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Eddie Van Halen wanted his first signature guitar to be a scaled-down ES-335 with a Floyd Rose
“I enjoy working with guitars, but I think the next guitar I’m going to get built is going to be difficult and probably cost a lot of money.”
Credit: Koh Hasebe / Shinko Music / Getty
In a now-resurfaced 1980 Eddie Van Halen expressed that he wanted his first signature guitar to be a scaled-down Gibson ES-335.
In a video uploaded to YouTube, Talking Guitar released the 1980 interview, which according to them, took all day to record.
The guitarist spoke a lot about his family and musical influences, and his favourite guitar, the Gibson ES-355.
“I enjoy working with guitars, but I think the next guitar I’m going to get built is going to be difficult and probably cost a lot of money.”
“I was playing a 335 for a while in the band before we got signed and it sounded fine but they told me I looked like Roy Orbison, he was a little skinny punk kid playing a Ted Nugent act,” he admitted. “They told me ‘Hey c’mon man you’re in rock and roll and you look like Roy Orbison. You either get some dark glasses or you get rid of the guitar’”.
“So I dumped that and started playing an [Les] Paul again. This was before I developed a Strat thing. So what I’d really like now to have built is like a three-quarter scaled down 335, or maybe half-size to fit my body. Maybe not quite as hollow.”
He then suggests why he isn’t a fan of the original ES-335.
“The old 335 had a solid beam all the way down [he’s presumably referring to the original long-tenon neck join of the ES-335, which was phased out in the 60s – Ed], they changed the design, I don’t know why. The original design was better. What I’d want is a whole piece down and maybe a little extra wood in there but still like a real semi-hollow to add a little bit of tone. The new one I have now lacks a little bit of tone, it’s too acoustic.”
It might sound like a VERY different guitar than Van Halen’s actual first signature model, the Kramer 5150, which was an evolution of the SuperStrat style he’d invented with the Frankenstein, but Eddie was still Eddie and this wouldn’t have been a stock 335 – “I’d still want my tremolo, my paintjob, my trip!”
It’s a fascinating sliding doors moment for the history of guitar – Eddie clearly changed his mind at some point over the following few years, but the world of shred guitar could have looked VERY different in the 80s and beyond had he stuck to his original plan.
You can listen to the interview below: