DETROIT – AUGUST 13: American musician, songwriter, producer, and inventor Eddie Van Halen (1955-2020) plays his custom Frankenstrat guitar at Cobo Arena during Van Halen’s “Hide Your Sheep Tour” on August 13, 1982, in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Ross Marino/Getty).
You gotta be super into guitars to drop $50,000 for one. And like, SUPER into guitars to buy one for over $140,000. But really, you have to be a bit off your rocker to spend over $230,000 for one single instrument.
But, these things do happen in the music world, and just did happen for some of Eddie Van Halen’s guitars that were sold in the Julien’s Auctions’ annual Icons & Idols Trilogy: Rock ‘n’ Roll Auction. $422,050 was the exact total for three of them, and they were taken home by some of the biggest collectors, investors, and Van Halen fans on the planet. His famous Frankenstrat was one of the three, which is a custom Kramer electric built with help from his guitar tech, going for $231,250. Check out the full story from Rolling Stone Magazine here. His son, Wolfgang Van Halen, isn’t to happy about it though:
The headline should read:
“Three guitars that are striped were sold at an auction for charity.”
They weren’t stage guitars.
I had nothing to do with this.
I don’t EVER plan on selling any of my father’s iconic guitars.
The only place they’d possibly belong in is a museum. https://t.co/npM4TZKWYU
— Wolf Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) December 3, 2020
Enough talking and reading, here’s what you really wanna see – it’s the most epic footage of Eddie playing “Eruption” on his Frankenstrat guitar, plus a couple of other Frankenstrat-themed videos:
How to build a Frankenstrat replica:
How Eddie painted Frankenstrat: