. It's true what you say about Ed guarding his inventions, but there is word of mouth from Ed and Wayne that Ed bought the cheap body and routed it out in the shop floor with hammer and screwdriver. Only Ed knows.
Gary Thomas yeah true. I never really like talking about the black strat theory or his tone in general because there’s so many different theories, and in the end unless there’s photos of exactly what we want then I guess we will never fully know the stories behind his gear :)
He was true guitar hero to all of us man. He said something I seen in a interview earlier that it was on 5 years ago. He said you may think that a guitar player can’t make it big in today’s time but you can just believe and play play play. That hit home for me. True inspiration. Please do a part two for EVH.
His guitar knowledge and his intense investigation as to how to match what he heard in his head came out of necessity and lack of funds. Very creative dude.
All Eddie's whammy bar tricks to get it to stay in tune on the Vintage system was not necessary on the Floyd Rose. So his innovations with the Vintage system is more interesting.
That's also true ! Eddie didn't like to see people following him (all other guitar players from big groups). The paint job (red-black-white) was done (and a mess too) to stop people from copying his guitar. It became a trade mark... Eddie was also good at telling bull shit to guitare magazines and MTV journalists about his gear in general. He started being honest about it only a few years ago. Finally, even though he was a genius at creating many things on a guitar that became standard features since, his talent is coming from his hands, his ears and his heart ! Eddie Van Halen is a killer !
Kinda but also no. It was originally in a blank unpainted body and used for Women in Love but when he moved it the Franky he didn’t know how to wire it along with the switch, but he kept them there. Originally had a tele pickup in the middle but was taken out in 79 and the switch got moved to its famous spot where it’s been since.
Yeah he said that in an interview when they were manufacturing the Frankenstrat replica. The neck pickup was just there to confuse people according to him.
When Eddie came out we all destroyed our strats. I used a hammer and a flat head screwdriver to bang a hole for a humbucker in my Fernandes Strat. I used a Seymour Duncan invader. And spent a long time getting the whammy bar to behave. I used 2 Springs the secret is to get the spring and string tensions identical. I used to detune the strings and then tune it back up with the springs. And plenty of lube everywhere. More than half of the tuning problems comes from the nut.
@@guitarocd9984 oh yes lol I totally understand that setting them up is a pain! I have three fiddles with Floyds cause it saves a lotta time if I want to play in a different tuning 😒
They both have their own advantages. I've gotten too lazy to change strings on a Floyd. But of course a Floyd is the only way to go if you are doing excessive whammy bar stuff. We agree. But I do love to argue. But not today. LOL
@@guitarocd9984 What do you mean lazy to change strings? It takes about the same time to change strings as with a guitar without a whammy bar. The only excessive work is the screwing but it takes just few seconds for each string.
A separate video on the black and yellow "bumblebee" guitar would be good. Since it's buried with Dimebag, could accompany it with Pantera riffs, or have Ola as a guest guitarist!
lots of stuff like that from his early days when they'd hound him for his secrets. he'd just make things up on the spot then you'd see all the young guitarists looking for like a variac to burn their amp out because he said in some magazine that he ran his really hot.
Ted Nugent tells a good story when VH opened for him a few times and was blown away. During Ed's soundcheck Ted came over and ask Ed if he could play it. Ed said sure, here ya go. Ted said surprisingly.."I sounded exactly like ME.
This actually doesn't prove tone comes from the fingers, this just obviously means van halen and ted nugent play different things. Ted nugent will still sound like himself but with van halen's tone. Its like getting a blues guitarists to play a metal guitarist's setup, he will still play blues style music but with a metal heavy tone from all the high output gain.
The string boiling was also a trick to save money, old time guitarists would do that to clean dirt and oils off the strings, it was felt that they had that “new” tone again. BB King spoke about this in an interview.
I’m sure they probably used some additive to the water, something common like vinegar that would cut through the grease and grime and eliminate corrosion/rust. I’m also sure any real results were more than likely in their own heads. Interesting artifact from a time where strings were much more expensive( in relation to income) than they are now.
also John, in the same interview, BB noted that he never clipped his strings, but would wind them all up on the tuner.( he then showed Lucille and sure enough there was a big ball of wire on the pegs) he said this was because if he broke a string he could unwind it and “tie it off” so he could continue playing... that sounds horrifying ( if not impossible)to myself and my fingers. Not truly sure what he meant or how he would do this... would love to have seen him do it though.
I remember my brother coming home with the first album right after it came out. He brought me into his room and put on 'Eruption'. I was in awe. "Holy shit!" I finally got to see EVH a few years later. That cat is beyond incredible.
As a bass player I've been twisting my strings for years. Something I came up with as an experiment, much as I imagine Eddie did. It's a way of preloading them. Once strung and tuned, you loosen the strings one at a time just enough so you can turn the ball end of the string in the same direction as the winds as if you're making the winds tighter. I usually twist 2-3 full rotations depending on the strings. Re-tighten the string while holding the ball and once tightened the tension will maintain the twist. I gave no idea what effect this would have on a guitar string that isn't wound. I don't know why Eddie did this but I found it has an effect on everything about the string's playing characteristics, definition, and tone. I started doing this over 20 years ago and I still twist my strings to this day. Always one of my favorite tricks. ;-)
The string thing... He'd twist the string from the ball end inside the trem block so it wouldn't get twisted along the length of the string as you turn the tuners. Also used a brass nut lubed with 3 in 1 oil and no string trees and the Fender trem only used 2 of the 6 screws to reduce friction.
Classic misdirection lol I read that also in a magazine article so I tried it and destroyed my amp lol I thought THIS was the sound of magic but it was the smell of smoke I heard lol
@@Mickocarbomb Watts = Amps * Volts. Eddie used the variac to lower the incoming voltage from the wall which essentially lowered the wattage of his amp allowing him to get more overdriven tones at more reasonable volume. Since he was constantly playing in a low-voltage state or "brownout" it was called the "brown sound"
The tone in Eddie's hands is, and will always be unmatched. However, it's so much fun just trying to emulate. I think that many would agree that it's GREAT exercise and VERY educational!
I have two number one guitar heroes : Jimi Hendrix (I was too young to see him or know his music during his life) and Edward Van Halen (my generation 'x' !). That guy made me flip so many times because of his talent, his tone (of course !) and solos... I saw him a few times in concerts. Actually, my 1st concert was Van Halen in 1984 !! It was like a ton of bricks in the face ! It was SO LOUD ! I could feel his guitar in my chest.... That era is over now. Full stacks are dummies... It wasn't then...
