Frankenstrat

Frankenstrat

Custom guitar created by Eddie Van Halen
Other names	The Frankenstrat
Inventor(s)	Eddie Van Halen

The Frankenstrat, also known as the "Frankenstein", is a guitar created by Eddie Van Halen. Its name is a portmanteau of Frankenstein, the fictional doctor who combined body parts to create a monster, and the , an electric guitar made by Fender. A copy of the Frankenstrat is housed in the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The Frankenstrat was Van Halen's attempt to combine the sound of a classic Gibson guitar with the physical attributes of a Fender. It was made from a Northern Ash Stratocaster body, with pickup routing which he modified to fit a Gibson PAF humbucking bridge pickup. The guitar has a maple neck and fretboard and chrome hardware, and had a different paint black and white striped design until it arrived at its final combination of red and black-and-white stripes. It is a six-string guitar, with a Floyd Rose tremolo.

Van Halen bought the Frankenstrat's ash body and maple neck for $130 from Wayne Charvel and Lynn Ellsworth, who sold Boogie Body bodies and necks. Van Halen was able to purchase the factory second body at a discount price of $50 due to a knot in the wood. The $80 neck had jumbo fret wire, and its truss rod was adjustable at the heel.

The guitarist originally used the Fender tremolo system from his 1958 Fender Stratocaster, adding the Floyd Rose later. He equipped the Frankenstrat with a PAF (patent applied for) pickup removed from his Gibson ES-335, potting the pickup in paraffin wax to reduce microphonic feedback (an older technique). He then screwed the pickup to the guitar in the bridge position, slightly sideways to compensate for the different string spacing between the Gibson's pickup and the Fender's bridge. This pickup was later replaced by a Seymour Duncan humbucker.