Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

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Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by Tone Slinger » Wed Jul 02, 2014 6:12 pm

So much attention is placed on the painting time-line of Ed's Franky, but the more important part (sonically) is its actual construction, concerning wood type and orientation.

First off, I'm making an ASSUMPTION, and that is that the guitar below is the Franky. As Wjamflan pointed out, the pick guard is indeed the one that Ed cut and ended up on the striped version. I think it went from bare (below) to Black, then to the famous stripes. The below guitar is obviously ash and it is obviously the 'Azusa' shape. Comparing the grain, it is not the strat with Danelectro neck in the VHII studio pics(though that body also appears to be an Azusa).

The bare Franky in the below pic is a two piece center seam ash build. I can decipher by the grain that the 'end grain' pattern at the join is an 'A'. Meaning at the join the growth rings get bigger to smaller from the bottom of the body to the top. The VHII 'studio' Strat/Dano neck is center seamed the opposite way ('V' at the end grain join/seam).

What does this mean ? Well for one a two piece, center seam is a preffered construction from a rigidity perspective (counter warping) and Two, it has better 'resonant draw' because the seam is right in the middle of the bridge up through the neck pocket, which are very important areas in regards to resonance. Obviously densities within same species wood affect things too, but the ring orientation is an absolute in terms of effect on sound. So, regardless of ring orientation,tighter rings with tighter curve are denser and are from the upper tree height and will be heavier/denser (brighter), wider rings with less curve are obviously from the lower regions and are less dense/heavy (less bright), etc.

A tree grows up and out. The rings get bigger from 'center out', like dropping a rock in a lake, the rings get bigger. A guitar that has the rings, from back of the body to top, getting LARGER, you get more resonant draw. Its the way the tree grows, a law of nature (physics). The other way (like Eddie's Franky), you get less resonance. The sound will have less headroom and overall bloom. What you WILL get though is a thinner, harder sound with alot of attack (the 'A' end grain seam, like Ed's Franky).

Warmoth ALWAYS uses a two piece body and always use the 'V' join at the end grain seam. This is a sonically prefered ring orientation. Ed's 'VHII studio pic strat with Dano neck' has this prefered endgrain seam.

So, WHY would Ed like a guitar that is slightly thinner,& hard and bright sounding ? I dont know, but assume it was just that (bright, hard attack ). Ash is inherently bright anyways regardless of ring orientation,but there is 'more bloom, less attack' one way and 'less bloom more attack' the other.

The second picture is ( Warmoth) that of a true 'Bookmatched' center seam. It has the 'V' pattern at the seam. The rings get bigger going towards the top/face of the guitar. More headroom and overall 'size' to the sound. The prefered seam.

The third pic (KnE) is converse to the second pic. It is the 'A' pattern at the seam like Ed's Franky. The fundamental sound is thinner and harder/tighter with alot of bite, but lacks the overall headroom and size to the sound. I've ordered/built several guitar bodies with a two piece construction and regardless of the wood species and weight, this is what I have observed, though I didnt initially know why. Musikraft, USA Custom, KnE, Fender, pretty much everybody out there have no ONE WAY. I guess they only consider aesthetics (The side of the two piece blank that looks better ends up as the face of the guitar). This 'ring orientation' thing holds true for one, two, three, etc, piece bodies.

You pluck a string, the mounting screws 'draw' up the vibration/resonance, the bridge plate is engaged, the saddles, the string vibrates according to this and is affected by the direction (orientation) of the rings. The pickup then does its job, but the fundamental resonance precedes the pick up, thats why a electric guitar sounds a certain way regardless of what the pickup adds or subtracts. By comparison, an acoustic guitar is as much about what ISNT there as by what IS. A two piece center seam has two pieces with the rings at an angle when they join right at the most important spots (bridge, neck pocket). You get an increase in 'resonant draw' where it counts the most.


This is a very subtle and nit picky topic, but is decisive. I think that if what I just explained is understood (I know it sounds confusing) and put to the test by others, then the same conclusion would be met.

So, regardless of how good Ed made that Franky sound early on, MOST players 'probably' wouldnt have dug that particular guitar, cause it was a overly bright, hard sound that lacked the depth and sonic width that most associate a great guitar as having. And yes, by looking at the guitar you can pretty much tell (but you can definately hear it on the records & Boots). Not dissing it though, my first KnE Azusa (pic 3) does Ed better than my other guitars, but doesnt fare as well doing other sounds for sure.
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by Strat78 » Wed Jul 02, 2014 8:03 pm

That is the Franky, check out the particular grain pattern by the jack, pretty cool. Oh, and that little indentation on the inside of the lower horn. So much for the burst strat theory. :lol: Man, these are two great shots!
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by Tone Slinger » Wed Jul 02, 2014 8:21 pm

There is a much better blown up version of that pic. Wjamflan posted them in another thread .

Agreed, the Sun Burst was OBVIOUSLY not an Azusa,no way no how.

What is odd is that Ed cut the black pickguard, BEFORE he even painted the Franky. It ended up black and Ed put the White Pickguard on from the Sunburst. Maybe a month (or two) like that. He then taped it and painted it white and put his homemade pick guard back on.

