Everyone knows he changed the way we play the instrument. But it’s less celebrated that Eddie Van Halen first changed the instrument itself. By cobbling together the limbs and innards of dead gear, he gave the Strat new life, turning it into a fire-breathing metal monster—a new species, known as the FatStrat. He dared to tinker. And in doing so, he revealed that the wizard behind the pickguard is merely a few wires and solder—not so mysterious after all. Today, Van Halen’s “Frankenstein” is a representation of his ascendancy into rock stardom, and subsequent transformation into a brand, with replicas fetching more than $20,000. It’s a testament to the power of trial and error (not to mention the failure of metalheads to grasp the concept of irony).
But even though Ed did it with trial and error, it doesn’t mean we can’t refine the process. Here are 20 tinkering tidbits I’ve learned so far, with the burn scars to prove it. I hope you find this helpful as you make your own monster to unleash on an unsuspecting audience without breaking the bank. Feel free to leave your own nuggets of DIY wisdom and survival stories in the comments section.
1. Get a good soldering iron ($30)
2. Always de-solder ($1.53–$15)
Unless you’re starting from scratch, chances are you’ll need to remove old solder to apply the new stuff. I prefer de-soldering braid, but they also make cheap de-soldering pencils that work like irons, but with a suction pump. Be mindful of where you leave it when plugged in as they often come without holders and heat up like a mother. That’s how the castle burned down in Bride of Frankenstein.
3. Use 60/40 rosin core solder ($3.95)
It figures that the best solder would be made from the worst stuff—lead. Rumor has it that rosin core is scheduled to be banned, so get it while you can. Always solder in a well-ventilated area, and/or get a good gas mask. If the lead scares you, try heating up some McDonald’s fries with a burning cigarette. I’m sure that works just as well.
4. Use heat sinks and save your pots ($0.99–$5)
Small, copper alligator clips will suffice for guitar electronics work, or you can buy a larger one specifically designed for this application. Either way, before soldering, clip it to the component to draw excess heat away to prevent frying the circuitry. If using the small clips, remove them with needle-nose pliers to avoid battle scars.
5. Keep sandpaper on hand ($1–$5)
When grounding pickups and/or claw wire (for vibratos), lightly sand the hosting metal so the solder sticks. If you’re a fussy neat freak, ring terminals are also an option, available at RadioShack for cents. I prefer the standard method of using the tops of pots, now that I’m getting to be a better solderer.
6. Heat shrink tubing is your friend ($2.99–$14.95)
7. 4-wire humbucker = 4 tones ($20–$150)
Why not swap out your two-lead humbuckers with newer 4-lead pickups? The extra leads will allow you to split the coils, put them in series or parallel, or change the phase with a simple $3 DPDT switch from RadioShack.
8. Practice on cheap parts ($20–$100)
You can get 4-lead humbuckers on eBay from Hong Kong for $20 and fully wired pickguards for under $50. Make sure they are open-coiled. If they’re capped, they’re probably epoxy-filled and unalterable.
9. Install a kill switch ($1.99)
Otherwise known as an ON/OFF momentary switch. It’s the easiest mod to execute (see our how-to here), and will help build confidence. If you mess this up, check with your doctor—you may be a drummer.
10. Save them phone cables (free with purchase)
11. Ask for directions (time and pride)
Speaking of online forums, you can find a wealth of information and support online, so don’t be afraid to join an online community before you start. Chances are, you’ll find an answer to every electronics question, no matter how lame. I’m a member of the aforementioned guitarnuts2.proboards.com forum—they’re remarkably patient with novices.
12. Heavy metal matters ($40–$100)
If you’re a whammy bar enthusiast like myself, check your tone block (the alloy slab through which you pass the strings). If the block is thin, the bridge is crap. Replace it with a steel or brass block. Or, better still, a titanium one, and say hello to sustaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiin. Ironically, titanium is not heavy metal, but the sustain it delivers is pure Tufnel.
13. Don’t fall for pickup sorcery ($10)
Don’t assume ceramic bar magnet pickups suck before trying them. You can find a set of Chinese, single-coil pups that are hotter than vintage ones for the cost of a three-item plate at Panda Express. Leo Fender would be proud to install them because they’re utilitarian and sound perfectly fine. Tone is a matter of variables.
