Dweezil Zappa World

This guitar has undergone many transformations in it's day. It started it's life as a Kramer flying V. In fact it's the one on the cover of my first recording "My Mother Is A Space Cadet" I was 12 years old at the time and had only been playing guitar for 9 months. (If anyone has that cover handy please post it). By the way, that was produced by Edward Van Halen and engineered by Don Landee who did the first few VH records. We recorded it at the UMRK studio.

Back to the guitar. On the cover of the "Space Cadet" single it is shown with different colored polka dots. That was my homage to Randy Rhoads. They were actually just little stickers for file color coding. As time went on I got inspired by Edward Van Halen's guitar building practices and decided it was time to make a few changes to the V. The first thing I did was ask one of the construction guys who was working on our house if I could use his belt sander.

First I sanded off  all of the paint. Then I said to myself, "I wonder if I could make this look more like Randy Rhoads V guitar with it's sleek sharp edges." I kept sanding away at the edges of the guitar until I had made sharp points on each horn. I even sanded a cut away at the neck joint so I could reach the top frets easier. Next I got some black Schwinn bicycle paint - nod to Edward - and I sprayed it all black. For real Randy Rhoads action it needed a toggle switch placed on the low V horn. Kuni from performance guitar installed that for me. I think I also got a new Floyd Rose tremolo installed at that time. They were brand new then and all the rage!

It stayed black for a while. Then I got this cool neck from Steve Ripley. He made a neck that was a baritone style neck, extended 2 frets past a normal scaled neck. It meant that the whole guitar would live in D tuning or lower if desired. I put that neck on the guitar. It looked a little weird because the neck was now longer. It didn't have the Randy Rhoads vibe anymore either. I decided to get it painted like Dr. Seuess's Cat In The Hat stripes. Dan Lawrence, an amazing artist who painted the Madonna guitar and the Sheik Yer Bouti guitar painted the stripes for me. Some people think it's meant to be a barber's pole.

Anyway that is how it has remained ever since.