Buy From Chucks

From Eddie Van Halen comes an all-new guitar—the Wolfgang—representing over 35 years of cumulative EVH experience and expertise in guitar design. The process undertaken to develop the Wolfgang took over two years of intense trial-and-error research. The formidable task yielded a series of prototypes that endured a full year of brutal in-concert road testing by Eddie on Van Halen’s triumphant 2007-2008 world tour. The result is a bulletproof and beautiful tonal giant of a guitar that takes whatever you can dish out and then asks for more.

As the VH tour kicked off in the fall 2007, Eddie pushed every aspect of the Wolfgang’s performance capabilities to the absolute limit, playing various Wolfgang prototypes every night on virtually every song. As the tour roared along, Eddie changed and adjusted components and specs until he was satisfied with the Wolfgang’s sound, feel and looks. To prove that it was battle-worthy and could survive the road, performance data was collected from every gig for months and months to establish and confirm consistency and durability.

This is what makes the Wolfgang the culmination of Eddie Van Halen’s endless pursuit of outstanding tone, durability and consistency. Available to the public beginning in January 2009, the EVH Wolfgang guitar is built to his exact specs and has every single feature of the Wolfgang guitars he himself plays onstage and in the studio. It’s exactly what he uses.

“Everything that I’ve built, destroyed, stumbled onto, learned and experienced is in this guitar,” Eddie Van Halen said. “Every aspect and component of this guitar has been examined and upgraded to the highest standards possible—stainless steel frets, double-potted custom-wound pickups, five-piece binding on the matching body and headstock, custom-made signature tuning machines and Floyd Rose® bridge, new low-friction pots, and the list keeps going. We left no stone unturned.”

Eddie Van Halen exploded onto the rock music scene in 1978 with a homemade guitar known as “Frankenstein.” “At the time, no guitar did what I needed mine to do, so I built my own that did,” he said. Thirty-five years later, he’s still doing it—studying and improving everything about the instrument. It’s personal for him, and that’s where the Wolfgang comes from.

“A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it,” he said. “You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I could’ve just stayed at home and built this guitar for myself. I do this because a lot of people ask if they can get what I use. Well, yes you can, and what you get is identical to what I use. We redid everything on this guitar. That’s why it took so long.”

Specifications:

Color
(85) Black    (86) Vintage White    (90) Tobacco Burst

BODY
Basswood core, 1 1/2” thick; Arched 1/2” thick AA Maple top

NECK
Quartersawn maple

FINGERBOARD
Fingerboard AA birdseye maple Compound radius 12” to 16”

FRETS
22, Stainless steel frets, vintage size

SCALE LENGTH
25.5” (648 mm)

NUT
Floyd Rose® #2 locking nut, 1.625” (41.2 mm)

NUT WIDTH
1 5/8”

HARDWARE
Chrome

TUNING KEYS
EVH-branded Gotoh® tuning machines, chrome w/ pearloid buttons

BRIDGE
EVH-branded Floyd Rose® locking tremolo

PICKUPS
Neck: EVH® humbucking pickup
Middle: N/A
Bridge: EVH® humbucking pickup

PICKUP SWITCHING
3-way switch

CONTROLS
2 Bourns® low-friction pots (1x250k, 1x500k)

INCL. ACCESSORIES
Case: SKB® Case with molded stripes

UNIQUE FEATURES
Hard mount pickups; Magna Coatings paint, 2 Graphite neck reinforcement rods, Schaller® chrome string retainer, EVH®
D-Tuna, square jack plate