This guitar began it's life as a Charvel. The body was about the same as an Explorer, but it had a telecaster style control plate, and a Fender style tremolo. Shown in the picture below, it looks like Ed slapped a Danelectro neck on it (possibly the same neck he used on the Charvel Star).
J.F. Sterry, a friend of Ed's offered to make a custom piece of art out of this guitar for Ed. Here's a picture of the backside (sorry it's so blurry - it's the only one I could find). That writing in the bottom left corner is the artist's signature "J.F. Sterry"
My DragonSnake replica was 9 months in the making. These Charvel "Explorers" are so rare, I couldn't find one anywhere, and they are pretty different from a regular Explorer. But I was able to find the proper hardware, so I decided to make the body myself. I started with six maple boards that I picked up at Lowe's
I glued them, one joint at a time, to a 2 inch thickness
Special thanks to a CNC machinist friend, J.P., for designing me a template
I did all the routes by hand, with a regular router
And a bandsaw for cutting the rough shape
And the finer cuts
And then I started carving. Choosing to use hard maple to carve was probably not the smartest idea, but with a dremel tool, sandpaper, and some elbow grease I got the job done
Here's the final carving and the penciled outline of the blue snake
I taped off everything except for the blue snake
I painted a very light purple undercoat.. (it looks more pink in the picture)
And then covered that with a metallic blue
Here it is after peeling the tape.. you can't see the metallic flake in the picture, but it's there and it's very cool!
Next, I protected the blue with a couple coats of matte clear, and then taped over it...
...and sprayed the metallic gold coat
Here it is after peeling the tape
For the backside, I forgot to take a few pictures. I protected again with a couple more coats of matte clear, taped off everything except for the center and the underbelly of the blue snake, and sprayed a satin black
I protected again with matte clear, taped off the underbelly of the snake, and hand painted acrylic yellow
I hand painted the scales on the blue snake next. I used a medium grey acrylic paint. I started with oblong hexagons and wasn't really happy with how they were looking because they would stretch too much with the turns in the body. So I switched to equilateral hexagons and they started looking much better. At that point, I had painted so many scales, there was no way I was going to start over - so some scales in the center of the guitar are a little lame
Next I painted the snake head details
And then I painted the brown snake. By this time, I had gotten pretty good at painting scales, so these came out excellent!
My favorite part of the painting was the dragon - it's not an exact copy of the original, but I think it looks just as good, and it was all freehand!
And finished with the dragon claws and fins
I didn't want to replicate the original artists signature, so I put my own on this one!
I bought the proper Fender neck on Ebay for about $80, and sprayed satin black on the headstock and the back of the neck. I believe the original neck was the neck from the original VHII BumbleBee, before a Floyd Rose tremolo was installed on it
And after some wet sanding and gloss, and then assembly...
There are alot of Van Halen replica guitars out there, and quite a large number of people that enjoy this hobby. However, I am proud to say that, to the best of my knowledge, I am one of maybe only 4 hobbyists that has attempted to replicate this guitar. And to be honest - it really wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, and it came out WAY better than I thought it would! Don't be afraid of it!
Here's a rare clip of Ed playing the Dragonsnake in '79
And here's a clip of my DragonSnake