Eddie also liked to record rythmn parts with his Ibanez Destroyed Destroyer, too. Another guitar innovator of what we think of as "That Rock Sound" that many guitarists latched on to (and took further), including Eddie: Tom Schulz
The quarter originally served the purpose of propping up the Floyd Rose in case of a broken string. Break a sting? Swing the quarter under the edge of the trem to keep it from going sharp. It didn’t work out so well because it was incredibly hard to balance the tuning between free floating, and propped. It was a hell of an idea though.
About the "string turning" - He would put the string through the bridge, and twist as he was tuning, bc when you string a guitar, the strings have a tendency to twist as you turn the tuner. He wanted to keep each string as straight as possible. :)
**+Prayers for Edward+** Life would never be the same again without Eddie. I'm betting he is God's favorite guitarist too. Lord our Heavenly Father... please heal Eddie Van Halen. Amen.
'best guitar player ever'... when i go back and listen, the reaction is invariably, 'this guy really had it'... hopefully he will successfully battle his illness.. thanks for the vid.
That's an interesting bit about using the quarter to switch between floating and down-only trem; I'd never heard of it, but it's rather brilliant. BTW, it is not at all difficult to keep a standard Strat trem in tune, once you know how to eliminate or at least ameliorate a few points of friction and quickly eliminate slack between the nut and the tuners, while playing.
Dude, just discovered you channel and I’m hooked! Been binging on your videos and they’re all fantastic. You’re a great player and you’re making great content!
In Edward Van Halens world the saying "necessity is the mother of invention" applied. He always claimed to have zero money and some things he wanted didn't exist. He looked around him and made what he had at his disposal work. Viola!......a Frankenstrat is born.
My favorite player of all time too. I just geek hard on this stuff and learned something today too... never knew the quarter was initially configured to swing in and out of place. Too damn cool =VH=
The quarter wasn’t ever used that way. When originally installed it had one screw in the center. Which wouldn’t allow it to rotate out of the way. The screw eventually snapped off and it was gone all of 82. Then in 83 he put the quarter back with 3 screws. Only one remains today. It looks like it moved because Tom Anderson moves where the Floyd was installed. Because it was mounted too far back. The guitar wasn’t correctly intonated all those years. That 1/4” move toward the neck made it seem like the quarter moved but it didn’t.
Quick question. How could Eddie spin the string's ball end while tuning it? On vintage trems, the ball end sits in the bridge's tone block. Needle nose pliers couldn't even fit. I'm pretty sure he just manually locked the strings on the tuners the old fashioned way and oiled everything up. At one point, he also had one of the very first Floyd Rose bridges that would lock the strings on it, but didn't have the fine tuners on it.
@@dylanl4780 I used to always boil my bass strings. Most guitar players don't bother because guitar strings are much cheaper than bass strings. If bass players replaced their strings with new strings as often as guitar players do, that expense would add up lol.
Robert B unless you’re cheap like me and replace your strings only if they break or sound really really dead, I’ve had the same strings on my guitar for two years and they sound fine
Great video, man! It’s crazy that you referred to how innovative Eddie “was” and you made this video a year ago...RIP EVH. Keep making great content, my dude!
Boiling guitar strings had nothing to do with tuning stability. It was just something poor guitar players did to try to get more use out of a set of strings, by boiling off the crud and grime.
Yes. Ive done it with bass strings (because they're so expensive) and it works pretty well. A good trick, especially like in my case- i was in a recording session at night, and the bass just sounded dead and after boiling them it sounded alive again!
@@BillDerBerg Best trick to clean them up is to put the strings in a jar filled with denatured alcohol, close the jar and let it stay for at least 24 hours. That'll give you some more tonal life on your strings.
I thought the humbucker was overwound by Eddie. Though he did use and SD-1 and two Echoplexs early on. The Floyd Rose bridges have been known the effect the tone of guitars due to the thin block. I wonder how going from the Strats bridge to the Floyd effected his tone? An important thing with a Strat bridge is the bearing edge of the holes in the bridge. The better it is the better the Strat stays in tune.
hey man, you have one of the best evh guitar sounds i've heard. what amp are you using in this video and what else do you have going on to get this sound?
Fun fact about the Floyd; the amount of string tension adjustment came from Eddie wanting to be able to switch between standard and drop D tuning. That's according to an interview with Floyd Rose. That's also one version of why the quarter was there; to keep the trem from going out of position when Eddie would switch to drop D during a show.
i think that the small pickguard was for convience...as ed used his vol pot alot...one could switch out the pot without removing the strings...as far as anything ed had said in the past..he admitted to giving false info about his gear...i also heard his amp was stock...his extra gain came from the preamp on his echoplex...but he did run a variac on his marshall :)
I love how everyone goes nuts over all the Frankenstrat mods. It might just be Dutch mentality because I've grown up to think like that. My dad is the type of guy that's like, if something isn't working the way you want it to, just mod it, find something to fix it. When I see the mods like the coin and stuff I'm just like, yeah sure, makes sense.
The stories one hears! The one I heard went like this(and I claim nothing of this is or is not true, just passing it down) First I need to ask; Is the body an actual Fender? Because the tale as I heard it, was, the guys at Kramer guitar would allow VH to come to their shop or factory, and search through the stock of"seconds" or "blemished" parts and components, then build whatever they could using these parts. This makes the "less than top of the line" parts and haphazard methods used in construction somewhat understandable. Take free parts that nobody pays for that are likely landfill bound, add the craftsmanship of a young guy probably influenced by a tiny bit of alcohol, then he gets to fu**ing around on parts he does not need to be worried about, in the after hours dark recesses of a shop, use a chainsaw tip (way I heard it) to route out the body for the pickups,functional or not, decoys or not, assemble it , plug it in, test it with an aggressive run thru of say,,,Eruption, hopefully with a lightning storm to keep the beat, then raise it up above your head offering it up to the Gods of dead 27 year old greats looking down from above, lightning crashing,rain streaming down your face, you laugh maniac and cry out, "It's ALIVE! . ALIVE!!" After this,WTF else to name this wretched creation, an insult to all the master craftsmen of Fender,Gretch,Gibson etc. than "The Frankenstrat" Thats gotta be how it came to be!! There you have it, my view of the backstory of this iconic mutt, taken from I believe a carefully imaginative effort. One of the "read between the lines" sort. Has to be true!
Eddie has also been known to use Telecaster guitars from time to time when recording. I read in an interview once that he overdubbed a Tele when recording the chorus for Poundcake. He needed a crisper tone to cut though the mix when playing the chorus part. Tele is of course, a perfect choice.