14. Swimming pool or hot tub? ($50)
Check the body’s routing cavity before starting a mod. If you’re modding a USA Strat, the Alder body will be routed for single-coil-sized pups. So if you want to install a humbucker, make sure it’s the right size. Or, buy a cheaper Agathis body with a “swimming pool” route to allow for any combo of pups and wires. Tonally, it’s like Alder, though some believe the reduced mass affects tone. Maybe, but on the flip side, they’re sausage-finger accessible.
15. Invest in a fretting kit ($40–$200)
16. Mini-pots require big skills ($5)
Cheap guitars often come with cheap mini-pots (though not all mini-pots are cheap). On the one hand, they allow room for more switches. But they’re also a soldering nightmare if you’re not a whiz with an iron. I prefer full-sized CTS pots. And I now wear a magnifying visor (see tip No. 19) having blown my eyesight thanks to mini-pots.
17. Switch your switch ($15)
If you play a cheap guitar, it came with a cheap switch. Replace it with a good one. Check Allparts, Stewart-MacDonald, or eBay for good, American-made switches.
18. Avoid the Floyd ($50–$200)
If you own a USA-made Fender Strat, for the love of God, don’t install a Floyd Rose (like I did). They eat tone, not to mention the value of your guitar. Besides, you can sound just as dated with a good Fender bridge and some Big Bends Nut Sauce. (Remember that Eddie went unlocked for the first three albums.) Or check out the Super-Vee system, which requires no extra routing and can be removed at anytime to revert to your stock setup. If you have a Floyd, replace the tone block with a brass or titanium one from Floyd Upgrades, or K-T-S.com. “And watch your sustain go to eleven,” claims Nigel Tufnel.
19. Get a magnifying visor ($5–$25)
20. Remember how it all started (free)
Always refer back to Eddie’s Frankenstein for inspiration. It’s a testament to the fact that you don’t need to know what you’re doing to know what you’re doing. And who knows? Maybe one day, a repro of your hunk of junk will fetch $20,000.
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For the first time in the band’s history, the Dawes lineup for Oh Brother consisted of just Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (left and right).
Goldsmith’s lyrics spoke to me the loudest, with lines like “Well, you can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks / Yes, you can stare into the abyss, but it’s starin’ right back” (a casual Nietzsche paraphrase); and “Oh, the snowfall this time of year / It’s not what Birmingham is used to / I get the feeling that I brought it here / And now I’m taking it away.” The way his words painted a portrait of the sincere, sentimental man behind them, along with his cozy, unassuming guitar work and the band’s four-part harmonies, had me hooked.
Nothing Is Wrong and Stories Don’t End came next, and I happily gobbled up more folksy fodder in tracks like “If I Wanted,” “Most People,” and “From a Window Seat.” But 2015’s All Your Favorite Bands, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Folk Albumschart, didn’t land with me, and by the time 2016’s We’re All Gonna Die was released, it was clear that Goldsmith had shifted thematically in his writing. A friend drew a thoughtful Warren Zevon comparison to the single, “When the Tequila Runs Out”—a commentary on vapid, conceited, American-socialite party culture—but it still didn’t really do it for me. I fell off the Dawes train a bit, and became somewhat oblivious to their three full-lengths that followed.
Oh Brotheris Goldsmith’s latest addition to the Dawes songbook, and I’m grateful to say that it’s brought me back. After having done some catching up, I’d posit that it’s the second work in the third act, or fall season, of his songwriting—where 2022’s Misadventures of Doomscrollercracked open the door, Oh Brother swings it wide. And it doesn’t have much more than Dawes’ meat and potatoes, per se, in common with acts one or two. Some moodiness has stayed—as well as societal disgruntlement and the arrangement elements that first had me intoxicated. But then there’s the 7/4 section in the middle of “Front Row Seat”; the gently unwinding, quiet, intimate jazz-club feel of “Surprise!”; the experimentally percussive, soft-spoken “Enough Already”; and the unexpected, dare I say, Danny Elfman-esque harmonic twists and turns in the closing track, “Hilarity Ensues.”
The main engine behind Dawes, the Goldsmith brothers are both native “Angelinos,” having been born and raised in the L.A. area. Taylor is still proud to call the city his home.
