Speaking to Consquence Of Sound , guitarist Slash talked about his new custom guitar collection by Gibson Guitars, as well he talked about Eddie Van Halen, saying:
“The thing about Eddie is that he was such a gifted musician.
“Any instrument he had chosen to play would have been phenomenal, because he just had that pure musical talent. And he chose guitar, because that’s what turned him on. And for somebody with that kind of musical talent to get turned on to rock ‘n’ roll guitar was sort of unique unto itself, because most of us guitar players are a ragged bunch of rock ‘n’ rollers who don’t have too much technical ability or schooling.
”We just sort of go for this raw thing. And he had that, but he also had this musical, sort of classical gift. Then, on top of that, just being somebody sort of like Les Paul, who hears something in his head or has an idea and creates it. So it made him a triple threat. He was a great guitar player, but he was also this amazing musician, so it just made his guitar playing that much greater. And then he was an innovator on top of it, creating new things with whatever his imagination came up with. So he was just an amazing artist, period.”