It’s been a long time since my friends over at Fender have been nice enough to send me a new toy to play with, so I get the most excellent fuck off big surprise when I wake up on a Sunday morning to find that I have an EVH® Frankenstein Relic® Series on its way to my front door. Now, don’t get me wrong, I had no fucking idea what an EVH® Frankenstein Relic® Series even was, but I sensed that having EVH in front of a name like Frankenstein that I was in for some kind of a treat!
Three days later I arrive home from my boring as fuck painful day job to find an EVH box on my kitchen table. At this point, I’m absolutely thrilled and keen as fuck to whip this thing out of the box and give it a blast with one of my bands who are all banging on the front door of my studio to let ‘em in. Before I give in, and let ‘em all in though, I crack the box to find a gig bag with the EVH logo on the front over a background of the classic Frankenstrat paint scheme.
When I open the bag, I’m shocked to find one of the ugliest guitars I have ever seen in my life. It kind of reminded me off an old knock off red strat I had back in high school after I destroyed it through lack of care and general teenage stupidity. Keep in mind, I didn’t bother to research this guitar prior to receiving it and I also overlooked the fact that it is a relic? Even the other guys in the band commented ever so gracefully, “what the fuck is that thing”?
Now, let’s not get me started on this whole trendy relic thing that happening right now. I don’t get it, why would you want to buy a brand new old-looking guitar? Is tone not in the balls anymore, is tone now in the relic? Well, it certainly fucking is in this thing and as soon as I started playing it the rest of the band looked up in amazement at the ripping tone that was now blasting out of my full stack Marshall.
Imagine this, I’m standing there with this thing hanging off a spare $5 guitar strap that looks like the wish version of a snakeskin strap, because it basically is, and being the big fat bastard that I am, the guitar is sitting up around my tits like I’m in some kind of Jazzcore Djent band. Veal is definitely not Jazz or Djent, but I decide that I’m going to use this for the whole rehearsal of our 1-hour plus 10-year anniversary show that we have coming up. Yes, that’s some shameless self-promotion, sue me.
Anyway, I blast through our whole set with this thing, a set that is usually shared between a PRS Custom 24 and an AX Ibanez Prestige. The strange thing is, not once did I feel uncomfortable playing this guitar, even though I could almost rest my chin on it. The Heavy Relic® Lacquer neck on it, although feeling and kinda looking like the handle of a broomstick was ridiculously comfortable and so smooth that I could slip up and down the neck flawlessly and the Jumbo frets added to my comfort/laziness by making it quite effortless to finger Frankie.
How does 1 guitar fill the gap for two guitars you ask? Well, it took me a long time to figure it out but the Floyd Rose® Locking bridge is actually an EVH®-Branded Floyd Rose® Locking Tremolo with EVH® D-Tuna® . What that means is that you drop from E to D and back, in an instant! And when I say an instant, I mean it. You basically just have to give it a quick pull and a twist which I’m sure none of you will have an issue with.
So, what else does the Frankenstrat offer? Well, not fucking much, actually. It literally has one Wolfgang humbucker and a volume dial, which for some strange reason is labelled “Tone”. Yeah, I know, the picture shows a neck pickup, but that fucker straight-up doesn’t work. The bastard isn’t even connected, and if it was, it wouldn’t work anyway because the pick-up selector switch is bolted upside down in the centre pick-up position with a heap of dead-end wires coiled up under it. Rumour has it, that you can wire the pick-up in, but why the hell would you want to, you’ll get all you need out of that EVH® Wolfgang® Humbucker, and more!
There is a whole heap of extra notable features to this guitar, you know, some things about “tone wood”, neck shapes, scale lengths and that type of jazz which you can find here: https://www.evhgear.com/gear/shape/strat/evh-frankenstein-relic-series/5108005539#productOverview
If I were you though, I’d just drop by your local retailer and give one of these bad boys a crack. I doubt if you’ll be able to play like Eddie, but you sure as hell will get pretty close to sounding like him with this beat in your filthy hands!
Don’t judge this book by its dinged and scratched-up cover though because this Franken monster might just end up being your new Franken bride. And for all those still searching for tone, tone is stored in this beast’s neck bolts!
