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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

EVH 'Frankenstrat'

I just watched a middle-aged guy on youtube™ take a 25K Frankenstrat and rip on it... I mean, he does sound great... all the way down to the harmonic notes like Eddie. He sits cross-legged, with athletic socks on, with little movement, apart from a cool, calm and focused attention to his playing. It occured to me you can do a lot with very little energy expended...I guess all the extra-Eddie jumping on stage and train-wrecking into David Lee-Roth (the better version of Van Halen...ok, now I am going to get 300+ arguments on that one) was not necessary to the sound so much. These guitars are officially at 25K each. You might EBay one for 23K. If half of the profits go to the artist, and they made 300 of them (officially)... and...cost to build them in parts is around $300 (give-or-take). I guessed 3-days build time (if they do them in batches)...that's 27 hours of the Masterbuilders' time, at $175 per hour... we have a cost to build them of around 5K. So thats 9K (let's say) to the artist from each one... artist-being-Eddie... 300 X 9K = 2.7 Million dollars....this of course is all beer-talk... I have no idea... but part of me needs to work out how my world spins... I know these guitars DO sound GREAT (as a PLAYER speaking)... could I go into a pawn shop and find one as good...it would take 30 pawn shops, and lots of time, and the guitar would cost me around $900. It might not look as good though. Now...let's see... ten pawn shops, walking...3 weeks...5 hours a day..at $12 and hour...including Starbucks on the way.... ..... ....