Seymour Duncan is treating the hard rock and heavy metal guitar community right. It was just the other week it launched its Iron Maiden signature electric guitar pickup sets, including Janick Gers signature pickups for the very first time.
Now, we’ve got the Eddie Van Halen-inspired Frankenstein Collection – an aftermarket humbucker that nails the tone of the late guitar icon’s most-famous hotrodded electric guitar, and the look.
Well, to be clear, there are four looks, with the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop offering these in four different EVH stripe finishes, including traditional red with black and white stripes, ‘Bumblebee’ black with yellow stripes, black with grey stripes, and white with black stripes.
The humbuckers themselves offer three different takes on the Gibson PAF that EVH installed in the original Frankenstein. These pickup designs all got the sign of approval from Mr Edward Van Halen himself, with the Frankenstein Plus co-developed with the guitarist in 2013.
It offers a hotter take on the PAF while promising the same clarity, and is based around an Alnico II magnet. Seymour Duncan says it’ll give you the “distinctive crisp highs, assertive midrange, and powerful low-end response that are hallmarks of Eddie’s unmistakable sound”.
The Frankenstein Custom is the “faithful reduction” of the original PAF – in other words, it’s a huge component in the sound of those early Van Halen records. And the Frankenstein Classic was another humbucker inspired by those sounds.
“He knew what he wanted to sound like and he was very good at it,” says Seymour Duncan. “He was a good conductor of his own equipment and his own sound.”
Duncan knew Eddie Van Halen from the beginning. If there was a new hottest player in town, Duncan would know him.
“I was listening to Jeff Beck. I knew Jimi Hendrix. Then all of a sudden I hear this young guitar player doing all these cool hammer-ons,” recalls Duncan. “‘Who is this guy?!’”
The world soon found out. These pickups won’t make you play like Eddie Van Halen.They won’t help you find a Marshall with the Brown Sound on tap, or reveal all of the wet/dry/wet secrets of his live rig, but if you’ve got an HSS S-style that’s in need of a power-up, or say, a Stratocaster body you fancy retooling for a bridge ‘bucker, this could be bridge pickup option that you have been waiting for.
Just make sure you’ve got a low-friction volume pot for those swells.
The Frankenstein Collection is handmade in Santa Barbara, California. Each pickup is priced $199. And you can find out more over at Seymour Duncan.
