Lynn Ellsworth, a renowned guitar-maker whose work was purchased and played by some of the biggest rock ‘n’ roll musicians of the last several decades, died April 27. He was 81.
His instruments were played by guitar legends ranging from Pete Townshend to Eric Clapton to Joe Walsh to Billy Gibbons. But it was Ellsworth’s tie to one of the most famous instruments of all time — Eddie Van Halen’s completely beat-up, red-and-white-striped guitar, often referred to as “Frankenstrat” — that helped make the Washington man’s custom guitars such highly sought-after instruments.
Van Halen purchased a guitar body made by Ellsworth long before his namesake band hit it big. The beloved “Frankenstrat” is made of parts from different guitars — like a musical version of the scientist’s fictional creature.
On the cover of Van Halen’s 1978 debut album, Eddie Van Halen is holding a white guitar with black stripes that looks a lot like a Stratocaster. Except it wasn’t a Fender Stratocaster. It was the guitar body Ellsworth had crafted. It also was the guitar Eddie Van Halen played on the album.
Van Halen loved to modify that guitar, and even painted it several different ways before it ended up primarily red with black-and-white stripes.
Ellsworth’s Eastern Ash guitar body was a key part of an instrument so famous that a copy is in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
The guitar was “locked down and safe in a way that if the world ended it would still be OK,” said Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie’s son, in a recent interview.
Ellsworth retired in 2012, but he never stopped making guitars.
Many guitarists across the Pacific Northwest considered Ellsworth a friend, someone who would talk with them for hours. It wasn’t unusual for him to show up at local shows, to hear guitarists play the instruments he made for them.
“He always had a way of making me feel good when I’d see him, but that was Lynn. That’s how he was,” said his friend Pat Barclay, a community access specialist.
Before they met about five years ago at a show, Barclay knew Ellsworth as a premier maker of the Fender Stratocaster-type electric guitar and the co-founder of the renowned company Boogie Bodies Guitars.
Ellsworth teamed up with another luthier pioneer, Wayne Charvel, to create the company in 1976. Ellsworth specialized in making guitar bodies from his shop in Puyallup and shipped them to Charvel to finish.
At the time, other companies were ramping up mass production of lower quality guitars, which led to the rise of Boogie Bodies as one of the first companies to offer replacement parts.
This led to “hot-rodding,” which is when a guitarist replaces stock parts of an instrument with nicer pieces to make it more powerful and attractive.
Though the company earned widespread recognition, it fizzled around 1980.
But Ellsworth continued making custom guitars. As many luthiers do, he would attend shows to try to get his creations noticed by worthy guitarists.
Whether at live shows, bellying up at a bar or spending time with Barclay’s clients, Barclay connected with Ellsworth as they shared stories from their younger years.
Barclay would share interesting anecdotes about his days of touring with B.B. King, Martha and the Vandellas, and Boz Scaggs.
And Ellsworth would share about his relationship with some of rock ‘n’ roll’s greats.
It impressed Barclay that although Ellsworth’s health declined during a long struggle with diabetes, he made it to many local shows in his later years.
More impressively, Barclay said, Ellsworth never eased up from what Barclay cherished most about his relationship with his dear friend: their degrading, yet loving, banter.
“We are always giving each other trouble,” he said. “My most fun with Lynn was targeting each other back and forth like that because we were good at it.”
Another Spokane guitarist, Cary Fly, said referring to each other with profanities was endearing. It was somewhat of a “secret language,” he said.
“That meant I love you. That’s how we was: a gruff, grumpy guy,” Fly said. “But right underneath that was the biggest aquifer of love and tenderness and empathy — like an M&M.”
Ellsworth first introduced himself to the blues musician and vocalist at a venue in Seattle in 1971.
“He brought me two guitars, one of which was made out of a toilet seat,” Fly said with a long-lasting chuckle. “He was groovy.”
Ellsworth would bring two guitars for Fly to test out at most of his shows for the next few years until one impressed him so much, he played his whole set with it.
Ellsworth was also known as the inventor of the 2TEK Bridge, which isolates each string, allowing them to independently ring, thus enhancing the clarity of every note.
Some of his lesser-known creations were the Guinness Book of World Record’s largest guitar in 1980, a line of ultralight electric guitars cut from wood of burnt decks from homes damaged in a fire near Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho, and collectors’ guitars made from wood of a barn and boat dock called the Barncaster. Only 12 were made.
Though he earned fame and recognition, Ellsworth never acquired great wealth. He wasn’t very concerned with earning profit, according to his later business partner, Patrick Coleman.
“He was innovative and likable and a pioneer of the profession — just not the greatest businessman,” he said. “He used to say, ‘You know what $2 and fame buys you? A cup of coffee.'”
Through sniffles and giggles, Diane Ellsworth, Lynn’s wife, recalled how he would pay for wood with a wad of $2 bills, drive around town in a Cadillac hearse and persistently play loud music in their home in Millwood, Spokane County.
“He was hard of hearing from all those years backstage,” she said, laughing. “But he loved music, so our house would always just be shaking with Billy Idol or, my gosh, ‘Stranglehold’ by Ted Nugent.”
Today, Blake Ellsworth is carrying on the legacy of his father.
Lynn Ellsworth, who specialized in turning a hunk of wood into a beautiful body, often mentioned how proud he was that his son, who mastered the skill of hot-rodding with the parts his dad carved, made better guitars than he, she said.
Blake Ellsworth manufactures and sells instruments under his company name, Bad Azz Guitars, using the methods he learned firsthand from growing up in his father’s sawdust-coated guitar shop.
“It’s important for me, especially now that he’s passed to, you know, continue to carry on the family name in guitar building,” he said.
In addition to his luthier techniques, Blake Ellsworth also inherited his father’s unwavering work ethic, appreciation of a good joke and gratification felt only by a true craftsman.
“He would take raw wood and route it, shape it, sand it and finish it until it became a beautiful, playable instrument — started from nothing,” he said. “But what he enjoyed most was watching people’s reaction and the happiness that they get from playing his instrument.
“And now I enjoy it too.”
Lynn Ellsworth is survived by his wife; his sons, Phil and Blake Ellsworth; his daughter, Amie Kasarda; and nine grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his daughter, Heidi Ellsworth.