The Floyd Rose tremolo set up is for downward travel only. It’s seated into the wood
and recessed only slightly into the body in
its resting position. This contributes much
to the natural string vibration transfer.
When depressing the bar downward, it only
takes a light touch because there are only
two springs. This also contributes to making bending notes feel less stiff. The D-Tuna
is a push-in/pull-out attachment that drops
the low E to a perfect D.
ring with clarity. The vibration transfer to
the pickups is due mostly to the fact that
they’re screwed directly to the wood. This
is the reward for such a painstaking measurement and routing job—the pickups are
just deep enough to be in perfect relation
to string height. This in itself is ingenious in
the design of this guitar.
The Sound
The guitar’s natural resonance is significant—you can feel substantial vibrations
in the neck, and the guitar is easy to hear
unplugged. The lack of lacquer allows the
naturally resonating piece of wood to vibrate
freely. As a tonewood, basswood is less trebly and has a porous mass, giving this guitar
its natural midrange. The maple top adds the
density needed to give it the treble without
adding more unneeded mass.
Speaking of rolling the volume knob, the
Bourns 500k volume pot has a low-friction
action to its rotation. The taper is gradual
and not sudden when bringing it up or down.
This is more evident from the zero point and
glides easily without much force.
the body. After putting this guitar through
the ringer, abusing the volume knob, dive
bombing the Floyd and trying to outplay
the fretboard for several hours, this guitar
kept coming back—no need to retune it, or
even consider adjusting the polepieces in
the bridge pickup. Checking the fretboard
for a hair of wear on the frets turned up
no single indent. While this guitar might
not be for everybody, it truly lives up to its
design claims. If this is truly meant to distribute to a wider guitar-playing audience
exactly what Eddie uses, this guitar serves
as testament to him.
Plugging into a moderately overdriven
amp, the tone is ripping. Unlike some gui-
tars that have moderate output pickups,
the low-output EVH humbuckers have a
string clarity in which you can hear every
string in barre chords. For most of the test-
ing, the bridge pickup was used (since it’s
used 90 percent of the time in hard rock
settings). There seems to be more natural
string volume, making it sound much more
aggressive than some metal guitars with
active pickups. Rolling down the volume
knob, the tone is clean, and open chords
Another contributing factor to the guitar’s
tone is that the Floyd is non-floating, as the
bridge plate rests on the surface of the body.
What this does is lessen the amount of vibra-
tion lost, as happens when a Floyd Rose is
suspended only by the pivot posts. This sucker
sits squarely on the body and makes the guitar
sustain well when striking a simple A chord, or
holding a single note for quite a while.
The Final Mojo
The new EVH Wolfgang is a guitar made
from years of Eddie Van Halen’s own
research. It has an ease of playability and
though somewhat small-bodied, it sounds
like a herd of wild elephants when cranked
through an overdriven amp. The outstanding features of the guitar are the stainless
steel frets, the thinly coated body, low-output pickups screwed into the wood, and
the non-floating Floyd Rose seated into
You want defined clarity from low-output pickups in a guitar that’s
built like a tank, with consistent
action and wear-resistant frets.
Buy If...
Skip If...
You’re a rock player who enjoys standard production guitars with high-output pickups to mask your tone.
Rating... 4.0
ONTHEWeb
Head online to hear sound samples
of the guitar in action at
premierguitar.com
EVH Brand Guitars
MSRP: 3149.99 as reviewed
Evhgear.com
124 PREMIER GUI TAR GREATEST HITS VOL. 1
www.premierguitar.com
