If you caught Myles Kennedy live in concert in 2025, you will have seen a bass guitar in action that few people outside of the EVH Gear inner circle have even laid eyes on – a prototype four-string that may be coming soon to a guitar store near you. Some day. But not today.
For now, this bass is owned by Kennedy’s bassist, Tim Tournier, and at last summer’s Norway’s Tons of Rock Festival, he gave us a guided tour of its features, and explained how this was a first.
No one had ever given him an instrument before, but courtesy of his good friend Wolfgang Van Halen, here was this, a one of two prototype EVH Wolfgang bass, custom-built by EVG Gear master builder Chip Ellis.
The other one? That’s owned by Wolfgang, and presumably that’s the relic’d one that we have seen being played live by Mammoth touring bassist Ronnie Ficarro. As Tournier explained, Ficarro has been a willing guinea pig for this EVH bass.
“I played it, just at Mammoth show, and fell in love with it, so Wolf and Matt Bruck, who run [the] EVH brand, made this one for me
“There’s two earlier versions of this that Ed [Van Halen] was working on for years that then got taken out with Mammoth,” says Tournier. “And the bass player in Mammoth, Ronnie, really put it through its paces – which has been the EVH mantra forever, ‘cos if you’re gonna develop something and put out a product, it needs to go out on the road, be toured, learn everything you can about it, how you can make it better.
“I played it, just at Mammoth show, and fell in love with it, so Wolf and Matt Bruck, who run [the] EVH brand, made this one for me.”
And Tournier is busy putting this one through its paces. It is similarly spec’d to the white prototype. His is finished in gold, matching painted headstock FTW, dual humbuckers and there’s – what’s that? – over-sized selector dial dominating the controls. That’s too cool.
What gets Tournier really excited, however, are the pickups. We’ll let him explain why in the video above, and also explain how a lifelong guitarist ended up on bass, and playing bass for one of rock-and-metal’s blue chip stars.
But then Tournier has done pretty much every other job in music (he's current filling in on guitar for Sevendust while managing Alter Bridge, Creed and guitarist Mark Tremonti’s solo band) so maybe it was just a matter of time before he ended up playing bass with Kennedy.
Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Yungblud and more have been confirmed for Tons Of Rock 2026. See Tons Of Rock for ticket details. Myles Kennedy's Art Of Letting Go is out now via Napalm.
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