This guitar is a commission sale. If you have a high end or vintage guitar you’re interested in selling, please contact us. 
 
Due to the value of this guitar, it is offered to UK BUYERS ONLY as COLLECTION ONLY from our Ashton-under-Lyne store. Specialist courier delivery is available from £75 - please inquire.
 
Here for sale we have one of the guitar world's most famous & rare instruments. The Fender Custom Shop EVH Frankenstein Replica was a limited run of just 300 instruments, produced in 2007. The project was spearheaded by Fender Custom Shop master builder Chip Ellis who took on the project due to his love of Eddie's iconic playing, which was what originally inspired him to start playing & working on guitars. Incredibly, the replicas were produced exclusively from photographs- the original instrument remained in Eddie's possession throughout. Each of the 300 masterbuilt replicas produced was priced at $25000, and reportedly sold out within around 15 minutes of orders being opened. When Eddie received his replica, it’s said he blind A/B tested it with his original instrument & was unable to find a discernible difference between the two. In fact, footage of Eddie & Chip being interviewed exists where Eddie said the replica was even better than his original guitar!
 
A painstaking reproduction of the original Frankenstein Strat that Eddie built for himself in the mid '70s and used throughout his career, the Custom Shop replica carries all of the same modifications, repairs, damage, dirt & cigarette burns that Eddie's original picked up during its life on the road. Short on money & looking for an instrument which was just right for him, Eddie purchased the body from Wayne Charvel around 1977. Charvel was primarily distributing 'Boogie Bodies' parts at the time, and Eddie actually selected a factory second body which had a knot in the lower cutaway, and paid just $50. Originally the body was paired with a '61 Fender neck from a Strat he had been using for some time, but eventually a Boogie Bodies neck with jumbo frets & a compound radius was acquired, although was admittedly replaced several times throughout the instrument’s life. The original pickup Eddie installed was a PAF from his ES-335 in the bridge position. This was mounted slightly offset to accommodate the different string spacing on the Fender bridge. The dummy electronics were mounted in the unused cavities for the purpose of confusing people, masking the true source of his tone whilst also accommodating his rather rudimentary knowledge of electronics. 
 
Originally Eddie finished the guitar in black, before adding the Black & White stripe design for the first Van Halen tour of their eponymous debut album in '78. Eddie added the Red colour around March '79 in order to distinguish himself from his many imitators. Roughing up the surface and painting the red over the top with more stripe designs, the replica shows the sanding marks on just the black & white layer, just as the original does. A prototype Floyd Rose bridge was added in 1980, before the unit was available to buy publicly. The 1971 quarter was added around the same time to ensure the bridge stayed flush with the body. This reportedly did not work as intended, and the coin was fixed down permanently. As this appointment is one of the most iconic & unusual on the instrument, the Fender Custom Shop scoured the land for 300 quarters from the correct year to ensure each replica was as faithful to the original as possible. 
 
The neck is incredibly well proportioned - of course modelled as closely as possible to the one on the original instrument. Certainly on the slimmer side but not as thin as you might expect - there is enough substance to inspire a confident grip whilst remaining slim enough to offer razor sharp playability in all registers. The neck is left unfinished, making it feel tactile & smooth in the hand, even when things get sweaty. The compound radius begins at 12" in the lower frets and transitions smoothly to 16" as you climb the register. Paired with the Dunlop 6100 Jumbo frets, the playing surface is tailored perfectly to the needs of the player no matter the fingerboard position or technique employed. The Floyd Rose is set up just the way Eddie had his - 'Dive Only'. This means that the tremolo can't be lifted, but offers improved tuning  stability when resting the picking hand during playing, as well as preventing the guitar going completely out of tune if a string breaks during a song, allowing you to play to the end of the track. 
 
The amplified tone of the Seymour Duncan EVH passive humbucker in the bridge is eerily close to Eddie's sound. Aggressive & raw whilst retaining a sweet & organic sounding character, the pickup captures the sound & spirit of Van Halen beautifully. The controls are of course kept absolutely spartan, with simply a single master volume control. That said, it’s easily possible to use it to dial in the perfect tone whilst playing - backing off for the crunchier sections of the tune and rolling back up again for the higher gain parts. The level of care & attention taken in the creation of this instrument is clear to see, with everything from cigarette burns, empty screw holes where previous tuning machines were fitted, mismatched nut blocks, finish wear & damage, screw holes under the bridge where the original 6-point tremolo was fitted to the tremolo set up & even the position of the volume control, which reads ‘2’ when set to zero & ‘1’ when set to ten, just like Eddie’s one does. Every inch the authentic replica of the original instrument, this rare guitar with its complete set of original case candy & hand signed documentation is ready to become the jewel in the crown of any true Van Halen fan’s collection.
 
This guitar is a commission sale. If you have a high end or vintage guitar you’re interested in selling, please contact us. 
 
Due to the value of this guitar, it is offered to UK BUYERS ONLY as COLLECTION ONLY from our Ashton-under-Lyne store. Specialist courier delivery is available from £75 - please inquire.
 
Please be aware that for international buyers import fees are not included in our postage and packaging cost, this only covers the cost of the guitar being sent to you. Import fees will be charged by Customs upon the guitar's arrival in the recipient country. Due to Brexit, this also applies to EU buyers. We advise checking the total import cost with Customs as this is not information we are able to accurately provide.