You know Eddie Van Halen as the rock guitar god that he was. You may know him as the tinkerer who built his Frankenstrat piece by piece. You may even know him as the guy who pioneered using attenuators on amplifiers.
But did you know that he was also a bit of a mad scientist?
That’s right, Edward Lodewijk van Halen: rock star by day, serial inventor by night. Okay, maybe that’s the other way around. But the point still stands — EVH held multiple US patents.
Look, Ma, no hands!
The most well-known invention — besides the Frankenstrat — Eddie created was Patent No. 4,656,917. This device was a flip-out support system that could be attached to a guitar. It was basically a support that rested against the guitarist’s body and provided a solid foundation for the guitar.
Eddie came up with the idea to facilitate the tapping technique he popularized (but ironically didn’t invent!). The device positioned the guitar strings up, allowing the player to use both hands to play the instrument almost like a piano.
While Eddie certainly used tapping to an extreme in his music, it’s hard to know if he ever used his invention. At least, I couldn’t find any evidence that he did.
The tension is killing me
Eddie wasn’t satisfied with just one invention. Another EVH creation was Patent No. US7183475B2. This was a specialized tailpiece for a guitar that could alter string tension for an individual string.
Simply put, the tailpiece had a small lever with two settings or positions. In the first position, the string is tuned normally. When the level is moved to the second position, the string tension lessens, and a lower note sounds.
The easiest way to think about this to imagine you installed it on your guitar with the lever controlling the low E string. You would be able to change from standard to dropped D tuning literally with the flip of a switch.
Interestingly, many decades before Van Halen came up with this idea, banjoist Earl Scruggs used a mechanism on his instrument’s headstock to achieve a similar idea.
Why not pick up another patent, Eddie?
A third patent that Eddie had his hands in was Patent No. US20180102121A1, a unique humbucker pickup design. The design was actually created by a team of people, of whom EVH was one.
The main difference between this humbucker and any other is the orientation of the coils, which are turned on their sides as compared to “normal” pickups.
Unfortunately, the patent application seems not to explain the advantages of this method, and I’m not aware of any guitar ever having used this pickup.
(They also filed an application for USD817385S1, which was the ornamental design for the pickup.)
His legacy lives on
While sadly, we lost Eddie in 2020, his legacy lives on — not only in his music, but also with his inventions and patents.
RIP, Eddie.
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