After a lot of research and new infos/pictures coming after Ed’s death here is the what i’ve found
For VH1 Frankie : Eddie had a 1963 es 335. This is where the paf from the frankie comes from. In old pictures you can see the early unpainted version of the frankie with a zebra paf with holes in the bobbins. He even said in an interview with jas obrecht that the humbucker came from an es-335. He damaged it and seymour rewound it with black bobbins. Seymour then tried to sell it as the duncan custom because it was the first custom shop humbucker. As David Szabados wrote it in an article from legendary tones : the add was removed you had to call the custom shop to get this pickup. Many thought i was the sh-5, but not at all this is the 78 model. It is 9k however it comes with alnico 2 instead of V. How do we know it is short alnico V. There are 2 reasons es 335 from 1963 mostly had short alnico V magnets. The second reason is that in one picture of the bee humbucker which has the paf original magnet you can clearly see and measure the magnet and it is approximatively 2.25 inches. Those dimensions were used for alnico V.
Specs : 9k, 42 awg plain enamel, 2.25 inch short alnico V, wax potted.
For VH1 shark : the songs in Vh1 were recorded with the stock super 70’s humbuckers you can clearly see them in the clip of running with the devil.
Specs : 8k, alnico 8, poly wire.
For Vh2 bumblebee : It didn’t use a mighty mite as there are holes in the bobbins. Mighty mites don’t have holes in their bobbins. Van halen took a dimarzio super distortion, took the magnet from the paf and swapped it with the ceramic magnet. he covered the coils with copper shielding and then dipped the humbucker in parafin wax. He destroyed 3 super distortions before getting the wax pot right. Those infos were taken from the evh fender website, pictures and interviews. Another thing to take in consideration is that super distortions usually are around 13.5k ed’s one was around 14k4. It is way higher.
Specs : 14.4k, 2.25 inch short alnico v, copper foil shielded, formvar wire, wax potted.
For the frankie after VH2 : Eddie loved his bee humbucker and asked duncan to clone it. Duncan certainly came with variants of it. In a tone talk episode Seymour told he gave eddie many prototypes or variations of what he used or liked. The custom custom was one of the models seymour created with eddie’s ideas, he liked it but he never really used it. Those are almost all 14k humbuckers. Eddie finally settled with alnico 2 and he used it for fair warning and women and children first. This is the humbucker sold by evh and the seymour duncan custom shop (frankenstein humbucker). 14,4k, long alnico 2, poly wire, wax potted. Apparently it is slightly different from the custom custom even if the specs on paper are the same (perhaps magnet charge or lenght ?)
Specs : 14k-14k4, 2.5 inch long alnico 2, poly wire, wax potted.
For 1984 : Dimarzio inspected the kramer 5150 humbucker when they were designing the axis humbuckers. They confirmed it was a damaged duncan Jb which read 180k output. You can read about this story if you look for the pdf remembering van halen in dimarzio stories.
i hope this will help you find the humbuckers you need to play your favorite van halen riffs.
submitted by /u/Guitar_rocks
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