WACF Hybrid Charvel/Dano Star

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Note: I have a used white VEH pickup for sale on my website that is perfect for your replica.. Click HERE to check it out!

And here's some demos of my Star:

My VH Shark

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

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

                                               

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

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

Primed

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

Next came the masking...

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

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

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

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

Note: Having trouble locating the correct size turnbuckles for your Shark?? I already have them for sale on my website! Check it out HERE!

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

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

Note: I have a used white VEH pickup for sale on my website that is perfect for your replica.. Click HERE to check it out!

{Click on image to enlarge}

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

                                              And here's a demonstration of my Shark Replica

VHII Bumble Bee

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

(Above, the Charvel before the Floyd Rose)

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

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

(Left: The Charvel hybrid with the Floyd Rose)

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

I sealed both with Kilz sealer...

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

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

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

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

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

...and peeling the mask.

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

(Below: My First Edition Floyd Rose)

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

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

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

(Click on either image to enlarge)

Note: the picture above is the 3rd time I've painted this guitar!

~Notice the tone control potentiometer hanging around the back cavity~

Here's a demo of how this guitar plays: