“I did everything you could imagine to that guitar to ruin it”: Hear Eddie Van Halen tell the story of his early guitar modding experiments
Eddie Van Halen experimented with modding right from the beginning of his guitar journey. In a new mini documentary shared online, classic interviews with the Van Halen guitarist reveal just how it all began, right the way up to his Frankenstein.
Eddie’s modified guitars all formed part of a quest to find the right tone for him. From a 12-string model, to a Gibson ES-335, and his first ever Fender Stratocaster, each of Eddie’s guitars formed an important step in leading to the famous striped Frankie that became synonymous with the band’s sound.
READ MORE: “I can’t do this. This is too hard”: Why Joe Satriani backed out of a planned Van Halen tribute with David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen before later joining Sammy Hagar’s Best Of All Worlds tour
As created by Icons Remembered on YouTube, the mini doc features interviews and unheard audio with the tap trailblazer, in which he narrates in his own words his early mod stories.
Speaking of his first ever experiment, Eddie recalls how a Univox 12-string opened up a world of adapting guitars to his own tastes: “I remember one of the very first guitars that I went and bought was in a place called Lafayette. It was kind of like a Radio Shack, and they had a 12 string guitar.
“I liked the guitar but I didn’t want 12 strings, I wanted six,” he continues. “So I asked the guy, ‘can I take six strings off and try it?’ The guy goes ‘no’, I go ‘why not?’, he said, ‘if you buy it you can do whatever you want’, so I bought it, took six strings off and loved it, and that was my very very first successful attempt at changing something that was considered standard to my liking.”
A little further down the line, Eddie’s ES-335 became one of his most “experimental” guitars. He’d been playing the model, which was a 1963 Sunburst, for a while with the band before they were signed to a label.
“It sounded fine but the band were like, ‘come on, you look like Roy Orbison’,” he remembers. “That was actually my main experimental guitar, I mean I did everything that you could imagine to that guitar to ruin it, you know? It was too bad, ‘cause that guitar would have been worth some bucks today, but still, I ruined an expensive guitar to learn what I know now of building guitars which I guess is worth it.”
You can watch the full mini doc below:
Though no Van Halen tribute is on the cards, vocalist Sammy Hagar recently kicked off the Best Of All Worlds tour, for which he formed a supergroup with Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony, and Jason Bonham to play classic VH material. For the tour, Satch even modified his own EVH Striped Series Frankenstein electric guitar.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net