5 Legendary Guitars Rock Heroes Built or Hacked Themselves

Hey everyone, PJ Pat here. The video above digs into the story of the FrankenStrat, the way Eddie Van Halen bolted a Gibson humbucker into a cheap Fender body and chased that Brown Sound because he could not buy the guitar he heard in his head. Classic do it yourself genius.

But here is the thing. Eddie was not the only legend who refused to play something straight off the rack. Some of the most worshipped guitars in rock were built in bedrooms, assembled from spare parts, or beaten half to death on purpose. Here are 5 of them. 

Watch the video: The Story of the FrankenStrat and subscribe on the Rock with PJ Pat channel for more rock breakdowns.

1. Brian May built the Red Special with his dad out of a fireplace

Queen's Brian May plays one of the most distinctive guitars in history, and he made it as a teenager with his father Harold at the kitchen table. They started around 1963 because the family could not afford a proper electric. The neck was carved from a mahogany fireplace mantel that a friend was throwing out. The body was built up from blockboard and oak. The tremolo used valve springs from an old motorbike and knife edges made from hardened steel. Brian even used a sixpence coin as a pick because it gave him more attack than a flimsy plastic one. The whole thing cost a few pounds. That homemade guitar made every Queen record, from "Bohemian Rhapsody" to "We Will Rock You." Sixty years later it is still his number one. Not bad for a fireplace.

2. Eric Clapton's "Blackie" was Frankensteined from a pile of old Strats

In 1970 Clapton walked into a Nashville guitar shop and bought a stack of used 1950s Stratocasters for next to nothing, the kind of vintage gold that would cost a fortune today. He handed a couple to his pals George Harrison and Pete Townshend, then took the best pieces from the rest, one body, one neck, the best pickups, and assembled them into a single black Strat he nicknamed Blackie. That hybrid became his main guitar through the 1970s and 1980s and is all over "Cocaine" and the Slowhand era. The kicker. When Clapton finally auctioned Blackie in 2004 for his Crossroads charity, it sold for nearly a million dollars. A guitar he built from leftovers became the most expensive Strat on earth.

3. Tom Morello's "Arm the Homeless" started as a total failure

The Rage Against the Machine guitarist makes some of the most alien sounds in rock, and his main weapon is a parts guitar he had a luthier build for him in the late 1980s. The first version was such a disaster that Morello kept swapping out everything, the neck, the pickups, the electronics, until almost nothing original remained. He scrawled "Arm the Homeless" on the body with a paint pen as a political statement and added a couple of hippo and elephant graphics. It looks like a yard sale reject. It also made "Killing in the Name" and "Bulls on Parade," where that guitar mimics a DJ scratching with nothing but a toggle switch and a whammy pedal. Proof that the magic is in the hands, not the price tag.

4. Neil Young has played the same hacked 1953 Les Paul for over 50 years

Neil Young calls his main electric "Old Black," and it is a heavily butchered 1953 Gibson Les Paul that some previous owner painted black before Neil ever got it. Neil kept hacking. He jammed a Bigsby vibrato on it, which fights him constantly and is part of why his playing sounds so wild and unstable. He swapped a Firebird pickup into the bridge for that screaming tone. He even wired in a toggle that bypasses everything and slams the signal straight to the amp at full blast. Old Black is temperamental, half broken, and impossible to copy, which is exactly why every note Neil plays on "Cortez the Killer" or "Hey Hey, My My" sounds like nobody else. A perfect guitar would ruin him.

5. Willie Nelson played a hole clean through "Trigger"

Not every hack is a mod. Sometimes you just love a guitar to death. Willie Nelson bought a Martin N-20 nylon string classical guitar in 1969 for around 750 dollars, named it Trigger after Roy Rogers' horse, and never looked back. Here is the catch. A classical guitar is built to be played with fingers, not a pick, and Willie plays it hard. Over the decades he literally wore a large hole through the spruce top right next to the bridge. Most players would have retired it. Willie just kept going, adding the signatures of hundreds of friends and heroes scratched into the wood. That battered guitar with a hole in it is one of the most recognizable instruments in American music. Sometimes the hack is just refusing to let go.

More guitar lore on What Rocks: Slash's Band Collection, 7 Wild Billy Gibbons Stories, and 7 Wild U2 Stories.

Wear it loud

If you ride for the players who built their own legend, gear up like one. Two picks for you:

Rock Hand Sign Graphic Tee →
For everyone who knows the best tone comes from the player, not the price tag.

Volume Knob Rock Baseball Cap →
The quiet Spinal Tap nod that gearheads clock from across the room.

There you go. That is 5 guitars that started as fireplaces, spare parts, paint pen statements, and well loved wrecks, and ended up as some of the most worshipped instruments in rock. Eddie's FrankenStrat is in great company. The lesson is always the same. The legends did not wait for the perfect guitar. They built it.

If you missed the FrankenStrat video, the embed is right at the top of this post. Subscribe to the Rock with PJ Pat YouTube channel for more rock breakdowns.

Got a guitar or a band you want me to dig into next? Hit me on YouTube, Facebook, or drop me a message at its1louder.com. Always reading.

Crank it up 1 louder.

PJ Pat