It looks good in Stryker Red, Matte Army Drab, and Quicksilver too, but with the official release of the Gold Sparkle model, EVH Gear quite possibly has released its coolest Wolfgang Standard yet.
Retailing for £519 / $699 street, the Wolfgang Standard Gold Sparkle is a lot of electric guitar for the money, and as you would expect from a guitar bearing Eddie Van Halen’s initials on the headstock it is a bona-fide high-performance guitar. A metal guitar? Sure, but it’ll do a job at any stage on the rock spectrum.
Like the other Wolfgang Standards in the 2022 lineup, the Gold Sparkle features a caramel-coloured baked maple neck and fingerboard, a solid basswood body, and a pair of direct-mount Alnico II humbucking pickups that are voiced to nail the sort of harmonic-rich Saturday Night hard-rock tones that made Eddie trafficked in.
Everything is geared towards performance, with 22 jumbo frets to reward a light touch, rolled fingerboard edges for that luxury feel, and a 12”-16” compound radius on the fingerboard – dimensions that are a veritable playground for the shred-minded.
There are heaps of neat touches. The neck has an oiled finish, again, another come hither for fretboard pyrotechnicians. Bolted to the body, it is reinforced with a graphite rod to make it stand up to all kinds of punishment, performance-related and meteorological.
The amp-style dials for controls are cool, too. It makes a change to be able to see where the tone and volume is set. The two EVH Wolfgang humbuckers are selected by a shoulder-mounted three-way toggle switch.
And, of course, a design like this would not be complete without a double-locking vibrato for divebombs and harmonic squeals. Here, we have an EVH-branded Floyd Rose Special with an R2 locking nut, complete with zinc alloy saddles and sustain block.
Check out our 2022 preview of the new EVH Gear models arriving this year. The Gold Sparkle was among a number of eye-catching designs unveiled at the top of the year. And head over to EVH Gear for more on this Wolfgang Standard.
