“Purebred music-making machines”: EVH updates the Wolfgang Special line with baked maple necks and ’boards, and colors to dazzle

EVH Guitars has given its famed Wolfgang model a choice makeover with new fingerboards and some glorious finishes to boot.

The Wolfgang Special Baked Maple and Wolfgang Special Baked Maple TOM, which offer new tweaks to Eddie Van Halen's signature guitar, bring baked maple fretboards to its refreshed lineup, with a choice of Eddie-approved and whammy dive-ready Floyd Rose bridges, as well as stoptail bridge and tailpiece designs.

They’re being described as “purebred music-making machines,” so saddle up. Let’s ride out.

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Both models feature quarter-sawn, baked maple necks with matching 22-jumbo fret fingerboards. They're bolted onto their quirky bodies and reinforced with graphite, and the new standard, heel-mounted truss rod adjustment wheels.

As expected, they stay true to Eddie's preferred Wolfgang Backshape neck profile, delivering a 12"-16" compound radius with a hand-rubbed satin urethane neck finish.

Their basswood bodies get one-ply cream bindings, regardless of their color, and atop them sit twin EVH Wolfgang humbuckers, with many getting a Zebra colorway, nodding to their creator's DIY modding days (which never really ended, in truth).

Those pups are wired with 500K EVH Bourns Low Friction Volume Pots, a Treble Bleed Circuit, and 250K Tone Pots, as well as a three-way toggle switch which takes the Les Paul-like upper-horn position.

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Although the lack of glow-in-the-dark inlays is a minor oversight, it's a well-spec'd, mid-price axe that gives players the choice of a Floyd Rose R2 vibrato, or an adjustable hardtail bridge with tailpiece and a Graph Tech TUSQ XL nut.

The Floyd also comes equipped with Eddie’s D-Tuna invention to switch between standard and drop D tunings without needing an Allen key, an engineering degree, or the patience of a saint.

But let's talk about the color options, because you'll need sunglasses for some of them. The Floyd model gets Smoked Mesquite, Caution Yellow, Ivory, Stealth Black, and Gloss black. All are gloss finishes, save the Stealth Black option, which gets a satin urethane finish instead.

There are some dazzling options here that throw it back to the SuperStrat era of the 1980s, while hardware colors are either chrome or black, depending on the body color. They're priced at $1,499 apiece.

Conversely, the TOM model delivers Gloss Black and Husk White colorways with black hardware, Oxblood with gold hardware, and this writer's favorite, Kandy Green with Chrome Hardware. These guitars are a little cheaper at $1,399.99 each, which isn't too shabby.

See EVH Gear for more.

Meanwhile, a luthier has recalled the moment when Eddie visited the EVH workshop while his Wolfgang guitar was being crafted, taking the guitar builder by surprise.