His tone had to do with proper gain stages from pickup to cabling to eq then to preamp then cranking the bias on the power tubes and going thru proper ohmage cabs for speaker breakup.... blackmore got great tone the same way ( Eddie will never admit it but he's a blackmore fan ) .... listen to Ed's isolated guitar tracks and you can hear the sizzly grindy mids coming from the cabs ..... mids is where most of audio db power comes from. His sound is very hot .... lots of signal
The “twisting string” phenomenon can be observed if you fold a piece of tape around a slack string and bring it up to pitch. The tape spins because the string twists. There is surely a scientific term for it; it’s the same thing that happens to cables if you don’t do the over-under thing when wrapping them. So Eddie noticed this or somebody told him about it and he would twist his strings the opposite way before tuning up new strings to counteract the twist and (presumably) make them last longer. I tried it once and it seemed thoroughly unnecessary. Haha.
I read in an interview of ed in guitar world magazine in the early 90's saying the 1971 quarter was to give the orignal fender temelo a better landing spot. The floyd rose didn't need it anymore so he just rotated it out of the way and used another screw to secure it. He kept it because it belonged on the guitar.
I met Eddie once in the 80's..He went missing from the party only to be found playing an electric guitar without amp in the dark in the club's kitchen. To hear his iconic playing stripped down like that was something I'll never forget. This was around 4am. Fill in the blanks. ;)
Maybe an idea came to him. Cool story.
You lucky bastard you xxxxxxxxx
You glucked his dingle didn't you
he just write a new idea in his head and try to memorize it
I know that everyone obsesses over every little detail of EVH’s guitars and gear, but I’ve got some REAL bad news for y’all: it ain’t the car, it’s the driver.
This!
Boom Goes the Dynamite! LOL
There's a video on the web somewhere of, i think, John petrucci playing the hell out of a bullet strat and he kiled it! Like OP said, it's the driver
There is an interview with steve vai he said he played through eddies rig and it sounded like him steve vai not eddie its all in the hands nearly impossivpe but robert you the man still such a great video man love your vids too good long live eddie great job man
That's right, some drivers can play and sound very close to Eddie playing through completely different equips than Eddie
My best eddie story is when I saw him in concert in Seattle WA in the mid 1980's. I was right up front, could hardly breathe...my arms pinned to my sides. Eddie finishes a solo then flicks the pick out to the audience and I felt it hit me in the eye...I clamped down my eyebrow muscles and pinched that pick in my eye socket until I could get outta there. Well...I have that pick to this day...it has his signature and OU812 tour written on it.
pretty cool!
Cool
68Strat that’s rad!
If only I didn't wear glasses maybe this sort of thing would happen to me someday.
Were the grunge guys in that city already shitting on guys like Eddie at the time, or did all that come later?
Hard Luck grunge was in the 90s, and I don’t think any of them actually shit on Eddie
I must be old, literally read all this info in a Guitar Player magazine interview with EVH in about 1978-79
Fuck I wish I could've partied in the 70s
Kevin Stiles -THIS~
Broto theWilliams Take Some ‘Good Grade’ Acid -Go to Sleeping...,And You WILL *
Yeah, none of this is new. I want to put the words in his mouth when he starts to speak...never heard of Paraffin Wax, lol.
of course it had been talked about but 90% of the fans don't know that. I talked to Eddie about it in 77, at a Pasadena party . Still, i forgot a lot of it by now. I'm an old fucker as well.. Kudos to the video guy who got of his ass and did something cool not just talk and correct everything..lol
When the Fender Frankenstrat came out, Edward did an interview with one of the guitar magazines promoting it and he finally confessed that a lot of the "secret stuff" he talked about in old interviews (late 70s and early 80s) to get his sound (wax, boiling strings, using esoteric parts etc) was bs to confuse manufacturers and players chasing his sound and tone. He said he tried some of the things he talked about, but never committed them to the guitar used for recording. He said his tone came from his amp and fingers and that he can pick up any strat and sound like himself. Psychological Warfare at its finest. lol
I don't think it was so much to intentionally throw anyone off, it was more of a sarcastic answer to a stupid question. Assuming that some modification to his guitar is what makes him good? He worked hard for a long time to sound like that. There was no youtube, no internet tab, There wasn't even good loopers and jam tracks.
Like if he was a painter and made amazing paintings and then everyone asked "You paint so well, what's the secret to your brushes?" Eddie would have been like "The only good bristles come from the anus of an elephant." Just to watch people shave elephant butts.
@@JC-fj7oo Lmao Goddamn
@@JC-fj7oo right, and he only turned his back to the crowd during some licks so that we could get a better view of his back. Are you really under the impression that eddie doesn't know the difference between being asked about his sound/ tone ( gear) and being asked about his technique/ playing? Of course he lied to INTENTIONALLY throw people and create a false sense of mystery ( common in rock marketing at the time and still is) . He knew how a variac works and how he was using it, so the whole " use it to boost power to the amp" bit was a willfull lie man, not a mistake, not a joke. That said, to imply gear does not contribute and shape sound as well as impacts playing style is absurd. All in the fingers? That's why all amps are made the same and sound the same, because all the tone/ sound comes from fingers and style of playing. That's why guitar players dont have favorite amps, pickups, wood combinations etc.? Because those things have no impact on sound.... or maybe eddie is as full of crap as most of his legend. Eddie did what every generation of musicians does. He watched others, took their ideas and ran with em so that was not unique. If gear didnt matter he would have had no reason to mod his guitars and amps or use very specific effects, as many before him and after him have. Eddie just beat yngwie to claiming he invented it all hahaha.
@@rowdyjohnson6026 god I fucking hate yngwie what a trash heap. eVeRyOnE lOoK hOW fASt I cAn pLaY sCaLeS. There was hardly ever "music" in his "music". Just a bunch of fancy techniques and using simple music theory to put the right scales at the right times, and just play them fast. I never once listened to him and was like "wow I can't even picture what notes he was playing I've never heard that before ( like Eddie and Jimmie Hendrix still do to me this day ) it's just like "Hmm that was impressively fast and clean but man I can't stand how it sounds" Like most youtube metal players, just playing the same baritone guitar with the same overdrive tone as everyone else, over double bass pedal drummer, with really fast scales and tapping. Wow what a rant
@@quistador7 It might be a rant but it's spot on lol! There are some 'TH-cam' guys who have the right kind of swing and feel though (I'm looking at you Pete Thorn), actually I have both of Pete's albums and none of Yngwie's :-). I'd like to see Rob do a video on George Lynch too, I've listened to Dokken over the years but only recently put the Lynchmob album 'Wicked Sensation' on and it instantly dropped into my top three 80's style metal albums (actually it did come out in 1990 tbh).
RIP to the absolute KING of electric rock guitar. I like what Gene Simmons said after Eddie passed away. He said, "If there was a God of rock guitar, Hendrix would be his left hand, and Eddie would be his right". That really sums it all up. Those two players are literally the milestones of rock n roll guitar innovation. Hendrix changed guitar playing from 1965 to 1978, and then EVH changed it again from 1978 to at least 1990.