Another thing that Wjamflan has pretty much cleared up that had me perplexed is that Ed had the VH1 cover version of Franky togather by the time they entered the studio (at least by Sept.). I was leaning towards the all black rosewood board neck version for the album, but it pretty much seems the 'famous' B&W stripes and Ellsworth neck were what made the album.
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by rgorke » Thu Jul 03, 2014 7:46 am

I think your theories are pretty sound. I have a Franky guitar that just doesn't sound great. Heavy and very bright.

Yet others sound great and they have different patterns.

So, where is that other picture?
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by Tone Slinger » Thu Jul 03, 2014 8:23 am

'Rog, if you go to the topic 'Pickup Time Again' on page 2, there is a much better pic of it that wjamflan posted. He was the first, to my knowledge, to post those pics. I have built and ordered so many strat bodies that I can tell by looking at the face/top of a bare strat what the grain orientation is. Also, as strat78 mentioned, the grain pattern near the input jack is representive of a knot or in otherwords NOT a perectly straight grain. A little further up from the surface was a branch. So Ed wasnt totally lying. Actually the bare azusa strat in the staged VHII studio shots (Dano neck, 3 single ciils, etc) Also has a knot in the grain near the input jack. It is also a two piece center seam, but has the opposite grain orientation ad compared to the Franky .
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by wjamflan » Thu Jul 03, 2014 9:28 am

rgorke wrote:So, where is that other picture?
Image

Image

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php ... 6&start=15

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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by ffoner » Thu Jul 03, 2014 10:35 am

Tone Slinger wrote:There is a much better blown up version of that pic. Wjamflan posted them in another thread .

Agreed, the Sun Burst was OBVIOUSLY not an Azusa,no way no how.

What is odd is that Ed cut the black pickguard, BEFORE he even painted the Franky. It ended up black and Ed put the White Pickguard on from the Sunburst. Maybe a month (or two) like that. He then taped it and painted it white and put his homemade pick guard back on.

Another thing that Wjamflan has pretty much cleared up that had me perplexed is that Ed had the VH1 cover version of Franky togather by the time they entered the studio (at least by Sept.). I was leaning towards the all black rosewood board neck version for the album, but it pretty much seems the 'famous' B&W stripes and Ellsworth neck were what made the album.
Hi all -

I've been writing my ass off trying to finish the book, so apologies for not chiming in about this sooner.

I wanted to say thanks for the replies in the other Strat thread about the the pinstriping Ed put on the Franky. That's dead on right, obviously and the pix from the 1979 rehearsal that show Franky w/o the pinstriping is the clincher.

So y'all probably recall that we were talking about the fact I had interviewed two old timers from Pasadena and a pro guitarist who saw VH at the Whisky. All of them told me he had a white Strat with electrical tape on it. Then there's also the Wayne Charvel quote. Charvel says Ed's guitar had electrical tape on it.

Here's what Charvel told Rosen:
I don't know. I never knew the outcome of it. He was always taking screwdrivers and really gouging out stuff and dropping pickups in, but that was good because that's the way to experiment. How are you going to find out what works? But anyway, I gave him one body and he painted it white in his garage or something with a spray can, he told me. Then he put tape around it. Then when they got the album out, they surprised me one day. They came up, they gave me this album, their first album, and it said, Special thanks to Wayne Charvel. I was excited about that, but I still wasn't sure if the album was gonna go. I thought, Gee, if it goes, that will be great, my name on an album. Super. But I had 5 or 6 albums at home with my name on it and zero business from 'em, right? So then when they started making it real big, we started getting calls from music dealers all over the United States. Who is this Van Halen guy? What is he doing? What kind of guitar is he playing? We want some guitars like that with stripes on 'em. I told them, Hey, these guitars, the one Eddie did, is painted white from a spray can and black electrical tape on it. I won't paint you a guitar and put black tape on it because it will come off and will look terrible. But I will paint stripes in for you.
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/intervie ... arvel.html

After the posts about the pinstriping, I still thought electrical tape = pinstriping.

But now I think that's wrong.

Here's a quote from an 1980s EVH interview ("The Fountain") with John Stix from GFTPM:
“It started when I got into painting guitars. I bought a wood grained Strat and didn’t liked the way it looked. I went to a Schwinn bicycle shop and bought some white paint and painted it. Then I started putting pin striping around it with tape. Then I said, what happens if I put tape all over the guitar?
Now here's where it gets tricky. He says:
Then I decided I didn’t like the color of it white, so I left the tape on and painted it black. I took the tape off and it looked kind of neat.”
Obviously this would have created a largely BLACK guitar with white stripes. Franky as we all know is a white guitar with black stripes. Black first, then sprayed white.

So I think we're talking about two separate guitars here.

One that started white and ended up with black electrical tapes as stripes.

A second one that became Franky.

Looking forward to the replies. I will check back in later. Off to write about VH's 1977 signing.

Greg
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by efraser68 » Thu Jul 03, 2014 11:09 am

As quoted above, "I bought a wood grained Strat..." could be taken two different ways. Either he's talking about buying a Strat that's already put together (different guitar), or he's talking about buying the body and neck and assembling Franky and just wanted to summarize what happened.

