A guitar icon in fabric.
QC 004 - EVHcaster
I decided to ‘amplify’ my design skills and challenge myself to emulate one rock’s most iconic guitars; Eddie Van Halen’s ‘Frankencaster’. His guitar has an amazing story.
Reproduction elements
This was my first attempt at a stratocaster guitar style. Furthermore, my goal was to reproduce many of the iconic parts of Eddie’s guitar; the masked spray painted stripe pattern, the dead neck pick-up where Eddie couldn’t get the wiring to work, the single ‘Tone’ knob which is really just a single volume knob, the cut-off pick guard with empty holes, the 1972 quarter with several drill holes where he used it as a backstop to level out his old tremolo, the heavy fingerboard wear on the maple neck, and of course, Eddie’s iconic cigarette burn marks on the head stock, where he’d wedge his cigarette into the the strings and jam out until it burned down into the wood. If you want a guitar that screams character - as well as volume, well this is guitar.
Personal additions
I wanted to add my own personal touches to this quilt design. The goal was to emulate the striped pattern as best as I could but with fabric. So for the background I used a bright red fabric like Eddie’s guitar and then quilted it with subtle deep red stripes to give it some texture. Then, for the white stripes I decided to use EMS reflective stripes, a subtle nod to when I was a Paramedic. It created a really cool ‘pop flash’ look when you shine light or a flash on this guitar.
The hardware, body and neck
Eddie’s guitar was a stratacaster style guitar body (although his was not a real strat), the neck is a maple neck and maple fretboard. As you can see Eddie’s years and years of hard fret wear has been emulated to give the guitar an aged feel.
The result
This guitar really forced me to really deal with multiple and unique challenges both in artistic design and historical accuracy. To me the best part of this guitar is the reflective stripes. It’s amazing how little light will be picked up and reflected, even sitting in a dark room a single light beam will make this guitar pop from the shadows. Pretty cool.
I believe Quiltcaster 004 EVHcaster capture that unique Eddie Van Halen look and sound but using a worn ‘quilted fabric’ feel.
QC 004 EVHcaster completed 2017.
