Friday, August 04, 2006

the 5150 went under the knife and came out SWINGIN





S0... I finally decided after 2 years to take the 5150 Kramer EVH replica to the shop. It didn't have very good hardware so it wouldn't stay in tune very long(which is so annoying), and therefore couldn't really be used as one of my main axes. so I bit the bullet, toook it in to "Gear Music" on Oakville, and finally had all the pieces it needed installed so it matches Eddie Van Halen's original 5150 'Frankenstrat' Kramer. Here's the list of surgery she had done on her:

1.I had the body routed out to fit in a vintage Floyd Rose locking tremolo unit with matching neck locking nuts. Now she'll stay in tune no matter what I do!

2. To get some serious monster tones I had a Seymour Duncan " Pearly Gates" humbucker pickup put in. The "Pearly Gates" pickup is Billy Gibbons' ( ZZ Top) custom pickup, and since ZZ Top is the other reason I even play guitar, it seemed like the perfect match. Thick and beefy tones now...pure texas hot-rod!

3. The varnish used on this guitar dried in a yellow colour which made the white stripes look creme-coloured, so I took a very sharp knife and peeled most of it off. Since Eddie's guitar is supposed to look weathered and beat up, the result looks perfect!!! I actually dropped it and that furthermore added the scratches and dings needed to look like his!

4. I custom ordered the '5150' numbers that are identicle to his. Some dude on Ebay reproduces them and I bought them off him.

5. All the pickup wiring and selector knobs were redone.

All in all I think now this guitar looks and sounds like the real thing. I test drove her on a cruise boat in front of 350+ people, and afterwards when I listened to the recording of it I was BLOWN away at how SICK it sounded. LOVE IT!!

cheers,

D