The problem with Ed's quotes is taking them as the gospel. There's a strong possibility that Ed was coming off of his 5th Schlitz of the day on that GFTPM interview and just flip-flopped black paint for white paint. I wouldn't assume that meant there was a different guitar that was mainly black with white stripes.
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by Strat78 » Thu Jul 03, 2014 11:12 am

I also think those quotes from Ed are truthful but he just reversed the order in which the colors were applied. There are those Whiskey shots showing Ed playing the Destroyer while it was still white (remember that it was a natural grain guitar too, then painted white), and the B/W Franky is sitting just off stage, but I think someone spotted another guitar just off stage as well. It was white too! Can anybody find that shot? We can only go by what we see and it seems a new reviling shot turns up now and then like the ones Bill and Eric posted recently (see below). Anyway, I cobbled together those two shots to show that they are indeed the same guitar. Like Andy said, it was pretty obvious that they were both the same Azusa body, but I just wanted to make it even more clear.
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by mapat » Thu Jul 03, 2014 11:43 am

Wow.

Mind blown. You guys have done it again. The mystery of Franky solved!

Insane post to kick it off, TS. I went back and listened to your clips when you first got and put together your KNE strat and it is eerie how, as you put it, Ed-like it is in getting that particular sound.

One question, did you ask KNE to do the A-seam on your body when you ordered it, ie, were you trying to test your hypothesis about the orientation of the seams and how that affects the sound the body ends up producing?

P.S. Threads like this are why this forum is the best ever. :shred:

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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by ffoner » Thu Jul 03, 2014 11:58 am

efraser68 wrote:As quoted above, "I bought a wood grained Strat..." could be taken two different ways. Either he's talking about buying a Strat that's already put together (different guitar), or he's talking about buying the body and neck and assembling Franky and just wanted to summarize what happened.

The problem with Ed's quotes is taking them as the gospel. There's a strong possibility that Ed was coming off of his 5th Schlitz of the day on that GFTPM interview and just flip-flopped black paint for white paint. I wouldn't assume that meant there was a different guitar that was mainly black with white stripes.
Agree 100% about Ed's quotes.

My "favorite" one from that interview?

Q: Did you have any guitar buddies?
A: "No I was on my own. I didn't have any musician friends." :palm: :roll:

Totally untrue. Don't even get me started...

But back on topic. My interviewees and Charvel say it was a "white guitar with black electrical tape." Ed showed it to Charvel in his shop. Charvel built guitars. I think it's impossible to believe that he'd mistake painted stripes for electrical tape.

That cannot be Franky, right? Is it impossible to imagine that Ed bought more than 1 body at Charvel during that span of time (1977). Buys one, paints it white with tape, and then for whatever reason, gets another body and starts black and sprays it because the tape, just like Charvel said, wouldn't stay on.

:D

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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by efraser68 » Thu Jul 03, 2014 12:46 pm

Right, but as someone who's trying to get to the bottom of things, what point or resolution are you looking for? Are you wanting to know if:

1. Franky was once in a state of being white with electrical tape (and Ed showed it to people)
OR
2. Franky was once in a state of being white with electrical tape (and Ed gigged with it)

I think both scenarios are entirely possible in the timeline and then he ended up with a white and black painted guitar with electrical tape pin stripes AND it's all the same guitar.
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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by Strat78 » Thu Jul 03, 2014 12:59 pm

The grain on the Franky looks to be from the very outside of the tree, still the two planks seem to be anything but matched, definitely a paint grade quality body. Franky was truly a mess, I can see how Wayne's first impression could have not been totally accurate. These were rutted professional builders catering to a clientele that wanted everything perfect. Some kid brings in a guitar that looks like it has black electrical tape wrapped around it, with little pen striping (peeling of in some spots), and a hack pickguard, they roll their eyes and that's that. They don't have the fortitude to see the genius and beauty in that mess, but instead have to be spurned on by request for copies. No wonder Charvell was a stagnant business prior to that time, what a bunch of bores. No electrical tape was used anyway, because only masking tape tares in that fashion as seen on the final guitar.

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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by wjamflan » Thu Jul 03, 2014 1:09 pm

Strat78 wrote: There are those Whiskey shots showing Ed playing the Destroyer while it was still white (remember that it was a natural grain guitar too, then painted white), and the B/W Franky is sitting just off stage, but I think someone spotted another guitar just off stage as well. It was white too! Can anybody find that shot?
Phil - are you talking about one of these? Yes I know the 2nd pic is of the Sunburst....

Image

Image

While I'm at it... I saw the indentation on the lower horn you were referring to. What are we supposed to see in the compilation pic you posted?

Also, for what it is worth, the natural ash pic at the beginning of this thread was one that I found on Greg's facebook page a while back.

And although it's entirely possible Ed bought multiple bodies at the same time, I think Eric's 5th Schlitz Malt theory makes the most sense.

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Re: Ed's Franky (beneath the paint)

Post by efraser68 » Thu Jul 03, 2014 1:12 pm

Which wood grain Strat is this? It has some kind of LP or Danelectro style headstock too.
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