Mammoth WVH frontman Wolfgang Van Halen revealed how his upcoming signature guitar is related to his father Eddie Van Halen on Chris Shiflett’s Walking the Floor podcast.
After Van Halen’s disbandment, Wolfgang Van Halen put together his own band Mammoth WVH in 2020. Since then, the musician has been trying to break free from the expectations of his father’s fanbase as his primary reason was to create his voice and style with his band rather than continuing with Van Halen.
Moreover, Wolf reflected on this issue during multiple interviews as he has been asked about living with the last name everybody knows in the rock music scene. The primary argument Wolfgang has been trying to impose on people lies within the idea of being lucky to have Eddie as his father but working hard to be where he is today.
Now, Wolfgang is designing his own semi-acoustic signature guitar as his father once designed his iconic guitar with his brand named EVH. During an interview with Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett, Wolfgang revealed the name of his new signature guitar. He chose to give it a meaningful name in honor of his father and included Eddie’s birthday into his guitar’s name.
He told the name of the guitar and its meaning with these words:
“I’m calling it the SA-126: Dad’s birthday is January 26. He named a song, ‘316’, after my birthday. SA means semi-acoustic. That’s been the code name, and the more I’ve sat with it, the more I really like it.”
During the interview, he also explained how Eddie’s guitar inspired him to find what he finds in his heart as a musician. Although he appreciates his father’s legacy, he chooses to create his sound instead of just repeating what has already been done, thus being in the shadow of Eddie.
Wolf said about practicing his unique sound the following:
“The main thing with Mammoth is that I wanted to establish my own identity and my own sound. When we started recording the album, the first guitar that was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is starting to become its own thing,’ was when I pulled out my dad’s ’59 ES-335.
And it was so old that when I tried to tune it, I believe the tuning pegs were ivory or something; they crumbled in my finger. Like, it just turned into cinnamon on my finger. But when we recorded it, it sounded amazing, and that’s when I got that bug for the hollow-body sound.”
You can listen to the mentioned interview below.