Hot take
Maxx have to make a correction. You cant forget the one who started it chuck berry.
@@bobpugliese4428 even Chuck would tell you, I'm no Jimmy.... And sure as hell no Eddie!!!
@@bobpugliese4428 but definitely one of the greats who started it all
When the Fender custom shop was studying his guitar to make the replicas, they found painters tape still on the body. Eddie didn't know it was there.
LMAO
When they completed the replicas, they brought three for four to Eddie to evaluate. He couldn't tell the difference between them, and he freaked out. Once he figured out which one was the original, he wrote on the back of the headstock in sharpie so he could tell his from the replicas.
@fastguitar if you watch the video and see the condition he was in at the time, it wouldn't be a big surprise.
@@Phreddyfoophred Yea, he was still in bad shape at that time. If you listen to the interviewer, he asks Ed about putting the guitar together, and Ed either didn't hear the question right, or something else popped into his head and he started talking about the paint job, lol. Yes, they did a great job on the replicas, but 25K for one? Yea, no thanks!
Wow
The yellow one is buried with Dime.
Gary Heighway is that true? If so that is really cool!
@@AB-vn2jc yeah in a interview Eddy said it was buried with Dime because it was his favorite.
It’s true...
Ed Hated that guitar! That's why you didn't see him often with it. (the yellow Stripped one)
skyprop okay now thats one that I didn’t hear.
The Floyd rose in Frankie was never meant to float. Dive bombs only. There’s a video of him playing a strat and laughing like a child at the sound it makes when he pulls up on the tremolo. RIP King Edward.
blackcamelify - Wildly inaccurate, there were top mounted floating Floyd Rose Kramer guitars loooong before there were flush mount tremolo Ibanez guitars & those Jems with extra routing for pulling up. Steve only innovated the extra routing for pulling up more than a usual Floyd setup, but Floyd style tremolos were as a rule always floating. Even the original Fender Strat trems can be set to float for a half step pull up.
@@j_freed Floyd roses are always floating? Are you nuts dude? I literally own a Kramer Barretta w/ a Floyd, and it’s flush with the body. All EVH guitars are non-floating Floyd’s. The initial comment was correct, it was Vai and Satriani that popularized a full float.
Eddie didn't put a 335 pickup in a super strat, when he put the 335 pickup in his guitar it became THE super strat.
👍
He built it custom to hold his cigarettes just right.
Ace Freely stole that move from Clapton. Check out Concert for Bangladesh and you’ll see the same practice 👍🏻
ihate names I don’t think he meant it in an attacking sort of way, I think what he meant to say was that Eddie drew influence from Clapton in using that idea. Eddie was a huge Clapton fan after all.
Yeah, Keith Richards does it, too....
What makes the Frankenstrat so funny is people nowadays are so obsessed with "tone wood" and making everything perfect when one of the most recognizable and influential instruments of all time was basically a cobbled together piece of sh*t with leftover parts and whatever Eddie could afford at the time. Goes to show it's the musician, not the instrument.
Different woods do contribute to different sounds but it’s only noticeable in acoustic guitar. You can only hear it in an electric if you’re lying about it.
The 335 pick up is not a piece of shit, lol! But I agree otherwise!
agree, Give me Eddies guitar, Steve Vai's guitar or Yngwie Malmsteens and I would still sound like shit.
@@WeDontWantYourWar Steve vai and Joe satriani both tried , I think Brian Mays guitar.. and guess what… they did not sound anything close to Brian May. Just goes to show . Music comes from the fingers , the individual. Not the gear
Still, Eddie is the same guy that said he regretted carving the teeth in his Ibanez destroyer because it ruined the tone 🤷
EVH's frankenstrat is one of the most legendary and important pieces of guitar history! While looking incredibly a mess, it had some innovative gear setups. Awesome work here!
Nope, Team 5150 here *\_('-')_/*
@@An2oine Ahh I can definitely I understand that choice my man
Not a mess but I know what you mean
@@kerryhyder1980 From an aesthetic standpoint, some might call it messy. But for others, it's amazing and beautiful
That guitar was way ahead of it's time!!!
The yellow and black Bumblebee guitar was buried with Dimebag.
Facts
Almost a exactly a year after this video was made, the Legend became just that... We will all miss our master but he lives on in every guy with a guitar....
Eddie didn't invent wax potting, it's been used in radio electronics for as long as the field existed. Fender were potting the pickups on early telecasters because of experience working with radios. Asking any electrical engineer or technician how to fix microphonic pickups would have yielded a similar answer.
Gibson were incredibly late to the party and Eddie was just doing Gibson's quality control for them.
The easiest source of paraffin wax is candle wax, it's not particularly special or exotic, although a wax that doesn't shrink when it cools is better. There are paraffin wax based commercial potting compounds available, but amateur luthiers often use a beeswax and paraffin wax blend which doesn't shrink as much.
There are a lot of things that Eddie didn't invent that he still gets credit for. That's because he brought it all to the masses. Potting was one of the many things. Just like how he gets all this credit for the hammer ons and pull offs...he didn't invent it but VH brought it to the mainstream.
Rowland Straylight Potting waxes are much better but it’s tough to buy them in small quantities.
Eddie mentioned doing the wax thing with his pick ups in an interview and said he ruined so many pickups by burning them up with the hot wax
@@stevestringer7351 You can't get paraffin wax hot enough to burn up a wire coil.
@@TexanUSMC8089 You can melt/burn the plastic bobbins though.
I looked at the comments to see if anyone mentioned this. I worked @ Ernie Ball/Music Man in the early 90s at the time they were working with Ed to develop their signature guitar for him. The engineers were puzzled as to why they couldn't duplicate the sound of Ed's Frankenstrat. Investigating, they were getting odd electrical resistance readings through the pickup and Ed gave them permission to investigate. They found there was a clean break in the middle of the winding which obviously contributed to the Frankenstrat's unique sound. I remember it was a pretty big WTF moment for everyone. Music Man then reproduced the pickups for the guitars with the same anomaly. I don't know how top secret that was but we weren't allowed to talk about it at the time.
Brian Mason years ago, Guitar World magazine did a piece on Eddies Frankenstrat and they mentioned something similar, however if I recall correctly (and it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong...it’s been years and years ago) it was the Fender Custom shops who discovered something similar when they had Eddies guitar in to be taken apart and measured and poured over so they could begin the process of making the replicas. If memory serves, they mentioned that the pickup basically functioned as a single coil due to the damage or broken wire or something like that. Again, it’s been at least 15-odd years ago or so, so I may have part of that messed up. But your reply definitely rung a bell. :-)
I saw a beautiful comment about Eddie the other day, "One of the greatest of all time, but not to be copied." I think that basically means, no matter how anyone tries, Eddie will never be copied. Even if you can play his licks perfectly, nobody has his soul or his ear for music. Eddie was a true innovator and an absolute legend.
