EVH's neck pickup in the EBMM "5150" guitar?

[d-bone]

Anybody knows if Eddie Van Halen used a bridge pickup in the neck position of his trans gold "5150" EBMM EVH ?
look at the neck pickup in this picture
(NOTE! Cream coil closest to the neck and black coil with adjustable screws closest the bridge)

http://www.vintagekramer.com/Ed/guitar-ebamber.jpg

This is the guitar that he used on every live and studio performance from 1991-1996 and he uses the neck pickup for a lot of solos and it never sounds muddy.

So what's in that guitar?????????????????

 

[GoKart Mozart]

Hmm...good eye there man. I'm sure that's just part of Ed's ongoing effort to screw around with every aspect of his tone. I looked at some videos and pics and here's what I came up with:

*LIVE RHRN Video: appears to be stock pickup configuration
*Guitar World Feb. 1995: Neck pickup is reversed, like in the pic you posted
*Toronto show from Balance tour: different EVH guitar; has a flame top and stock pickup configuration

So who knows? There's no telling what the heck was in the neck location of that particular guitar

 

[d-bone]

It may just be a revesed neck pup, who knows?

By the way, the Toronto show is great!
It's absolutly the best EVH guitar sound I've ever heard!
(I'm a Van Hagar/EBMM fan)

 

[GoKart Mozart]

It may just be a revesed neck pup, who knows?

By the way, the Toronto show is great!
It's absolutly the best EVH guitar sound I've ever heard!
(I'm a Van Hagar/EBMM fan)

Oh yeah, I definitely agree with you there. I got into Van Halen in 1994, so the Balance tone is the holy grail for me.

 

[hbucker]

I'm pretty confident (but have no hard facts) that he just turned his neck pickup around. I'm not sure what change this has on the tone, especially if you don't ever split the coils. But he does seem like the eternal tweaker. FWIW the Wolfgang has the same, neck reversed, configuration.

I've seen this reversal on several of his EBMM's in magazine photos while he was using them.

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

I would imagine he did it to copy Peter Green's famous Les Paul which has the neck humbucker back to front.

When I had some work done on my Wolfgang, the shop had put the pickup back the 'correct' way round, and it made no difference to the tone at all.

 

[howling wolf]

I think i can help, with a humbucker that has one set of stud poles and one row of adjustable screws when you turn the neck pup around it allows you to achieve a brighter tone.
this is accomplished by the fact that you raise the screws which are now closer to the bridge when reversed like that photo
and in turn gets a brighter tone.
I reverse my neck pups for this very reason as well as it allows me to have the front(stud pole coil) stay on when using coil tapping,
sounds better to me, i do know thyat VH started out with the neck pup normal,he may have gotten curious and turned it around and liked the results like me!
FWIW this is why the wolfgangs neck pups are turned around