The wheels are in full motion over at the Fender family design room, and this time it’s the turn of EVH. The company that Eddie Van Halen conceived has just revealed four new designs for 2022, including the '78 Eruption - a White-with-Black addition to the Striped Series - a pair of of natural-finished Wolfgangs and a Limited Edition 5150 Deluxe.
EVH Striped Series ’78 Eruption
Cast your mind back to 2018, and you may recall EVH releasing a super-limited edition Frankenstein in white-with-black stripes. Only 40 were made and it came with all manner of case candy to boot, and you’d have more luck performing dentistry on a hen than finding one used.
Well, now EVH has made the ’78 Eruption available as a production model. Of course, Eddie’s iconic red/white/black guitar started out life as simply white/black before he added the red later - it’s the same guitar - immortalised on the cover of Van Halen’s debut album.
Here, we get the original colour scheme, in a relic’d finish along with other EVH staples such as the hand-rubbed satin-finish neck, a compound 12”-16” radius fingerboard, heel-mount truss rod adjustment, and an EVH Bourns Low Friction volume pot complete with a treble bleed circuit.
The bridge humbucker is an EVH Wolfgang model, which has been relic’d to match the appearance of the rest of the guitar, and the Eruption ’78 is also fitted with a Fender trem, with a six-saddle bridge and solid 43mm brass block.
It’ll be shipping in September, and is priced at ($1,899.99/£1,269.00/ €1,409.00.
EVH Limited Edition 5150 Deluxe Ash
The 5150 is the most recent design in the EVH catalogue, but here the solid finishes of the Standard models and trans finishes of the Deluxe models have given way to the heat gun in favour of a natural, satin-finished Ash body.
More widely, it’s got familiar 5150 specs - the modified Strat body with a deeper upper body curve, maple neck with a compound radius 12”-16” fingerboard (this time in ebony), heel-mounted truss rod adjustment wheel, and that hockeystick headstock.
There’s a lot going on in terms of features too though, with Eddie’s trusty D-Tuna fitted to the top-mounted EVH Floyd Rose along with the unmissable big button kill switch.
The pickups are a pair of EVH Wolfgang humbuckers, controlled by a three-way switch and master volume/tone controls. Once again, the pots are EVH Bourns units, with a low-friction, treble bleed on the volume and a high friction tone control to make sure it stays where you put it.
EVH fans won’t have long to wait, as these start shipping in August, priced at $1,599.99/£1,029.00/€1,199.00
EVH Wolfgang Standard Exotic Laurel Burl & Poplar Burl
It’s hard to think of a better-stocked, affordable-ish rock guitar than the EVH Wolfgang Standard. For the mid-point of 2022, EVH has outfitted the model Eddie named after his son with some swanky natural finishes, adding to the Wolfgang Exotic line-up courtesy of a basswood body, topped with either laurel or poplar burl.
The guitars follow an identical spec and build, with a forearm-contoured body, baked maple, bolt-on neck (with graphite truss rod), 22-fret, 12”-16” compound radius baked maple fingerboard and an EVH-branded Floyd Rose.
The pickups are two EVH Wolfgang humbuckers, mounted directly into the body, and they are controlled by a three-way switch with a treble-bleed volume control along with a master tone control.
Both versions will be available in October, costing $699.99/£689.00/€799.00.
