Following Wolfgang Van Halen on Instagram and Twitter has been paying off lately! Throughout the week, he’s been digging into his father’s incredible guitar collection, and teasing us with glimpses of A Different Kind of Treasure Trove.
For our many readers who aren’t on those sites, we’re featuring his pictures here. If you are, be sure to follow Wolf on Instagram and Twitter.
Edward told Guitar Aficionado: “I’m not the typical guitar collector in the least. I’ve bought a lot of vintage pieces over the years, but I’ve destroyed quite a few of them. People might think, How could you desecrate the Mona Lisa? But I really don’t care what something looks like. I’m more concerned with a guitar’s functionality, sound, and playability. That’s why I started building my own. Other guitars wouldn’t do what I needed them to do, so I made my own.”
Little Guitar.
First issue 1958 Gibson ES-335. Much sexy.
One of my favorites.
My favorite.
Some more fun stuff today…
“The One.”
“What trips me out about this guitar is that when I painted it red, that made it more famous. A lot of people still don’t know that it’s the same guitar as the black-and-white guitar on the cover of the first Van Halen album. That guitar went through a lot of different phases and changes. On the first record, it had a stock vintage Fender Strat vibrato, then the Floyd came around, and then I added the dummy pickup at the neck. I kept changing it because I was tired of people copying my guitar.” —Edward Van Halen to Guitar Aficionado