“A guitar with the same style and massive sound Eddie Van Halen created all at an affordable price”: EVH Gear reimagines the Wolfgang Standard as a high-performance shredder with a TOM bridge

EVH Gear has refreshed its keenly priced Wolfgang WG Standard with three sweet finishes and swaps out the Floyd Rose vibrato for a TOM-style bridge and stop-bar tailpiece for a fuss-free performance.

This could be the sleeper hit of 2025. It could be the year’s best runaround electric – a hyper-playable platform for rock and metal guitar, without any faffing around with a Floyd.

That’s the thing with Floyds. Pretty much everyone can agree that a high-performance electric guitar is a lot of fun. The quick neck, the compound radius fingerboard, the jumbo frets – not to mention the high-output pickups.

But, sometimes, having a Floyd Rose can be a pain in the backside, especially when some wiseacre in the band suggests tuning down from Standard to Dropped C just to give the riffs some weight (Cue an intense session with your good friend Allen Key and his buddy Peterson, the guitar tuner).

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Here there is none of that. You’ve got an easily adjustable EVH-branded TOM bridge based on the original Gibson Tune-O-Matic design. And a guitar that’s based on the original Eddie Van Halen Wolfgang platform, complete with that trademark 3x3 headstock.

As you will find across all of the Fender-owned high-performance brands – Jackson, Charvel and EVH Gear – you’ve got some very shred-friendly dimensions and specs. We have a 12” to 16” compound radius fingerboard, the 22 jumbo frets, and above all a super-thin neck.

This baked maple neck measures just a hair over 2omm at the 3rd fret. Nonetheless, reinforced with graphite rods, it should be super stable, resistant to fluctuations in temperature and humidity. EVH Gear has given it an oil finish to make it extra tactile.

A key feature of these Wolfgang Standards is the direct-mount humbucker pairing, the idea being that these uncovered, agreeably hot electric guitar pickups pick up the vibrations of the basswood body and sound more alive with sustain.

Dial in some juicy overdrive on your guitar amp and you’ll get all those harmonics. Dime said amp and you’ll get some musical feedback, and you can tame all this by rolling back the black “Speed” knobs for volume and tone.

There is a treble bleed feature, so when you roll back that volume the tone won’t go dark. Other player-friendly features include the forearm carve that really puts a unique spin on this third-gen T-style vibe. There are oversized buttons for your guitar strap. No pickguard gives these a nice minimalistic look. The binding on the body’s top ties the look together.

Choose from Gloss Black, Cream White and – our favourite – Sea Foam Pearl Metallic. The Wolfgang WG Standard TOM is available now, priced £519/$599 street. See EVH Gear for more details.