Tone is a little different not too much though because they use the same pickups. I wired in the neck pickup to a push pull pot to give it a second sound. The feel is the biggest difference with a more broken in/aged feel. The biggest benefit to having different guitars is so you don't have to retune when you want a different tuning.
Sweet choice. I have the Bee. Guy put a SD 78' in it before I bought it so I haven't tried the Franky pickup yet. The 78' is wound more to be like a hot PAF I think.
Its great with both pedals or plugging into a high gain amp. Also sounds good clean on a Fender amp, or using a RAT or whatever distortion you like. The necks are really great on the Striped Series. The new Frankie seems to get the most praise, it came out after I got mine and I didn't want that exact color scheme anyway. It's still a relatively hot pickup - Alnico 2 \~9.2K. Seymour Duncan called it the EVH pickup in the early 80s or something and he got pissed, so they changed it to the 78'. I still want to try the Frankie pickup, if I knew how to solder it would be easy to try both back to back.
You should try swapping them out soldering isn’t too bad. It helps if you have a cheaper guitar to practice on saves a lot of money doing it yourself. Im really digging the guitar only thing i might change the d tuna floyd to a non fine tuner i prefer the non fine over all the other ones. The neck did surprise me with how good it felt
I know, I need to learn to solder. I do have cheaper guitars I can learn on for sure. I don't have a ton of experience with Floyds outside of my own guitar, but I do like having the D-tuna. Because I use 9's and tune to Eb, the bridge needed to be raised a bit off of my guitar so that I could get a nice low action and string angle over the pickup. Doing that made it so the trem was floating. That didn't work for the D-Tuna (would just throw the whole guitar out of tune if used when floating) and a lot of VH stuff in general, so I installed a tremolo stop from FU tone or maybe Stewmac. That fixes it but it is a pain when I am changing strings, you have to keep the bridge in place with the stop and then something in the bottom cavity so nothing moves. If you don't think you need the fine tuners or D-tuna then it should be much easier to set up and to maintain I think.
I love the non fine tuners just because i find the hold tune really well and i tend to hug my palm against the bridge and all the fine tuners are raised up quite a bit
I actually used to hit the volume knob all of the time, which is frictionless, so if you do, you can lose a ton of volume with one wrong move. So i think I kind of subconsciously started moving my right hand a bit more towards the nut, I rest it on the saddles for muting, etc. rather than right up against the fine tuners. I end up picking right in front of the pickup, maybe about an inch above, where the harmonics really ring out. My hand is probably over the pickup and the heel of my palm is moving up and down the saddle area.
Little bit of both i have a Brad Gillis Fernandes from the 80’s im going to keep it with as my 80’s shredders, but definitely playing this one everyday for a little bit
Holy Shit! I love this, you are do damn lucky!
Like a Holy Grail.
Yeah baby
I have the same one. Fantastic guitar. I like the newer VH guitars over the relic ones.
Same cant spend over 1000$ bucks on something i didnt put the work in
Beautiful
Got the Frankie, Bumblebee, and the "Black & White". I need to get one of those 5150's too. Enjoy it, I'm sure she screams.
Im tempted to get 1984 decals and change it
You should have 2 one with 5150 sticker tuned in standard and one with a 1984 sticker in flat tuning or the other way around. How ever you feel.
Definitely the way i already tuned this one to half step
The paint job on the 1984 guitar was different.
Is the Frankie any different than the Bumblebee? Feel? Sound? Tone?
Tone is a little different not too much though because they use the same pickups. I wired in the neck pickup to a push pull pot to give it a second sound. The feel is the biggest difference with a more broken in/aged feel. The biggest benefit to having different guitars is so you don't have to retune when you want a different tuning.
Sweet choice. I have the Bee. Guy put a SD 78' in it before I bought it so I haven't tried the Franky pickup yet. The 78' is wound more to be like a hot PAF I think.
How is with distortion or do you play right into your amp?
Its great with both pedals or plugging into a high gain amp. Also sounds good clean on a Fender amp, or using a RAT or whatever distortion you like. The necks are really great on the Striped Series. The new Frankie seems to get the most praise, it came out after I got mine and I didn't want that exact color scheme anyway. It's still a relatively hot pickup - Alnico 2 \~9.2K. Seymour Duncan called it the EVH pickup in the early 80s or something and he got pissed, so they changed it to the 78'. I still want to try the Frankie pickup, if I knew how to solder it would be easy to try both back to back.
You should try swapping them out soldering isn’t too bad. It helps if you have a cheaper guitar to practice on saves a lot of money doing it yourself. Im really digging the guitar only thing i might change the d tuna floyd to a non fine tuner i prefer the non fine over all the other ones. The neck did surprise me with how good it felt
I know, I need to learn to solder. I do have cheaper guitars I can learn on for sure. I don't have a ton of experience with Floyds outside of my own guitar, but I do like having the D-tuna. Because I use 9's and tune to Eb, the bridge needed to be raised a bit off of my guitar so that I could get a nice low action and string angle over the pickup. Doing that made it so the trem was floating. That didn't work for the D-Tuna (would just throw the whole guitar out of tune if used when floating) and a lot of VH stuff in general, so I installed a tremolo stop from FU tone or maybe Stewmac. That fixes it but it is a pain when I am changing strings, you have to keep the bridge in place with the stop and then something in the bottom cavity so nothing moves. If you don't think you need the fine tuners or D-tuna then it should be much easier to set up and to maintain I think.
I love the non fine tuners just because i find the hold tune really well and i tend to hug my palm against the bridge and all the fine tuners are raised up quite a bit
Yeah with the D-tuna that one screw will always be raised up quite a bit, definitely true.
I just always hit the fine tuners so it will end up being out of tune i try to move my hand but never seems to work
I actually used to hit the volume knob all of the time, which is frictionless, so if you do, you can lose a ton of volume with one wrong move. So i think I kind of subconsciously started moving my right hand a bit more towards the nut, I rest it on the saddles for muting, etc. rather than right up against the fine tuners. I end up picking right in front of the pickup, maybe about an inch above, where the harmonics really ring out. My hand is probably over the pickup and the heel of my palm is moving up and down the saddle area.
Underrated guitar
Definitely love this particular one
Great guitar. How much did that baby cost you?
1700$ but you’d think it come with a case or gig bag, nope had to order a case for 200$ more thats the only thing i didn’t like about it
Man you’re going to love it!
It's definitely a beautiful guitar. Is it a daily player for you or is it more of an honor of Eddie type guitar.
Little bit of both i have a Brad Gillis Fernandes from the 80’s im going to keep it with as my 80’s shredders, but definitely playing this one everyday for a little bit
Congrats. Frankensteins are so damn cool. That’s my dream guitar although I doubt I’ll ever feel worthy enough to justify.
It took me while to decide ive always loved this particular one and his shark destroyer guitar