Van Halen’s album, 5150 in 1986 was extremely influential to me. While I’ve always wanted to do a project where I made a replica of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar (“Frankenstrat”), it was obvious that his “5150” guitar would be the one I re-create.
The following photos document my project in chronological order. The project took approximately a week-and-a-half to complete.
I first obtained a guitar kit with all the parts and untreated and unpainted parts – luckily, I was able to find a kit that was the exact type of guitar needed for this project. After researching and finding the paint colors that most closely resembled the original, along with painter’s tape and other supplies, I was ready to start.
The step involved doing 2-3 coats of the white paint on the body and headstock.
After several coats, taping the guitar parts off with painter’s tape would be next.
Note: It’s interesting to know that Van Halen’s “Frankenstrat” guitar starts with a black coast of paint, then white, then red. Whereas here, the “5150” guitar starts with a white coat, then red, then black.
Next comes a few coats of red paint…
After taking off the painter’s tape, it was obvious that this project would end up to be pretty rewarding.
The challenging part was doing the black stripes because you have to tape up the entire guitar EXCEPT for the parts you want black. It took some time, but it worked out pretty well.
Because the original guitar was used in the studio and on several tours, it had some serious “wear and tear.” I would have to now “weather” the instrument in order to replicate that look. While I was apprehensive on doing so at first (don’t want to ruin such a nice paint job), I found it to be very therapeutic. I used sandpaper, a power sander, and just a lot of bad touching up of paint.
Adding vinyl stickers from my wife’s Cricut machine to replicate the Kramer logo was next.
Most people know that Eddie Van Halen was a chain smoker for most of his life. He smoked so much that he figured out how to hold his lit cigarettes in the tuners of his headstock – even to a point where he could smoke while performing. It simply took a lit cigarette (from a neighbor who was outside smoking) to burn into the headstock as needed.
At the same time, more vinyl stickers were created with prism paper to make the reflective numbers on the body, and the stars on the headstock.
Finally, putting all the parts together (after also finding the correct volume knob) was a challenge. I almost thought that this project would only be for decoration because the generic Floyd Rose tremelo system didn’t seem to install as it should.
Eventually, it all came together, and thus the guitar is a very accurate and close replica, and a fully functional guitar…
