“What Les Paul was for Gibson, Edward Van Halen is for Kramer”: Eddie Van Halen’s #1 Kramer guitar surfaces for sale – and is expected to reach $3,000,000 at auction

Eddie Van Halen's '#1 Edward Van Halen Model' Kramer electric guitar from the early 1980s is expected to sell for up to $3,000,000 when it goes up for auction later this year.

The six-string, which was built in the early 1980s, famously featured during Van Halen’s "It's very simply the best guitar you can buy today" Kramer ad, and – as confirmed to Guitar World by Chris Gill, EVH expert and author of Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen – was played for a handful of shows in 1982 and 1983.

This Kramer – one of the first builds the brand and Van Halen collaborated on together – was modeled after Van Halen’s legendary Frankenstein, with a black/red/white striped colorway that mirrors the OG six-string.

As Sotheby’s reports, this guitar was built circa 1982, and was used on stage on numerous occasions throughout 1982 and 1983, in locations such as Philadelphia, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina.

This, too, has been verified by Gill, who confirmed that Van Halen used this Kramer for shows at the Philadelphia Spectrum on October 19 and 20, and for the entire South American leg of Van Halen’s shows in Jan-Feb 1983.

“Ed had injured his wrist right before this,” Gill says. “In fact the band’s New Jersey shows from Oct 15-18 were cancelled. Ed was in the area, so he dropped by the Kramer factory during at least a few of these dates before the tour resumed in Philadelphia.”

Van Halen’s relationship with Kramer, as well as one of his earliest visits to the firm’s factory, was documented in the July 1985 issue of Guitar World, in which brand founder Dennis Berardi looked back on the pair’s burgeoning partnership.

In that excerpt, a photograph of Van Halen working on what is presumed to be this first Kramer model with an electric drill, can be seen.

“It was really strange, the way I met Edward. I was on my way to the 1982 NAMM show in LA, and on the plane I met one of his equipment managers,” Berardi said. “So, to make a long story short, we got to talking about the different tremolo bars and things about guitar design, and he asked me if I wanted to meet Edward.

“I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ So he made a couple of phone calls and that was it. We went up to his house, and Edward got his guitar out – it looked like something you’d throw in the garbage. But that was the famous guitar. So after he played for a while we talked.

“I told him about the kinds of things Kramer wanted to do, and he was very receptive; we talked for about three hours that day. Anyway, the result was that we established the relationship that we still have today.

“He’ll actually come down to the factory and spend three, four hours on the line assembling or testing guitars, checking out different components to make sure they’re up to the standards he wants maintained.

“I guess the best way to look at it from my perspective is this: Les Paul designed a revolutionary guitar for Gibson that made history. The simplest way to put it is, what Les Paul was for Gibson, Edward Van Halen is for Kramer.”

Van Halen would eventually gift this guitar to tech Rudy Leiren, with an inscription on the guitar reading: “Rude – it’s been a great ten years – let’s do another ten. Eddie Van Halen”. Leiren later sold it to Mick Mars, who would put it to use while recording Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood.

The significance of this particular model is twofold. Not only is it directly associated with Eddie Van Halen, and was played and designed by the man himself, it also represents a watershed moment in the guitar industry in the 1980s.

“This guitar is known as the 'Kramer Ad Guitar' amongst Van Halen guitar nerds,” says Gill. “It’s an iconic instrument as a symbol of Ed’s blossoming endorsement with Kramer, which propelled the company to incredible success, enabling them to briefly become the best-selling electric guitar manufacturer during the mid ’80s with sales exceeding even those of Fender.”

Owing to that significance, Sotheby’s has assigned this Kramer an eye-watering estimate, expecting it to sell for anywhere between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000.

That sounds about right: last year, Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher Kramer became one of the most expensive guitars ever sold at auction when it went for nearly $4,000,000.

To find out more, head over to Sotheby’s.