Who cares if you're not playing the songs perfectly, you're still doing a great job!
If you play the song exactly as it was recorded. While still impressive. It’s not getting anything new in terms of soul. So make mistakes add your own soul
Amen that's exactly what Eddie Van Halen said Eddie Van Halen didn't play the parts right didn't play the guitar right he played his way one of the most important things to remember about honey Van Halen cuz he said you play it your way Everyone's an individual the same Riff to be played a million different ways as long as it's your way
Yeah, I'm guilty of not playing a song perfectly. I can get the basics within a few minutes but more importantly is how you sound like you and not someone else.
people get really angry whenever you dont play something exactly the way the original artists played it. Cover master of puppets by alternate picking and you will get lots of angry butthurt purists telling you its all down strums.
@@ashleyjohansson230 and THOSE people can go shit in a hat. If you're looking to play something perfect like it was recorded, great. If not who gives a fuck? I don't
The quarter was for tuning purposes. When you restring a trem you slide the quarter under the trem and slightly tighten the screws on the claw. When you have the guitar tuned you loosen the claw until the quarter roles out from under the trem. There is also a secret he taught me about how to tune a fender trem and not need a locking nut that was passed from JH's guitar tech.
I saw VAN HALEN in 1977 when they supported BLACK SABBATH at the Glasgow Apollo, tripping out of my skull!! I have a very vivid memory of Eddie VH with his black and white stripped Strat firing off crazy lick after crazy lick!! At the time I had no idea who they were or who Eddie was, but it was as obvious that this guy was doing something real special!
When Ed said he used to twist the string as he wound it, I didn't understand it at first either. Then one day it came to me... Those old Strat sustain blocks had very shallow holes for the ball end or bullet end of the string to rest in. IOWs, the ball/ bullet end was right near the surface. So as he tightened the tuner with his left hand, he could twist the ball end or bullet end(he liked Fender 9-40 back then) with his right hand.
Of course, on modern Fender tremolos and most aftermarket trems, this is impossible to do since the string end sits deep in the sustain block. So there you have it. (You're welcome btw. I know it sure ate at me until I finally figured it out). I enjoy your vids btw, please keep em coming.
Tarrell Freeze if you turn the ball end while you’re winding the tension, it’s just going to unwind eventually I would think. I never tried it though. You could put a pin through the ball end somehow and that would keep everything wound up and taught
Ed didn't hold the ball end still, that would CREATE a twist. He turned the ball end as he wound the string to try to avoid any twisting.
The theory is, if a string was under twisted tension and he did a dive bomb, the string(& ball end) could untwist a bit and the string would then be a hair flat. FWIW, He doesn't sound sure it even helped. He was just trying everything he could think of.
That's why Floyd Rose was such a God send. He removed the problems on both the nut side and tremolo side. Plus, Ed decked his Floyd. That makes it sound more like a fat, sustainy hardtail. It also does away with the whole Floyd balancing act and if you pop a string, you can still finish the song.
I've played a decked Floyd for around 35 yrs and I wouldn't trade it for gold. I'm always in the tune and my bands have loved me for it.
@@blazelarson1427 Sorry, I just reread your message. I see you do get that Ed was turning the ball end. Bottom line, Ed obviously noticed that when he wound a string, it also caused twisting of the string. When he turned the ball end, he wasn't forcing it to twist, just the opposite... He was letting/helping the string untwist.
I was doing the same experimentation with guitars around the same time in the 70's.
I never became a great guitar player but I did become a luthier. lol
Reno thats cool could you please explain what would happen if you used a chainsaw to cut a guitar
@@bobpugliese4428 It would ruin the tone and you have to get another destroyer from Chris Holmes to record with the one with the harmonica bridge)
Eddie recorded most of the rhythm tracks on the 1st album with his stock
Ibanez destroyer, which he said he ruined when he cut it up to make the Woman & Children First Shark guitar...
That’s why you hear him using a toggle switch on “You really got me” ... so his 1st album which blew all of us away back then wasn’t his strat at all, it was a wicked Ibanez destroyer. That’s why Van Halen ll’s guitars sound so clean. All the albums are brilliant regardless.
Thank you for remembering that. He said the guitar sounded like shit after that mod which makes me wonder why anybody would buy the new evh model in that shape for 900 bucks
LOL... I know right? When it comes down to it, Eddie was a prick, misleading everyone about his guitar and gear. I remember being like 13 and boiling the shit out of my strings, he could of said, “put your guitar in the freezer” and I would of asked, “how long?”
Young guitar players now would be lost lifting the needle up 100x to get 3 notes. We might’ve all played it a different way, but damnit, it sounded JUST LIKE the album. It was a very special time to be a guitarist man.
@@nonsenseinmyhead9016 Nice! So true
randy ferri could HAVE
would HAVE 🤦♂️
Nice Vid. The thing about the quarter was due to the neck angle. I had an old Circus mag with an article about EVH and his guitars, where he states he had to make a last minute neck change cause he wore out the frets, which is why he uses stainless steel frets now, so when he put in the neck the angle was off and the action was too low. To correct this he had to raise the floyd to make up for that, which left the it in an upward angle and bar too high, thats when put in the quarter to level out the floyd, It was used that way for one show and was corrected later but left the quarter on the body.
This! :)
Patrik Sjöstrand This what?
The pickup was a genuine PAF that came out of his '62 ES-335. Eddie also rewound the pickup himself and according to him really didn't know what he was doing. So much so, it was amazing the PU worked at all let alone produced so much power.
Ed bought the body, which was a second, from Wayne Charvel for $50. He bought a boogie bodies neck from Wayne for $80. He chiseled out the space for the humbucker in the San Dimas Charvel shop floor.
Gary Thomas there’s a lot of evidence to challenge this statement. Eddie always lied about his gear in the early days to throw people off. There’s a pretty solid theory that the Frankie was originally a black strat routed for a humbucker (lots of pictures etc.)
@@charlesperry671 very true. But, Wayne Charvel and Ed were friends in this era, and Charvel was doing lots of early custom works for up and coming guitar players like David Gilmour and Alan Holdsworth to name a few.
Karl Sandoval was also a friend of Ed's at the time and painted the later bumble bee Charvel for Ed. I actually bought one of the batch circa 1980 bumble bee Charvels in mid 1981 before Ed and Grover Jackson had problems.