Photo by Jon Chu
“I have this working hypothesis that who you are as a songwriter through the years is pretty close to who you are in a dinner conversation,” Goldsmith tells me in an interview, as I ask him about that thematic shift. “When I was 23, if I was invited to dinner with grownups [laughs], or just friends or whatever, and they say, ‘How you doin’, Taylor?’ I probably wouldn’t think twice to be like, ‘I’m not that good. There’s this girl, and … I don’t know where things are at—can I share this with you? Is that okay?’ I would just go in in a way that’s fairly indiscreet! And I’m grateful to that version of me, especially as a writer, because that’s what I wanted to hear, so that’s what I was making at the time.
“But then as I got older, it became, ‘Oh, maybe that’s not an appropriate way to answer the question of how I’m doing.’ Or, ‘Maybe I’ve spent enough years thinking about me! What does it feel like to turn the lens around?’” he continues, naming Elvis Costello and Paul Simon as inspirations along the way through that self-evolution. “Also, trying to be mindful of—I had strengths then that I don’t have now, but I have strengths now that I didn’t have then. And now it’s time to celebrate those. Even in just a physical way, like hearing Frank Zappa talking about how his agility as a guitar player was waning as he got older. It’s like, that just means that you showcase different aspects of your skills.
“I am a changing person. It would be weird if I was still writing the same way I was when I was 23. There would probably be some weird implications there as to who I’d be becoming as a human [laughs].”
Taylor Goldsmith considers Oh Brother, the ninth full-length in Dawes’ catalog, to be the beginning of a new phase of Dawes, containing some of his most unfiltered, unedited songwriting.
Since its inception, the engine behind Dawes has been the brothers Goldsmith, with Taylor on guitar and vocals and Griffin on drums and sometimes vocal harmonies. But they’ve always had consistent backup. For the first several years, that was Wylie Gelber on bass and Tay Strathairn on keyboards. On We’re All Gonna Die, Lee Pardini replaced Strathairn and has been with the band since. Oh Brother, however, marks the departure of Gelber and Pardini.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is an intense time; this is a vulnerable time,’” remarks Goldsmith, who says that their parting was supportive and loving, but still rocked him and Griffin. “You get a glimpse of your vulnerability in a way that you haven’t felt in a long time when things are just up and running. For a second there, we’re like, ‘We’re getting a little rattled—how do we survive this?’”
They decided to pair up with producer Mike Viola, a close family friend, who has also worked with Mandy Moore—Taylor’s spouse—along with Panic! At the Disco, Andrew Bird, and Jenny Lewis. “[We knew that] he understands all of the parameters of that raw state. And, you know, I always show Mike my songs, so he was aware of what we had cookin’,” says Goldsmith.
Griffin stayed behind the kit, but Taylor took over on bass and keys, the latter of which he has more experience with than he’s displayed on past releases. “We’ve made records where it’s very tempting to appeal to your strengths, where it’s like, ‘Oh, I know how to do this, I’m just gonna nail it,’” he says. “Then there’s records that we make where we really push ourselves into territories where we aren’t comfortable. That contributed to [Misadventures of Doomscroller] feeling like a living, breathing thing—very reactive, very urgent, very aware. We were paying very close attention. And I would say the same goes for this.”
That new terrain, says Goldsmith, “forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do. I’m really excited in that sense, because it’s like this is the first album of a new phase.”
“That forced us to react to each other and react to the music in new ways, and all of a sudden, we’re exploring new corners of what we do.”
In proper folk (or even folk-rock) tradition, the music of Dawes isn’t exactly riddled with guitar solos, but that’s not to say that Goldsmith doesn’t show off his chops when the timing is right. Just listen to the languid, fluent lick on “Surprise!”, the shamelessly prog-inspired riff in the bridge of “Front Row Seat,” and the tactful, articulate line that threads through “Enough Already.” Goldsmith has a strong, individual sense of phrasing, where his improvised melodies can be just as biting as his catalog’s occasional lyrical jabs at presumably toxic ex-girlfriends, and just as melancholy as his self-reflective metaphors, all the while without drawing too much attention to himself over the song.
Of course, most of our conversation revolves around songwriting, as that’s the craft that’s the truest and closest to his identity. “There’s an openness, a goofiness—I even struggle to say it now, but—an earnestness that goes along with who I am, not only as a writer but as a person,” Goldsmith elaborates. “And I think it’s important that those two things reflect one another. ’Cause when you meet someone and they don’t, I get a little bit weirded out, like, ‘What have I been listening to? Are you lying to me?’” he says with a smile.
