Are these Eddie Van Halen model guitars?
Yeah!
No kidding.
No kidding! It’s not like I want the money. It’s like the reason I did that – I mean, it looks like a Strat, but it only has one pickup in it, one volume knob, no tone, no fancy garbage. It’s painted the way I like ’em, and it’s rear-loaded – you know, it doesn’t have a pickguard. I’m not saying it’s “Wow, the new guitar,” but it is a guitar that you could not at the time buy on the market. So he kind of exploited my idea, so I’m suing him. See, I feel kind of ****ed doing that, but all I want him to do is to stop. I don’t give a damn about the money. But the main reason I did that [built my own guitar] was to have something that no one else had. You know, I wanted it to be my guitar, an extension of myself. Just the other night – Christmas Eve – I went to the Whisky. A band called the Weasels was playing, and the lead guitarist had a guitar exactly like mine. I just don’t understand how someone could walk onstage with my guitar, because it is my trademark. You know, when people see a freaked-out striped guitar like that, with one pickup and one volume knob, they obviously know it’s mine.
There goes your identity.
Yeah. And also, him selling it and advertising, makes it seem to the fans that I’m selling myself. They don’t know that I’m against it. They think that I’m out for the bucks. That’s not it at all. So it’s kind of a drag. There’s another guy too . . . . See, I’ve rewound my own pickups before, and a guy named Seymour Duncan – you probably know him – I got pissed at him too. He called me up and said, “Can we use your name for a special pickup?” And I said no. Next time I pick up Guitar Player magazine, there’s a special Van Halen model customized Duncan pickup. So I called him up and said, “What the hell’s goin’ on?” So he stopped, finally. It’s just kind of weird, you know.
You’re getting exploited.
Yeah. Just say something like.
Where’s a good place to go for guitar parts?
There’s a lot of different companies where you could buy parts. DiMarzio makes parts, Mighty Mite, Charvel. The main person who I buy parts from now is a guy up in Seattle named Lynn Ellsworth. He makes Boogie Bodies. He’s a nice guy.