It's true what you say about Ed guarding his inventions, but there is word of mouth from Ed and Wayne that Ed bought the cheap body and routed it out in the shop floor with hammer and screwdriver.
Only Ed knows.
Gary Thomas yeah true. I never really like talking about the black strat theory or his tone in general because there’s so many different theories, and in the end unless there’s photos of exactly what we want then I guess we will never fully know the stories behind his gear :)
He was true guitar hero to all of us man. He said something I seen in a interview earlier that it was on 5 years ago. He said you may think that a guitar player can’t make it big in today’s time but you can just believe and play play play. That hit home for me. True inspiration. Please do a part two for EVH.
His guitar knowledge and his intense investigation as to how to match what he heard in his head came out of necessity and lack of funds. Very creative dude.
Not playing note for note, that's how I play all the time.
Even Eddie said he very rarely plays his solos note for note , just goes with the feel , Monsters Of Rock interview .
That's what makes it unique to your own talent and style
All Eddie's whammy bar tricks to get it to stay in tune on the Vintage system was not necessary on the Floyd Rose. So his innovations with the Vintage system is more interesting.
I heard that EVH had a dummy neck pickup, to confuse manufacturers, and keep them from making copies of it?
Yup
That's also true ! Eddie didn't like to see people following him (all other guitar players from big groups). The paint job (red-black-white) was done (and a mess too) to stop people from copying his guitar. It became a trade mark... Eddie was also good at telling bull shit to guitare magazines and MTV journalists about his gear in general. He started being honest about it only a few years ago. Finally, even though he was a genius at creating many things on a guitar that became standard features since, his talent is coming from his hands, his ears and his heart ! Eddie Van Halen is a killer !
Kinda but also no. It was originally in a blank unpainted body and used for Women in Love but when he moved it the Franky he didn’t know how to wire it along with the switch, but he kept them there. Originally had a tele pickup in the middle but was taken out in 79 and the switch got moved to its famous spot where it’s been since.
Yeah he said that in an interview when they were manufacturing the Frankenstrat replica. The neck pickup was just there to confuse people according to him.
he didn't know how to solder a three position switch with the humbucker, the single coil and volume pot so he just soldered the pot to the humbucker.
When Eddie came out we all destroyed our strats. I used a hammer and a flat head screwdriver to bang a hole for a humbucker in my Fernandes Strat. I used a Seymour Duncan invader. And spent a long time getting the whammy bar to behave. I used 2 Springs the secret is to get the spring and string tensions identical. I used to detune the strings and then tune it back up with the springs. And plenty of lube everywhere. More than half of the tuning problems comes from the nut.
Retro-fit a Floyd.
Problem solved 👍
That's no fun. Floyd Rose's are pain in the ass. But they are effective. But I hear you. I never did buy a Floyd Rose guitar.
@@guitarocd9984 oh yes lol I totally understand that setting them up is a pain! I have three fiddles with Floyds cause it saves a lotta time if I want to play in a different tuning 😒
They both have their own advantages. I've gotten too lazy to change strings on a Floyd. But of course a Floyd is the only way to go if you are doing excessive whammy bar stuff. We agree. But I do love to argue. But not today. LOL
@@guitarocd9984 What do you mean lazy to change strings? It takes about the same time to change strings as with a guitar without a whammy bar. The only excessive work is the screwing but it takes just few seconds for each string.
You nail eddie's tone in this video, can you share a bit on what the signal chain is from the pickup to the mic on your cab? Great video!
A separate video on the black and yellow "bumblebee" guitar would be good. Since it's buried with Dimebag, could accompany it with Pantera riffs, or have Ola as a guest guitarist!
eddie says in an interview that the selector switch and neck pickup was only put in to confuse people trying to copy his sound
NFE strong that’s what I heard too
lots of stuff like that from his early days when they'd hound him for his secrets. he'd just make things up on the spot then you'd see all the young guitarists looking for like a variac to burn their amp out because he said in some magazine that he ran his really hot.
Ted Nugent tells a good story when VH opened for him a few times and was blown away. During Ed's soundcheck Ted came over and ask Ed if he could play it. Ed said sure, here ya go. Ted said surprisingly.."I sounded exactly like ME.
In 1993, Ted started using Peavey 5150 amps too!
Ted sed you put the magic box away,,lol
Exactly the same with Nuno from Extreme
This actually doesn't prove tone comes from the fingers, this just obviously means van halen and ted nugent play different things. Ted nugent will still sound like himself but with van halen's tone. Its like getting a blues guitarists to play a metal guitarist's setup, he will still play blues style music but with a metal heavy tone from all the high output gain.
love seeing someone else get this geeked out over their passions
I’m digging the EVH tone you got. -- what did you use to get it?
hey man.... what's your rig set up for this video? great tones. you playing this through your Friedman BE50?
The string boiling was also a trick to save money, old time guitarists would do that to clean dirt and oils off the strings, it was felt that they had that “new” tone again.
BB King spoke about this in an interview.
I tried this a few years ago and it simply didn't work. Strings came out naaaaasty.
I’m sure they probably used some additive to the water, something common like vinegar that would cut through the grease and grime and eliminate corrosion/rust. I’m also sure any real results were more than likely in their own heads. Interesting artifact from a time where strings were much more expensive( in relation to income) than they are now.
also John, in the same interview, BB noted that he never clipped his strings, but would wind them all up on the tuner.( he then showed Lucille and sure enough there was a big ball of wire on the pegs) he said this was because if he broke a string he could unwind it and “tie it off” so he could continue playing... that sounds horrifying ( if not impossible)to myself and my fingers. Not truly sure what he meant or how he would do this... would love to have seen him do it though.
an alcohol wipe works wonders while string are on the guitar even.
I remember my brother coming home with the first album right after it came out.
He brought me into his room and put on 'Eruption'.
I was in awe. "Holy shit!"
I finally got to see EVH a few years later.
That cat is beyond incredible.
As a bass player I've been twisting my strings for years. Something I came up with as an experiment, much as I imagine Eddie did. It's a way of preloading them. Once strung and tuned, you loosen the strings one at a time just enough so you can turn the ball end of the string in the same direction as the winds as if you're making the winds tighter. I usually twist 2-3 full rotations depending on the strings. Re-tighten the string while holding the ball and once tightened the tension will maintain the twist. I gave no idea what effect this would have on a guitar string that isn't wound. I don't know why Eddie did this but I found it has an effect on everything about the string's playing characteristics, definition, and tone. I started doing this over 20 years ago and I still twist my strings to this day. Always one of my favorite tricks. ;-)
I just saw "the one" at Play It Loud in New York. It was fun to see it up close. They were my first concert. 1985 album tour.