Taylor Goldsmith's Gear
Pictured here performing live in 2014, Taylor Goldsmith has been the primary songwriter for all of Dawes' records, beginning with 2009’s North Hills.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Guitars
- Fender Telecaster
- Gibson ES-345
- Radocaster (made by Wylie Gelber)
Amps
- ’64 Fender Deluxe
- Matchless Laurel Canyon
Effects
- 29 Pedals EUNA
- Jackson Audio Bloom
- Ibanez Tube Screamer with Keeley mod
- Vintage Boss Chorus
- Vintage Boss VB-2 Vibrato
- Strymon Flint
- Strymon El Capistan
Strings
- Ernie Ball .010s
In Goldsmith’s songwriting process, he explains that he’s learned to lean away from the inclination towards perfectionism. Paraphrasing something he heard Father John Misty share about Leonard Cohen, he says, “People think you’re cultivating these songs, or, ‘I wouldn’t deign to write something that’s beneath me,’ but the reality is, ‘I’m a rat, and I’ll take whatever I can possibly get, and then I’ll just try to get the best of it.’
“Ever since Misadventures of Doomscroller,” he adds, “I’ve enjoyed this quality of, rather than try to be a minimalist, I want to be a maximalist. I want to see how much a song can handle.” For the songs on Oh Brother, that meant that he decided to continue adding “more observations within the universe” of “Surprise!”, ultimately writing six verses. A similar approach to “King of the Never-Wills,” a ballad about a character suffering from alcoholism, resulted in four verses.
“The economy of songwriting that we’re all taught would buck that,” says Goldsmith. “It would insist that I only keep the very best and shed something that isn’t as good. But I’m not going to think economically. I’m not going to think, ‘Is this self-indulgent?’
Goldsmith’s songwriting has shifted thematically over the years, from more personal, introspective expression to more social commentary and, at times, even satire, in songs like We’re All Gonna Die’s “When the Tequila Runs Out.”
Photo by Mike White
“I don’t abide that term being applied to music. Because if there’s a concern about self-indulgence, then you’d have to dismiss all of jazz. All of it. You’d have to dismiss so many of my most favorite songs. Because in a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.” (He elaborates that, if Bob Dylan had trimmed back any of the verses on “Desolation Row,” it would have deprived him of the unique experience it creates for him when he listens to it.)
One of the joys of speaking with Goldsmith is just listening to his thought processes. When I ask him a question, he seems compelled to share every backstory to every detail that’s going through his head, in an effort to both do his insights justice and to generously provide me with the most complete answer. That makes him a bit verbose, but not in a bad way, because he never rambles. There is an endpoint to his thoughts. When he’s done, however, it takes me a second to realize that it’s then my turn to speak.
To his point on artistic self-indulgence, I offer that there’s no need for artists to feel “icky” about self-promotion—that to promote your art is to celebrate it, and to create a shared experience with your audience.
“I hear what you’re saying loud and clear; I couldn’t agree more,” Goldsmith replies. “But I also try to be mindful of this when I’m writing, like if I’m going to drag you through the mud of, ‘She left today, she’s not coming back, I’m a piece of shit, what’s wrong with me, the end’.... That might be relatable, that might evoke a response, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily helpful … other than dragging someone else through the shit with me.
“In a weird way, I feel like that’s the whole point—self-indulgence. And then obviously relating to someone else, to another human being.”
“So, if I’m going to share, I want there to be something to offer, something that feels like: ‘Here’s a path that’s helped me through this, or here’s an observation that has changed how I see this particular experience.’ It’s so hard to delineate between the two, but I feel like there is a difference.”
Naming the opening track “Mister Los Angeles,” “King of the Never-Wills,” and even the title track to his 2015 chart-topper, “All Your Favorite Bands,” he remarks, “I wouldn’t call these songs ‘cool.’ Like, when I hear what cool music is, I wouldn’t put those songs next to them [laughs]. But maybe this record was my strongest dose of just letting me be me, and recognizing what that essence is rather than trying to force out certain aspects of who I am, and force in certain aspects of what I’m not. I think a big part of writing these songs was just self-acceptance,” he concludes, laughing, “and just a whole lot of fishing.”
YouTube It
Led by Goldsmith, Dawes infuses more rock power into their folk sound live at the Los Angeles Ace Hotel in 2023.
