Frankenstrat, Blackie, Number One and Lucille: What Is Actually Documented

Four guitars come up whenever people talk about instruments with a story: Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstrat, Eric Clapton’s Blackie, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Number One and B.B. King’s Lucille. Each has been retold so many times that the retelling has hardened into fact. This guide goes back to what can be checked: how each guitar came together, what museums and auction houses have said about it, and where the sources contradict each other. Where a detail rests on a single account, we say so.

Quick Facts

Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstrat: Built from Parts

The Frankenstrat is the clearest case of a guitar whose story is told with more confidence than the evidence allows. The broad outline is well supported. Van Halen started with a factory-second Stratocaster-style body that cost $50, according to American Songwriter’s 2024 account of the build, and the same piece puts the whole project at under $150. The body came with routing for three single-coil pickups. He cut it to take a humbucker from a semi-hollow Gibson-style guitar, and the piece says his carving and soldering were rough.

The details of the electronics are consistent across the accounts we could read. According to American Songwriter, the humbucker was set at an angle because the Fender bridge’s string spacing was wider than a Gibson’s, and it was dipped in paraffin wax to reduce feedback. A single volume knob is marked “Tone”. A selector switch and a non-working pickup were added to puzzle copyists. If you want the background on why that kind of pickup mattered, our PAF humbuckers explained guide covers what a Gibson humbucker of that era actually is.

The finish and hardware changed over time. The black-and-white stripes seen on the first Van Halen album cover were done with Schwinn acrylic bicycle paint, according to the same article, and the guitar was later repainted red with more stripes. On the band’s second world tour Van Halen turned to a prototype locking tremolo from Floyd Rose, which did not fit cleanly; American Songwriter says he wedged a quarter under the unit to hold it. So “the Frankenstrat” is not one fixed object: the guitar on the first album cover and the one played on later tours differ in finish, tremolo and neck.

Where the sources disagree

The date is the first problem. American Songwriter says the body and neck parts were made in 1975, and Premier Guitar’s 2011 report on the Smithsonian donation says Van Halen began building the guitar in 1975. VanHalenGear, a fan-run reference site that is open about its own uncertainty, says he bought the body at Wayne Charvel’s shop in 1977 and describes it as a Schecter-pattern body, possibly stamped “Boogie Bodies”. It adds that whether the stamp exists is disputed, because no clear photograph shows one. The Met’s exhibition label, as transcribed by the Van Halen News Desk, gave no date. We would treat any single build year as unsettled.

The neck is the second problem. VanHalenGear says the first neck on the guitar came from Van Halen’s own 1961 Stratocaster and not from a Boogie Bodies part. Other popular retellings describe a neck bought at the same time as the body. The sources we opened do not establish a neck-and-body purchase on a single day. Our Eddie Van Halen guide covers his wider career and rig.

Museums, replicas and the original

Two different guitars get mixed up here. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History did acquire a Frankenstein guitar in 2011, but it is “Frank 2”, a replica. Premier Guitar’s report, datelined 10 February 2011, says Fender master builder Chip Ellis copied every detail of the original in 2006 as part of a joint venture with Van Halen, that Van Halen used the replica for most of the 2007-08 tour, and that it came to the museum through a partnership donation with Fender Musical Instruments.

The original was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the exhibition Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll, which ran from 8 April to 1 October 2019. The Van Halen News Desk, a fan news site, reported it as the original and not one of the official replicas, labelled as coming from Edward Lodewijk “Eddie” Van Halen. The sources we opened do not say who owns the original or where it is displayed, and we found nothing dated 2026 that does. For the later signature design that grew from it, see our EVH Wolfgang Standard guide.

Eric Clapton’s Blackie: Several Strats, One Guitar

Blackie is a composite, and Clapton has told the story of its assembly more than once. The accounts are collected on Where’s Eric!, a long-running fan site, which sets out three of Clapton’s own versions side by side: the introduction to the 2004 book The Stratocaster Chronicles, a 2004 interview for the Christie’s sale, and his 2007 autobiography. All three agree on the outline. Clapton found old Stratocasters at the Sho-Bud shop in Nashville, bought them, gave several to friends, and built one guitar from the best parts of those he kept. The friends named in all three versions are Steve Winwood, George Harrison and Pete Townshend.

The numbers shift between versions. According to the same site’s summary, the Christie’s interview says “six of seven” guitars at about $100 each, while the autobiography says six at about $100 each, and the Chronicles introduction gives no count and a price of two or three hundred dollars. In the Christie’s interview Clapton says the pickups came from one guitar, the scratchplate from another and the neck from a third. The sale description, as Where’s Eric! reproduces it, calls the result a composite Stratocaster of about 1956 and 1957. That is why Blackie does not have a single model year. Our Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster guide covers the signature model that came from it, and Clapton says in the Chronicles introduction that he gave Blackie’s neck to Fender as a template.

Use and retirement

Christie’s lot essay for a related photograph describes Blackie as Clapton’s main stage and studio guitar from late 1970 to 1985, and cites a 1985 Guitar Player interview in which Clapton said the guitar had become part of him. Where’s Eric! dates its first public use to the early show of the Rainbow Concert in London on 13 January 1973, and CBS News, writing on 25 June 2004, also reported a 1973 London benefit debut. The retirement in 1985 had a physical cause: in the Christie’s interview Clapton said the guitar was getting thin and the neck was wearing down.

