Re: 78 model and Thornbucker + (the same pickup ?) Van Halen PAF.
VH1: SH-5
VH2: '78
1984: SH-11
Mh not quite sure ^^
VH1 are two guitars :
the ibanez destroyer which could have use the original super 70's humbucker or the mighty mite 1300 super distortion which is very similar to the duncan custom. however i would say those are the 70's ibanez pickups because the bobbin of the pickups in the clips are black and they don't have any hex screws. When eddie came to wayne charvel to get some mods he said the guitar was completely stock.
The franky as eddie said : he took his es 335 PAF in the franky. Those humbuckers were usually around 7k-8k with alnico 2 or 5 magnets. This guitar was only used for the trems songs. Eddie damage the pickup and then got it rewound by duncan.
For VH 2 eddie used the bee which had a dimarzio paf which has the same specs as the duncan 59. For VH2 he also used a dimarzo super distortion. What is fun about that is that mr duncan worked for mighty mite which are dimarzio copies. The duncan custom is very similar to both of them.
here you have some proofs :
http://jasobrecht.com/eddie-van-halen-complete-1979-interview/
here is the part about the PAF for the 78 album...
And how many are part of your act?
See, what I do mainly is I use one a year. Like the first year, supporting the first album, I used the black-and-white-striped one. That was actually the original. It was not rear-loaded. It had a pickguard which I cut out myself, and it had an old Gibson P.A.F. The thing I always do to the pickups is I pot them. You dip them in paraffin wax, which cuts out the high, obnoxious feedback. It’s kind of a tricky thing, because if you leave it in there too long, the pickup melts [laughs].
You just heat up some paraffin at home and stick the pickup in it?
Oh, yeah. You just take a coffee can and use the same kind of wax that you use to wax a surfboard. You just melt it down, put the pickup in it. See, the reason the pickup feeds back is the coil windings vibrate. And when the wax soaks in there, it keeps it from vibrating. It still feeds back, but it’s controllable. It’s like it feeds back when you want it. It doesn’t cut out feedback totally; it just gets rid of that real high squeal, like a microphone feeding back.
And you used a Gibson P.A.F. or a copy of one?
A Gibson.
Is that the guitar you had when I did the first [1978] Guitar Player story on you?
Yeah.
Here is the part for the VH2 super distortion :
Did you make a different guitar for your second album and tour?
Yeah. Well, see, it was my idea to have it rear-loaded, so it wouldn’t have a pickguard. Charvel routed it for me, because at the time I couldn’t afford a router. So they claim that they built it for me, which is actually bull****. You know, all they did was that did what I told them to do. That’s the guitar on the second album cover.
What kind of electronics went into that one?
The pickup that’s on the picture is not really what I used. It’s like when we did the photo session for the album cover, I’d just finished painting it and slapping it together, and I just stuck some garbage pickup in there I wasn’t actually playing, just so it would look like a complete guitar. But I’ve tried a bunch of different pickups in there. I took the pickup out of the first one and put it in there, and it didn’t sound too good. So what I did is I took a DiMarzio pickup – I don’t really go for those, because they’re real distorted. See, I like a clean sound, but with sustain. I hate the fuzz-box, real raspy sound. I don’t particularly go for that.
It’s old now.
Yeah. DiMarzio pickups have real big magnets – that’s how they get their power – so what I did is I took a DiMarzio pickup and put the P.A.F. magnet in it and I rewound it, which took a long time.
Van halen is my favourite guitar player. I learnt everything i could about his gear however it's difficult to have the exact specs...
