This was taken at the Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam in October 2024. I hope this helps anyone who is looking to create an accurate replica. This is the actual Kramer "918V", which served as the backup guitar to Eddie's legendary Kramer 5150. I believe this was together with the "1984" guitar used as backup for the 1984 tour. There were quite a few more backup striped Kramers over various years and various tours but this is quite an iconic one. "918V" refers to the police code for a violent mental patient, which is an interesting alternative to the "5150" police code, which is California's police code for a person deemed to be a danger to themselves or others due to mental illness. Some things I personally noted although I'm not an expert. I have done a 5150 replica so there's a few things that stood out to me. - I was amazed how raspberry red the paint is, perhaps even more so in real life. This is close to natural daylight near a window and taken with a Pixel 8 so fairly accurate colour capture. It will depend of course on your monitor or screen what you see but it was a very nice surprise. - Unfortunately there was no way to get all the way round the back so I can't provide any accurate striped pattern pictures there. I don't think I've seen any out of the case pictures of the back. - This obviously does not have the Kramer Banana neck, but the pointy headstock which is a nice touch. Not sure if I'm correct but I believe the pointy came before the Banana in retail Kramers which is interesting as well. Lovely patina/yellowing of the Kramer sticker! - It's got the slanted pickup much like the Baretta but hard mounted and routed into the body. Note the very close proximity of the pickup to the strings. - It's got the same tape-less black stripes which looks like they were done with paper or cardboard, hence the paint feathering you see, especially round the edges. - Interesting intonation position on the B string. - White stripe on the outer edges going all the way round looks thicker than 5150. Or maybe I'm making it up here! I'll let you be the judge. - Interesting is the strap button at the back of the top horn. No hook. The guitar is held on at the bottom with just a horrible metal bracket and no strap button it looks like. But then again, the bracket probably would have made Eddie laugh! - The string action isn't as low as I may have thought, the Floyd is flat to the body like Eddie liked it so it seems to suggest that's the string height Ed played this guitar at. - The spacetape is as far as I know the same between "5150", "1984" and "918V" and is the same spacetape that you can still buy from the EVH brand. That's the only correct tape, not some of the horrible looking replicas you see sometimes floating about. The star/ice sticker is not a flat sticker but also similar to the spacetape, multifaceted. Perhaps it came from blue spacetape letters and was cutout with a knife to give this pattern? It is the only striped Kramer I know of with this decal on it. And it's definitely blue. - I don't want to nitpick but the plaque next to it refers somewhat inaccurately to it as a "Frankenstein" guitar. There's of course only one Frankenstein guitar and that came well before Kramer and was a true Frankenstein guitar made by EVH himself. Anyway, here's what the plaque says: " VAN HALEN This Kramer "Frankenstein" guitar was acquired by the Hard Rock directly from Eddie van Halen. Easily the most important and influential electric guitarist since Hendrix, Eddie's incendiary technique and effortless virtuosity jumpstarted the entire "shred" guitar phenomenon of the '80s. With it's striped pattern of paint and electrical tape, the "Frankenstein" is among the most recocnizable instruments in rock history." Nod to scotthillcustoms on Instagram for originally uploading pictures of 918V back in 2022 which verified it was indeed in Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe, which made me head straight to it when I first got to Amsterdam. Nod2: Free EVH-esque music courtesty of RockSounds - No Copyright Music.

• published: 31 Oct 2024
• views: 106