EVH’s New Mahogany Rush: Details

Full Circle Maybe? Plus the 50w 5150 III – Amp Settings?

Don’t know if you’ve seen the few vids from the EVH booth at the recent NAMM trade show, but if not, most interesting for me was the new EVH Wolfgang Custom – basically a Les Paul in EVH clothing. Or maybe an EVH-ized Les Paul. Sounds like a cool concept – I had to score some deets!

A cool concept because much as I love Les Pauls,they can be tough for mortals to play EVH-style stuff on. Maybe this is a cool hybrid.

Unfortunately, seems the only info out about these guitars is in the vid. As usual, there’s nothing on the woefully out of date evhgear.com, and apparently no official press materials, so what we are left with is this:

> Les Paul-like mahog body and neck, maple cap, rosewood “or ebony” (cool if true) fingerboard.

> “Weighs a ton” (mahog).

> Graphite rods running through the neck, presumably for neck and headstock strength.

> Les Paul-like bridge and tailpiece.

> Floyd Rose-like fine-tuners on the tailpiece.

> Covered EVH Wolfgang pickups, and his now-preferred Bourns low-frickin’-friction pots.

Scale length is 24.75″ like a Les Paul, rather than EVH’s long-preferred Fender scale length of 25.5″. Remember too that if the pickups are the same, they were tweaked to sound good in a 25.5″ scale guitar. Not that that’s the kiss of death – plenty of pickups sound good in both.

Oops, I take it back: Just as I was about to post this, I tripped over a thread at thegearpage.net about these guitars, and sinasl! (aka, Pete Thorn, sideman guitarist for big-name folks and a heck of a player) posted pics with this info:

I got to play two of the early prototypes for these guitars a couple months ago (the set neck) and was really impressed. I’m an endorser at this point, so yadda yadda take with grain of salt and all that but I really dig ’em.

They copied a neck on a 1960 burst that Ed has for one that I played. They were both different thicknesses (bodies), they were still (and maybe still are?) nailing stuff down but I think they are a unique yet familiar LP style axe – nice touches like straight string pull, fine tuners on tailpiece, tune o matic sunk in body a bit, etc. make it pretty slick.

I gotta tell you, I’m really curious about how a particularly fine specimen of the Wolfgang Custom (in white!) will sound with vintage-type pickups (T-Tops), or even maybe an old DiMarzio Super Distortion in the bridge. Wish it had a maple neck though….

Wonder when these guits are hitting stores.

> Mention was made in the vid (first one below) of a Floyd nut on bridge/tailpiece guitars. I’m assuming that’s for hardtail Wolfgangs, not Wolfgang Customs. But not sure.

Full Circle?

“In the beginning” Ed loved Les Pauls. Real Les Pauls, Les Paul Juniors, mahogany, humbucker, the whole deal. Some internet pundits speculated that the gradual evolution of the Wolfgang – maple top, hard tails, etc. – has been toward a Les Paul. I don’t buy it, but obviously the love is there.

Fact is, Ed will sound like magic on anything with strings.

New 50w EVH 5150 III

Here it is:

You probably heard about the new 50w version of the EVH 5150 III head, supposedly coming out with an MSRP of $999.00 US. I’m assuming a US street price of about $800. Could be great if it sounds Ed-like – which in the vid below it sort of does, starting at 1:25 and in particular starting at 1:39. It’s that articulate distortion, almost a hybrid Fender-Marshall thing.

(Note to Chris, EVH product manager and demo guy: Nix metal riffs, play some VH!)

Worth noting is that Ed himself pinched the prototype from the NAMM show floor because he’s using it to track new VH tunes. Got that? Using it…to track…new Van Halen…tunes.

Sweet!

> The head will have a 1×12 and a 2×12 cab, somehow supposedly voiced like a 4×12. If true, the cab itself would be sweet.

> This photo was posted by current VH producer John Shanks. Does it show (blurrily) Ed’s preferred amp settings?

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Alex Skolnick playing the Wolfgang Custom through an EVH III – love the articulation.

Category: Edward Van Halen, Les Paul