BC Rich Eagle Crazy Nights
Introduction – How This Started
The eighties were always KISS’ most interesting years for me. I clearly preferred the period without the (black and white) makeup. The lineup with Bruce and Eric Carr was also my favorite. Hey, shoot me…
The guitars were certainly more flamboyant and appealing to me. My favorites were the BC Rich models: the Eagles, the Warlock, and the ST.
Around 2013-2014, I bought a cheap Eagle One with the idea of customizing it into one of Paul’s Eagles. Not knowing which one I preferred, I hadn’t gotten around to it until a month ago. In December 2025, I was incredibly lucky to see the leopard Eagle on BC Rich’s website. It had been recreated once, in the same style as Paul’s from 1982-1984. I bought it.
That’s when I got motivated to make the Eagle, which was a combination of the leopard and striped Asylum guitars with a few additions.
I first made the Steinberger with the Body Glove image. That really impressed me, so the major customization began.
The BC Rich Paul Stanley used in 1987-1990
This is the original Eagle One I bought around 2015.
Paul Stanley’s BC Rich has only a bridge pickup, different knobs, and a different bridge.
His version also has different tuners: a combination of tuners on the headstock and fine tuners under the bridge.
I started by completely disassembling the Eagle. Then I cut diamonds from pearloid foil and glued them over the round position markers on the neck.
After that, I spent two days preparing the file for the sign maker. I didn’t have any clear photos of the entire guitar, so I had to do it from bits and pieces of various photos.
When the file was ready, I sent the file to the sign maker and delivered the guitar myself.
While the guitar was being wrapped, I gathered all the necessary hardware:
- Grover Imperial tuners
- Badass Leo Quan chrome bridge
- Leo Quan gold-colored fine-tuning system
- EMG81 active pickup
I had some black knobs lying around, as well as reflectors.
Just like with the Steinberger, I ran into a few issues while assembling the Eagle.
For example, the original bridge was positioned lower, and the string guides with saddles were above it. However, with the latter, the bolts are closer together than with a bridge, so I had to drill holes to accommodate the Leo Quan.
As a finishing touch, I applied some gaffer tape with white picks. The result is satisfactory.
But…repositioning the bridge turned out to be a wrong decision, since it is crucial where the bridge is placed on a guiter.
That was a lesson to be learned, because no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the guitar in tune. So…
I took it to a friend who knows a thing or two about guitars and we tried to intonate the guitar as good as we could, but without any result.
There were two things I could do.
- Leave it like that and keep the guitar as a prop on the wall or…
- Get it working properly.
Since I invested around € 500,- for the Grover Imperial tuners, bridge, finetuners and pickup I decided to go for the second option.
A guitar builder advised me to close the drilleholes with a round stick of wood with some glue and then saw it off and sand them.
So I took off the wrapped foil and started all over again. There is an advantage though, because I wasn’t 100% happy with the positioning of the wrapped foil. It was a little to high. I adjusted some colours also. So now I was able to fix these things as well.