The Wolfgang Custom Electric Guitar From Peavey
Lead guitarist and co-founder of the band Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen has always been a rock and roll innovator. Always tinkering, he admits to destroying hundreds of instruments in his quest to find the ultimate custom electric guitar.
While Eddie had had other guitars designed for him or made for endorsement since the 1980’s, it wasn’t until he worked with the designers and engineers at Peavey Electronics in late 1996 to create Wolfgang custom guitars.
Named after his son and fellow bandmate, Wolfgang Van Halen, this guitar was the culmination all the musical and technical knowledge that Eddie had amassed over his many decades as a professional.
From 1996 to 1998 the Peavey Wolfgang came in six standard colors, black, ivory and 4 types of maple called “quilt tops”. It also had
After 1996 the original curly maple wood tops were replaced with a flame or flamed maple wood top similar finishes on the vintage Gibson J-200 once played by Elvis Presley. In 1998 Peavey launched the Wolfgang Special which had several improvements over the original models but it was not until 2002 that Peavey developed a shop exclusively for creating a EVH branded custom electric guitar.
The Wolfgang’s custom guitars shop was basically comprised of four master lutherie craftsmen. Lutherie is the process of building classical stringed instruments. The shop which was first located in the now legendary Leakesville facility and later moved further north to it main plant at Meridian, Mississippi.
People who buy custom electric guitars are not your every day type of fan or guitarist. And for the buyers for the Peavey Wolfgang’s custom guitars were no different. People who ordered these unique guitars often had to wait a long time since each artisan was a master in his specialty and virtually hand-made each custom electric guitar. In fact even at the height of production, they were only able to produce a single guitar a day, their standards were so exacting.
Because of this methodical method of production only 500 or so customer orders were made by the Wolfgang’s custom guitars shop from 2002 to 2004. These custom electric guitars are highly collectible and sought after by various fans and guitar buffs.
The Wolfgang’s custom guitar shop was probably not a true profit center for the Peavey company but was used as a way to fulfill specialty customer orders plus act as way to showcase their designs and technical expertise. With such a limited production rate each custom electric guitar that was made had the ultimate in quality materials and craftsmanship, tone and its own distinctive design.
In fact many of these Wolfgang custom guitars are considered one-of-a-kind and with the advent of the newer Fender designed model, have become highly prized more than ever.
While it is true that there are only a limited number of these superior instruments, now that you know more about their history, you will be able to appreciate them even more.
