One look at this bass and you’ll know its inspiration. However, Rick Wilson of Moonshine Custom Guitars went way beyond replicating the paint job from Eddie Van Halen’s infamous Frankenstrat. The four-string tribute takes every little detail about the guitar and its scars into consideration.
“I have painted an EVH replica before, but this time I spent a lot (too much) of time researching Eddie’s original guitar, in the process I learned a lot of small details about the instrument,” Wilson tells us.
The builder started with a lightweight paulownia P-bass body and maple neck from GuitarFetish.com. From there he could whittle them down and modify them to mirror Van Halen’s axe. One key component was installing the tremolo.
“Since I was installing a tremolo I decided to inlay an insert made of oak to support the studs for the tremolo. I also filled the P pickup route and then did a rough route to resemble a Stratocaster pickup route. It was odd to purposely make things look crude but I got into it after awhile. I decided to use an imported tremolo that I bought off of eBay, it was cheap but surprisingly well made.”
“After that,” he continues, “it was all about the paint job; I made it a point to use electrical tape as well as automotive pinstripe tape just like what EVH used on the original. I tried to get as close as possible to replicating the original but I still took a bit of ‘artistic license’ being this is a P bass, not a Strat (and who’s going to really know?) One thing I didn’t want to change was all of the little details that were on the original guitar; this was the fun part, the paint job was only the beginning… There were a ton of details to add, not the least being the 1971 Quarter once used to help the original Floyd Rose tremolo return to the proper location.”
