
Eddie Van Halen Talks Building the Frankenstein, Honing the 5150 and EVH Gear - 6stringmerc
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/eddie-van-halen-talks-building-the-frankenstein-honing-the-5150-and-evh-gear-641564
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6stringmerc
Fortunately this seems to be quite focused on talking gear and that sort of
thing, not talking about music opinions or current events. To me it makes it a
better article:

> _So a lot of it came out of solving problems?

“Yeah, a lot of it was through necessity and just mistakes. A lot of
accidents. Like the one-pickup thing wasn’t intentional. I just didn’t know
how to wire it back up to the five-position toggle switch, it was just too
complicated!_

& this one:

> _“Then I went ‘Ding! I wonder what’ll happen if I hook my main amp up to the
> light dimmer in the house?!’ Of course, I blew out all the fuses in the
> house because I wired it backwards, but once I figured it out, I went down
> to an electronics store and asked ‘Do you guys sell an industrial type of
> variable voltage regulator?’ and they go ‘Yeah, here you go!’ It was called
> a Variac._

Gems like that really seem to align with the hacker ethos of diving in
sometimes and still being ignorant enough to have room to learn over time.