The string thing... He'd twist the string from the ball end inside the trem block so it wouldn't get twisted along the length of the string as you turn the tuners. Also used a brass nut lubed with 3 in 1 oil and no string trees and the Fender trem only used 2 of the 6 screws to reduce friction.
Yeah, it's obvious, that quarter was there "because it made cents" 7:07
EVH used it 25% of the time!
The pickup selector wasn’t hooked up either, just all dummy wires
My favorite is when he used a varaic to lower the amp voltage to 85-90 volts, he told everyone he used it to boost the voltage to 150 volts.
Classic misdirection lol I read that also in a magazine article so I tried it and destroyed my amp lol I thought THIS was the sound of magic but it was the smell of smoke I heard lol
Aren't amps power rated in watts and not volts?
@@Mickocarbomb Watts = Amps * Volts. Eddie used the variac to lower the incoming voltage from the wall which essentially lowered the wattage of his amp allowing him to get more overdriven tones at more reasonable volume. Since he was constantly playing in a low-voltage state or "brownout" it was called the "brown sound"
Jeremy C i thought thats the one that makes you shit yourself
What is a variac?
The tone in Eddie's hands is, and will always be unmatched. However, it's so much fun just trying to emulate. I think that many would agree that it's GREAT exercise and VERY educational!
It's like a drunk 12 year old got a hold of his dad's tools, and in spite of things being all wonky and terrible looking, it actually works.
This video came out exactly a year ago! RIP EVH
I have two number one guitar heroes : Jimi Hendrix (I was too young to see him or know his music during his life) and Edward Van Halen (my generation 'x' !). That guy made me flip so many times because of his talent, his tone (of course !) and solos... I saw him a few times in concerts. Actually, my 1st concert was Van Halen in 1984 !! It was like a ton of bricks in the face ! It was SO LOUD ! I could feel his guitar in my chest.... That era is over now. Full stacks are dummies... It wasn't then...
Eddie also liked to record rythmn parts with his Ibanez Destroyed Destroyer, too. Another guitar innovator of what we think of as "That Rock Sound" that many guitarists latched on to (and took further), including Eddie: Tom Schulz
The quarter originally served the purpose of propping up the Floyd Rose in case of a broken string. Break a sting? Swing the quarter under the edge of the trem to keep it from going sharp. It didn’t work out so well because it was incredibly hard to balance the tuning between free floating, and propped. It was a hell of an idea though.
Love the tone of your rig. What are you using?
Awesome job. Thank you!
One of your best videos! Lots of fun and interesting info that I had no idea about + killer VH riffs = very entertaining!!!! Keep it up dude!
About the "string turning" - He would put the string through the bridge, and twist as he was tuning, bc when you string a guitar, the strings have a tendency to twist as you turn the tuner. He wanted to keep each string as straight as possible. :)
Well wishes and mojo sent to Eddie as he's battling cancer again.
Yeah.....
(cancer is fungus).
**+Prayers for Edward+** Life would never be the same again without Eddie. I'm betting he is God's favorite guitarist too. Lord our Heavenly Father... please heal Eddie Van Halen. Amen.
:(((
Was, battling cancer...😔
Sadly his battle is over. RIP Eddie.
'best guitar player ever'... when i go back and listen, the reaction is invariably, 'this guy really had it'... hopefully he will successfully battle his illness.. thanks for the vid.
Nice post Robert. Pretty cool stuff, even if I knew most of it. Hearing it and having it explained coherently was a nice change from other videos.
I remember I had a neighbor who painted guitars in this style back in the 1990s he huffed model car glue and paint though
That's an interesting bit about using the quarter to switch between floating and down-only trem; I'd never heard of it, but it's rather brilliant. BTW, it is not at all difficult to keep a standard Strat trem in tune, once you know how to eliminate or at least ameliorate a few points of friction and quickly eliminate slack between the nut and the tuners, while playing.
Dude, just discovered you channel and I’m hooked! Been binging on your videos and they’re all fantastic. You’re a great player and you’re making great content!
Thanks so much!
RIP Eddie! Great segment on his mods, thanks
In Edward Van Halens world the saying "necessity is the mother of invention" applied. He always claimed to have zero money and some things he wanted didn't exist. He looked around him and made what he had at his disposal work. Viola!......a Frankenstrat is born.
My favorite player of all time too. I just geek hard on this stuff and learned something today too... never knew the quarter was initially configured to swing in and out of place. Too damn cool =VH=
He's the man you are one of the few who really have that EVH feel to your playing. I've never been able to get his swing.
@@RobertBakerGuitar Wow, that's the ultimate compliment bro... especially coming from such a great player. You made my day :)
The quarter wasn’t ever used that way. When originally installed it had one screw in the center. Which wouldn’t allow it to rotate out of the way. The screw eventually snapped off and it was gone all of 82. Then in 83 he put the quarter back with 3 screws. Only one remains today. It looks like it moved because Tom Anderson moves where the Floyd was installed. Because it was mounted too far back. The guitar wasn’t correctly intonated all those years. That 1/4” move toward the neck made it seem like the quarter moved but it didn’t.
Sounds great man, Really nice job. What are you playing through.? The riffs retain the Eddy tone and feel which is really wonderful. Cheers
Quick question. How could Eddie spin the string's ball end while tuning it? On vintage trems, the ball end sits in the bridge's tone block. Needle nose pliers couldn't even fit. I'm pretty sure he just manually locked the strings on the tuners the old fashioned way and oiled everything up. At one point, he also had one of the very first Floyd Rose bridges that would lock the strings on it, but didn't have the fine tuners on it.
Wishing Eddie all the best. Get well. You got this!
Bassists have been boiling their strings for quite a while I believe
Not to discredit Eddie doing it! Not many guitar players choose to
@@dylanl4780 I used to always boil my bass strings. Most guitar players don't bother because guitar strings are much cheaper than bass strings. If bass players replaced their strings with new strings as often as guitar players do, that expense would add up lol.
Robert B unless you’re cheap like me and replace your strings only if they break or sound really really dead, I’ve had the same strings on my guitar for two years and they sound fine
Cleaning them with WD40 can spruce up older strings, or keep them 'new' longer.
When I started in music and was to cheap to buy new bass strings, I'd just boil the strings
Great video, man! It’s crazy that you referred to how innovative Eddie “was” and you made this video a year ago...RIP EVH. Keep making great content, my dude!
What amp are you using in this video. Great job, BTW, digging up all those details!
Boiling guitar strings had nothing to do with tuning stability. It was just something poor guitar players did to try to get more use out of a set of strings, by boiling off the crud and grime.
john deaux this is true, my hippie aunt told me this that I could resurrect the strings by boiling them , never tried it though.
