Guthrie Govan Discussion

[dave...]

Ok, since many people here seem to have great knowledge of guitar equipment and accessories i was wondering what you thought of the EVH Wolfgang special... the one im looking at is korean made. Does anyone own one/has anyone ever played one?

im a student with very little cash and im looking for a gig worthy workhorse that will cover quite a few styles and tones etc... basically a hybrid, and for the £350 price range this appears to be the best guitar on the market. can anyone help/ give opinion?

while we're about it what is your general concensus on EVH himself...? i thought i'd grown out of him. i believed him to be a 'linear', vai-like guitarist but the other day i heard 'spanish fly' again and remembered how stunning he can be. is his importance in terms of guitar playing overrated or not?

thanks!

[bill®]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'linear'? John McLaughlin and Shawn Lane were generally very linear players in the conventional sense of the guitar definition (but I may be confused)? :s

EVH was a cool rock guitarist, and did some very clever things, but I don't think he was really an important guitarist so much as an important pop musician that played guitar (in that he had a significant effect on peoples attitudes to guitar in mainstream music). I don't think he really did any much technically innovative stuff on the guitar (yes tapping has been around for a long time, he just used compression and made people notice).

He wrote some great riffs.

[jordan]

Hi Dave,

I've owned both the "low-end" korean made wolfgang, and currently the top of the range Standard Deluxe, so hopefully I'm qualified to give you a good answer...

With regard to the EXP, I don't think there's a better guitar out there for the money. I bought my EXP the first week the became available in the UK for £399, and certainly at the time nothing came close to it. The double-locking trem system works very well, to the point where you really have to struggle to push it out of tune. Both pickups are very powerful (read: hot!), and the guitar works great for any style of rock/metal. Surprisingly, I remember getting some lovely clean tones out of that wolfgang. They're also built like a tank....some people feel the wolfgangs are a little bit squashed in shape, but for me they just feel solid. I've never had any problems with any wolfgangs, and I've been playing them now for about three and a half years.

Of course, (in my eyes) they look great also. I had the dark red colour, and it really looked great. The necks are fairly chubby which some people worry about before playing them. I have fairly small-ish hands, and I found the guitar extremely comfortable to play. I know that many questioned Peavey's decision to introduce this range, as the USA-made special barely differs from this model at all. I can personally say that the USA specials (flat-tops, plain colours) did very little for me. I certianly didn't think they were worth over twice the price of the korean-made EXP.

However (apologies, here's where the gloating begins), I can honestly say the my Standard Deluxe is the most incredible guitar I've ever played. The construction, looks (awesome flame maple top and birdseye neck) and TONE make it, for me at least, the ultimate rock guitar. I've since had mine set up for a coil-tap by pulling out the tone pot and the resulting single coil sounds are more convincing that many of the "upper-class" strats I've played.

I could go on for days praising the wolfgangs, but I've probably said too much already.....remember though, one man's Satch is another man's Vai...don't go on rumour alone, there's no replacement for playing as many guitars as you can before buying a new one.

For further information, check out www.wolfgangguitars.com . The guy who runs this site is who I bought my Standard Deluxe from, and he seriously knows his stuff (if not a little biased at times!). I believe he has a thorough appraisal of the EXP Wolfgang under the "Other Wolfgangs" page.

One more point to note: Peavey have since stopped all production of the Wolfgang's, with the Custom Shop and Standard Deluxe models now being very saught after. If your budget ever allows, I can't recommend the top-end models well enough. At last I can say I own one guitar that I will never sell.

Hope this has helped,
Jordan.

[dave...]

thank you VERY much for you advice jordan, thats certainly cemented my opinions... now all i gotta do is get down and try one.

having mulled over what you said bill, im inclined to agree. He had accute technical skill but ive only heard him really fly a couple of times. Maybe he was intelligent in his decision to just craft songs/play for the song?

thanks guys.

[alexkhan]

EVH was very cool and he was quite influential, but, to me, he was more of a pop-rock musician/songwriter and an icon than a really great guitarist if you look at his recorded output. I'm just talking about technical facility on the guitar now. I love the early VH albums although I was never a fan of DLR's singing and posturing. The thing about EVH in his early heydays was that he had that indescribable fire and attitude in his playing that the more technically accomplished who came after could never quite duplicate. And yeah, what great tone he had...

I always wondered why he never stretched out and did instrumental stuff (at least once!) and just really play like Yngwie, Satch, Vai and all these other shredders did. My thought is that he felt that he just didn't have the facility to pull something like that off convincingly. I saw the VH live videos back in the late-80's and remember being rather disappointed after having seen Yngwie, Satch, and Metheny live a bunch of times by then. He was never a really good picker and I never felt that he really played interesting lines in an extended soloing format. He did great in a standard pop-rock format, but I never thought of him as a "virtuoso" as the rock press often made him out to be.

But I do think he was one of the greatest guitarists in the history of rock. The impact he had was undeniable. When you talk about some of the greatest guitarists chronologically from the days of Chuck Berry, James Burton, Duane Eddy, etc. to Jimi, Clapton, Beck, Allman, and Page, etc., EVH has to be considered the next logical step in the evolution of rock guitar. He was the absolute dominant rock guitar god of the early-80's. But when Yngwie came along (and then Satch and Vai), you could tell EVH just didn't want to "compete" against that kind of new super chops and just focused on songwriting and playing within a band context. I think his "downfall", if you could call it that, is that his playing that put him on the map and on top of Rock Guitar Olympus for 6 years or so did depend on speed and flash. And when the G3 guys came along, he could not respond note-for-note. It still doesn't diminish EVH's status in my book as one of the greatest voices of the electric guitar over the past 30 years or so.
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