Building a Frankenstrat: A Tribute to the Late EVH

For the first real post on this blog, I thought it would be fitting to write about something that was killing me not writing about it at the time: building my first guitar. My desire to do this write up was also fueled by an unfortunate event from that year; one of my all-time idols, Eddie Van Halen passed away on October 6th, 2020, just months after I had completed the build in the summer. The guitar in question is a replica of Eddie's famously haphazard Frankenstrat, a guitar that after watching several YouTube videos and learning of the guitar's construction, I figured "Well, I can do that too!". So I did, and this guitar holds a very special place in my heart, not just because I defied my own lack of experience, but because I feel like it's a fitting tribute to one of the greatest guitarists that ever lived.

Now I've never built a guitar prior to this one. Hell, I could barely play guitar as is, but something about the Frankenstrat just clicked. Considering that EVH himself built the guitar out of what was basically scrap with little to no guitar building experience, I felt it was a worthy undertaking, especially since the end result would be one of the most iconic rock n' roll instruments of all time. With my confidence high and my wallet ready, I set off to the internet and began picking my parts.

My main goal with this project was to create a relatively close replica of the Frankie for $500 or less. I was basically dead set on all the actual hardware for the guitar; an EVH 500k potentiometer and the Frankenstein humbucker, and a Floyd Rose Special tremolo to round out the essentials. The rest of the details; the pick guard, the non-functional switch and single coil pickup, the tuners, and a 1971 quarter, I all picked up from eBay. The jack and knob I salvaged from a scrap Squier Stratocaster body I procured.

This left me with sourcing a body and a neck. Now I was super picky about how I wanted this guitar to look, which meant I absolutely needed a body that was cut for three single coil pickups. Unfortunately, the Squier body I bought was not cut this way, being cut HHH instead of SSS despite how it looked with the pickguard on. So I settled for an unfinished mahogany Strat body from a seller on Amazon for $70. More work on my part, but at least it was going to look right.

The maple neck was another story altogether. Initially I wanted a classic Strat headstock like the original guitar, however after being unable to find one I settled for a hockey stick style headstock similar to the one used on the Kramer 5150. COVID had completely screwed up shipping across the globe at this time and first neck I ordered was coming from China, which went about as well as you'd expect. It took three months for that neck to arrive and by then I had managed to snag a neck with a more accurate looking headstock from a US seller. 

While the neck debacle was well underway, I had started work on the body. I realized I needed a router since there was no way in hell my Dremel was going to handle carving up all that wood. So, who do you call when you need cheap-ass tools for a one-time job? Harbor Freight of course! $40 scored a small trim router and a set of bits that made short work of the guitar body, edges and all. 

That left the question of paint, and I settled for several cans of Rustoleum 2X with a gloss clear coat. Now I suck at spray painting; prep, finishing, you name it. Thankfully any mistakes I made would only fit the character of this guitar. The original was far from a custom shop job, so there's no reason I had to get bent out of shape on the finish. The job required five layers: a primer coat, a black base coat followed by white and red layers, before an ample serving of clear coat. 

You have no idea how satisfying it was to peel that tape off and soak in the glorious striping the body now possessed. I almost wanted to keep this classic black and white look after seeing it in the flesh, but I had to take it another level.

Taping this second to last layer was a bitch, with several different sizes of tape and a ton of weird shapes that I had to cut with a hobby knife, but the result was nothing short of spectacular. A little overspray here and there since my tape didn't stick too well in some spots but like I said; it all kind of suits this guitar. After a round of clear coating, the body was complete.

Not long afterwards, my neck arrived and I quickly set to panting it to mimic the headstock on the Kramer 5150. As far as I know the original Frankenstrat didn't have hockey stick neck like this at any point in it's life, but I thought it looked so much cooler than the standard Strat neck that it was worth losing some accuracy points for. After I bolted it all together, I think it was well worth it.

Plugging this guitar in for the first time was an otherworldly experience, especially considering my less than stellar soldering job. I had expected the thing to erupt into flames the minute I flipped the switch on my amp, but instead I was greeted by the mellow hum it normally produced. I gently strummed the strings and... it worked.

While my playing skills would never do it justice, it was a real guitar. The nerve wracking install of that Floyd Rose and my ugly solder job all worked out in the end. The only glaring faults were that the tremolo would not return to it's normal position after dive bombing it and the sound would suffer, but that was easily fixed by adding another spring. The other was that the humbucker was positioned a little too far off center, and my high E string sounds a little quiet as a result, but that too was an easy fix.

Normally I wouldn't call sweating my brains out in my garage during a typical Texas summer to be therapeutic, but blasting Van Halen while I slowly pieced this thing together was a cathartic experience. Yeah sure, I couldn't and still can't play a lick of Van Halen on it but building this Frankie was easily my biggest highlight from what was otherwise an apocalyptically shitty year. Like many other people who had their world's turned upside down during that time, I found comfort in trying something new.