“Over and over I would say, ‘It ain’t hitting me in the gut!’ All it took was one note... We went through 80 sets of pickups”: Eddie Van Halen details the years of onstage trials and workshop tribulations that shaped the EVH Wolfgang guitar

Eddie Van Halen performs onstage with Van Halen at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on May 13, 2008.

This interview was originally published in the February 2009 issue of Guitar World.

The production line where Eddie Van Halen’s new EVH Wolfgang guitars are built delivers surprises and awe-inspiring sights around every corner. From the point where workers transform raw blocks of wood into the Wolfgang’s distinctive archtop body shape to the final setup section, where a few dozen white-, black-, and sunburst-finished models rest in quiet grandeur before shipment to their new homes, the factory buzzes with spirited activity.