Yes. Ive done it with bass strings (because they're so expensive) and it works pretty well. A good trick, especially like in my case- i was in a recording session at night, and the bass just sounded dead and after boiling them it sounded alive again!
best trick to clean them up
@@BillDerBerg Best trick to clean them up is to put the strings in a jar filled with denatured alcohol, close the jar and let it stay for at least 24 hours. That'll give you some more tonal life on your strings.
john deaux Eddie also said that he boiled the strings to take some of the harsher high end out.
I thought the humbucker was overwound by Eddie. Though he did use and SD-1 and two Echoplexs early on.
The Floyd Rose bridges have been known the effect the tone of guitars due to the thin block. I wonder how going from the Strats bridge to the Floyd effected his tone?
An important thing with a Strat bridge is the bearing edge of the holes in the bridge. The better it is the better the Strat stays in tune.
hey man, you have one of the best evh guitar sounds i've heard. what amp are you using in this video and what else do you have going on to get this sound?
Fun fact about the Floyd; the amount of string tension adjustment came from Eddie wanting to be able to switch between standard and drop D tuning. That's according to an interview with Floyd Rose. That's also one version of why the quarter was there; to keep the trem from going out of position when Eddie would switch to drop D during a show.
Yeah he was as amazing for the stealth mods as he was for playing. There is still a lot of mythology and misinformation surrounding his early gear
I knew that the b&w became the r/b/w - do I win a prize? If so I would like the Friedman - k, thanks 😜
If he had figured out how to get that single coil going, his music might have been much different.
I know right? I was thinkin the same about how he would sound and his dynamics and stuff if he wired it right and used it.
Great video, enjoyed the various licks. Please do show your rig setup to get those tones. Looking forward to more on Eddie’s rig and tweaks.
Great Vid and sound !! What amp are you using here ? The Origin ?
i think that the small pickguard was for convience...as ed used his vol pot alot...one could switch out the pot without removing the strings...as far as anything ed had said in the past..he admitted to giving false info about his gear...i also heard his amp was stock...his extra gain came from the preamp on his echoplex...but he did run a variac on his marshall
:)
I love how everyone goes nuts over all the Frankenstrat mods. It might just be Dutch mentality because I've grown up to think like that. My dad is the type of guy that's like, if something isn't working the way you want it to, just mod it, find something to fix it. When I see the mods like the coin and stuff I'm just like, yeah sure, makes sense.
I think it's a Germanic thing , because I do it too .
Interesting vid. Was this through your AXE-FX ? If so can you share the patch for it please ? :)
Wow, you've got that tone NAILED!
The stories one hears! The one I heard went like this(and I claim nothing of this is or is not true, just passing it down) First I need to ask; Is the body an actual Fender? Because the tale as I heard it, was, the guys at Kramer guitar would allow VH to come to their shop or factory, and search through the stock of"seconds" or "blemished" parts and components, then build whatever they could using these parts. This makes the "less than top of the line" parts and haphazard methods used in construction somewhat understandable. Take free parts that nobody pays for that are likely landfill bound, add the craftsmanship of a young guy probably influenced by a tiny bit of alcohol, then he gets to fu**ing around on parts he does not need to be worried about, in the after hours dark recesses of a shop, use a chainsaw tip (way I heard it) to route out the body for the pickups,functional or not, decoys or not, assemble it , plug it in, test it with an aggressive run thru of say,,,Eruption, hopefully with a lightning storm to keep the beat, then raise it up above your head offering it up to the Gods of dead 27 year old greats looking down from above, lightning crashing,rain streaming down your face, you laugh maniac and cry out, "It's ALIVE! . ALIVE!!" After this,WTF else to name this wretched creation, an insult to all the master craftsmen of Fender,Gretch,Gibson etc. than "The Frankenstrat" Thats gotta be how it came to be!! There you have it, my view of the backstory of this iconic mutt, taken from I believe a carefully imaginative effort. One of the "read between the lines" sort. Has to be true!
Eddie has also been known to use Telecaster guitars from time to time when recording. I read in an interview once that he overdubbed a Tele when recording the chorus for Poundcake. He needed a crisper tone to cut though the mix when playing the chorus part. Tele is of course, a perfect choice.
He used a lot of different guitars both live and recording but everyone seems to be focussed on the Frankenstrat.
There's a 12 string electric in that song I think.
1. D. O.A 2.Where have all the good times gone. 3. Women in Love. 4. House of Pain. Nice playing, great vid. RIP EVH!
It sounds great! What amp are you using?
Ed didn’t hate the pickguard. He’s said he wishes he never painted it red.
His tone had to do with proper gain stages from pickup to cabling to eq then to preamp then cranking the bias on the power tubes and going thru proper ohmage cabs for speaker breakup.... blackmore got great tone the same way ( Eddie will never admit it but he's a blackmore fan ) .... listen to Ed's isolated guitar tracks and you can hear the sizzly grindy mids coming from the cabs ..... mids is where most of audio db power comes from. His sound is very hot .... lots of signal
You were shredding at the end ,sounds so smooth
Great video, I love nerding out and building EVH replica strats!!
The Ibanez Destroyer is the original "brown sound".
Finally!! They'll know...
Thank You!!!
That Ibanez Super 70 pickup was the basis for the 78 prototype pickup Seymour Duncan called it Evenly Voiced Harmonics first -> EVH
@@StONed-mb1iv Yep... the truth!
The snare was the "brown sound" not the guitar.
BlueLionProject ... not too many people know this one.
The Yellow and black one is buried with Dimebag Darrell
Subscribed! Legendary player mods. This is the kind of stuff I can geek out on. Thanks for sharing.
That's a sick tone homie! What model are you using on the Fractal?
The “twisting string” phenomenon can be observed if you fold a piece of tape around a slack string and bring it up to pitch. The tape spins because the string twists. There is surely a scientific term for it; it’s the same thing that happens to cables if you don’t do the over-under thing when wrapping them. So Eddie noticed this or somebody told him about it and he would twist his strings the opposite way before tuning up new strings to counteract the twist and (presumably) make them last longer. I tried it once and it seemed thoroughly unnecessary. Haha.
That friedman guitar is stunning. I didn't know Friedman makes guitars
built/ manufactured by Grover Jackson (also running his own brand GJ2)
Rodrigo Negrete they cost a lot but the neck joint is clever.
I read in an interview of ed in guitar world magazine in the early 90's saying the 1971 quarter was to give the orignal fender temelo a better landing spot. The floyd rose didn't need it anymore so he just rotated it out of the way and used another screw to secure it. He kept it because it belonged on the guitar.
Excellent as always - what's your amp/pedal setup here? You're gonna tell me it's all modelling, right... If so, sounds GREAT.