Eddie Van Halen Creates "Indestructible" Guitar

02/05/09 6:22pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Eddie Van Halen is determined to ruin the lives of guitar smashers everywhere (and by extension, make the world 83 per cent less atomic punk).

Van Halen has created a new "indestructible" guitar which he says even he can't break. He teamed up with a medical tool company to design the Wolfgang, which you can buy now for a cool $3,000 U.S., according to CNN. It's named after Van Halen's son, who plays bass in his father's band.

Van Halen is well known for being a guitar tinkerer. The first guitar he used with the band that bears his last name was a homemade one that he created by taking apart a guitar and adding different parts until he was happy with it.

"The new Wolfgang is a combination of all the years of tearing things apart, ruining things, creating things and coming up with things that I later found out I could patent," Van Halen told CNN.

"During the last show, I actually tried to break a Wolfgang, and it wouldn't break. I picked it up and I couldn't break the damn thing. I threw it up in the air, and later put it out in the rain. I picked it up half an hour later, and it was still in tune. It pissed me off."

Van Halen road-tested the guitar during his band's 2007-2008 tour, which, according to Eddie Van Halen's musical equipment website, is "produced to Eddie's exact specifications and with features identical to the Wolfgang guitars he records and performs with."

The guitar features stainless steel frets, double custom-wound pickups, custom-made tuning machines, low-friction pots and five-piece binding on its body and headstock.

The Wolfgang might be indestructible, but the Van Halen asteroids in this video game sure aren't. Now you can finally shoot Sammy Hagar like you've always wanted to.

Van Halen will marry his longtime girlfriend, publicist Janie Liszewski, in June. Little Wolfie will graduate from high school the same month. The band will apparently begin recording their first studio album since 1998's Van Halen III after that, according to Rollingstone.com. It will be their first with original singer David Lee Roth since 1984, the year and the album.

"I've got tons of music written, such a variety of stuff," Van Halen told Rollingstone.com. "The essence of me is obviously there, and those drums, they're always recognizable.

"But people expect a certain thing from Van Halen, and this isn't exactly bang-your-head-against-the-wall stuff."

We wonder if any of the new songs were written on the Wolfgang.