The Christie’s sale

Blackie was the highlight of Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Auction at Christie’s New York on 24 June 2004, an 88-lot sale whose proceeds went to the Crossroads Centre in Antigua. The price of $959,500 appears in a Christie’s essay for a related lot, in a trade report from Antiques and the Arts Weekly and in Where’s Eric!, with a pre-sale estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. CBS News, in a report dated 25 June 2004, gave the price as $950,000, and it put the whole sale at $7.4 million. We use $959,500 because the Christie’s wording supports it. Guitar.com names the buyer as Guitar Center, and it was a world auction record for a guitar at the time.

Where Blackie is held rests on thinner evidence. Where’s Eric! says it has been on permanent display at Guitar Center’s West 44th Street store in New York since October 2014. A Wikimedia Commons photograph dated 13 May 2019 shows it in the Met’s Play It Loud exhibition. We found no source dated 2026 confirming the current display, so check with the store before travelling.

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Number One: A Dated Hybrid

Number One is a rare case where a manufacturer’s staff took the guitar apart and dated the pieces. According to Premier Guitar’s gear gallery, drawn from Craig Hopkins’s book on Vaughan’s final years, Fender Custom Shop staff disassembled it in 2003 and dated the neck to December 1962 and the body to 1963. The pickups are from 1959, which is why Vaughan called it a 1959 guitar. The five-way pickup switch and the left-handed tremolo bar are not original, and gold-plated hardware was added in late 1985 or early 1986. Our Stevie Ray Vaughan gear guide covers the rig around it, and the Fender SRV Stratocaster guide covers the signature model built from it.

How he got it, and where the sources split

Two 2012 accounts agree that Vaughan bought the guitar from Ray Hennig’s Heart of Texas Music in Austin but not on the year. A gear report by Kevin Cochran on the Austin City Limits site, dated 3 October 2012, says 1974. A Guitar Interactive Magazine item dated 10 April 2012 says 1973. Cochran also passes on a story that Christopher Cross owned the guitar first and traded it for a Les Paul, and he notes that he heard it secondhand. It is a single-source story.

The neck history splits in a second way. Both accounts agree that years of refretting wore out the original neck, that a replacement neck was fitted, that it was broken before Vaughan’s death in 1990, and that the original neck went back on afterwards. They disagree on whose neck it was. Premier Guitar, citing Hopkins, says it came from “Red”, a 1962 guitar. Cochran says it came from “Scotch”. We cannot settle it from the pages we opened.

Display and ownership

In 2012 the guitar was on show at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin until 14 October as part of its Texas Roadtrip exhibit. Guitar Interactive reported that Jimmie Vaughan lent it, and Cochran described it as the first public display since 1990. Both are the writers’ claims. An official Stevie Ray Vaughan page lists it among the guitars the GRAMMY Museum’s exhibit would feature on his career, which was announced to open on 12 June 2014 and run through July 2015, with Jimmie as guest curator. As of 2012, Cochran wrote, it belonged to Jimmie. We could not open a museum catalogue record that states a legal owner or credit line, so we would not state one.

B.B. King’s Lucille: A Name, Not a Single Guitar

The first thing to get right about Lucille is that the name moved from guitar to guitar. As told by Time, reprinting an Entertainment Weekly piece from 15 May 2015, King was playing a cheap Gibson L-30 at a venue in Twist, Arkansas, in 1949 when two men fought over a woman named Lucille. A kerosene stove was knocked over and fire broke out. King ran back in for his guitar, and he afterwards named his guitars Lucille as a reminder not to fight over women or take foolish risks. A 2019 news report on the estate sale gives the same outline. The pages we opened cite no contemporary record of the fire, so the details are best treated as King’s own retelling.

From there the name attached to a long line of Gibsons. The model most associated with it is the ES-355, a semi-hollow guitar closely related to the one in our Gibson ES-335 guide. Time says that in the 1980s King worked with Gibson on a signature Lucille model of the ES-355, with a few modifications and the name on the headstock. We could not confirm that model’s detailed specifications from a page we could open.

The Julien’s estate sale

One Lucille has a clean paper trail. Julien’s Auctions sold a black Gibson ES-345 prototype from King’s estate in Beverly Hills on 21 September 2019 for $280,000, against an estimate of $80,000 to $100,000, according to a Fox News report of 23 September 2019 and a Mississippi radio preview dated 27 July 2019. The guitar was given to King for his 80th birthday, and the radio report says its headstock reads “B.B. King 80” and the back reads “Prototype 1”.

The designation is itself a small conflict. Julien’s called this guitar an ES-345 prototype, as the news and radio reports relay, while the Lucille most people picture is an ES-355. Both can be right, because King used several Gibsons under one name and the Fox report says King called it “one of several”. Our B.B. King guide lists the instruments he played.

Compare the Four

How to Read Guitar Provenance

The four guitars show three kinds of evidence. An auction house or manufacturer can document a sale or a teardown, as Christie’s and Fender’s Custom Shop did. A museum label records what the museum was told. An owner’s recollection is first-hand but shifts between retellings. In our view the auction record is the fixed point and the owner’s account is testimony. Our Stratocaster guide and the comparison of the four classic solid-bodies put the three Strat-based guitars in context.

Frequently Asked Questions