It’s one thing to be “Hot For Teacher.” It’s another to be hot for guitar. Clearly, one such bidder was willing to spend the cash. Eddie Van Halen‘s iconic six-string sold for a whopping $3,932,000 at a recent auction. The famous red and white-striped electric guitar was custom made for Van Halen by Paul Unkert of Kramer Guitars. It was seen both on stage and in the music video for “Hot For Teacher.”
The guitar was posted on Sotheby’s website April 18th with a starting bid of $1.8 billion. Valued at $2 to $3 million, the guitar also comes with the iconic white gloves and strait jacket used in the music video. The description of the guitar on the website is enough to make a guitar enthusiast drool.
For those of us that don’t speak metal, we’ll just smile and nod that these are good things:
“poplar double-cut ‘Strat’ style body, the top routed for a single double-coil Seymour Duncan humbucker pickup, volume control, Floyd Rose bridge with whammy bar, unvarnished 22 fret maple bolt-on neck (stamped ‘UNK’ on heel) with Kramer sticker on headstock”. Personally for us, all you need is the Van Halen label and we’re sold. Who wouldn’t want to own a guitar that changed the face of rock-and-roll?
If you’re looking into guitars of the greats, this isn’t the most expensive that’s ever sold. Kurt Cobain‘s guitar featured in Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged” sold for a mind-boggling $6 million in June 2020. Eddie Van Halen sadly passed away in 2020.
