Earlier this month, Wolfgang Van Halen announced work had begun on his sophomore Mammoth WVH studio album – an announcement that has since been followed by numerous updates confirming the completion of drums, the recording of the bass guitars and, last week, the start of electric guitar tracking.
And, just like his debut album – on which he played his late father’s original Frankenstein guitar for a handful of songs – Wolfgang has once again dipped into the Van Halen guitar archive to play some of Eddie’s old guitars on the record.
After posting a pic of a sunburst version of his upcoming EVH SA-126 semi-hollow guitar – named in honor of his father’s birthday – Van Halen then showed off the first Eddie-owned axe that earned itself a cameo on Mammoth WVH 2: a rare, radically modded 1962 Gibson SG Junior.
The SG itself can be heard on Dirty Movies from Van Halen’s 1981 album, Fair Warning, and was used by Eddie Van Halen to record the slide guitar part, as per Wolfgang’s comments. Notably, the lower horn of the SG was sawed off by Eddie as it “kept getting in the way”.
“Pop played this SG on the slide part in Dirty Movies on Fair Warning,” Wolfgang wrote. “He loved the tone, but the lower horn of the guitar kept getting in the way… so he sawed it off. And you’ll hear it on the next Mammoth album.”
In Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill’s Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen book, the rare SG was further explored in an “Eddie’s Oddities” section.
“I took this guitar to Sunset Sound when we were recording Dirty Movies for Fair Warning,” goes Eddie Van Halen’s recollection in the book (via Reverb). “I used it to play the slide part. I kept recording takes over and over, and finally I asked Donn Landee to get me a hacksaw.
“He asked me what I was going to do, and I told him not to worry about it. I hacked off the horn on the treble side because I couldn’t hit the high notes with the slide. Everybody looked at me like I fell out of my tree, but it was by necessity.”
Wolfgang Van Halen shared a sneak peek at another old EVH axe that will make its way on the upcoming coming in a later post: a Veillette Citron Shark baritone guitar.
Gill, who was active in the post's comments section, revealed the Shark was snapped up by Eddie Van Halen around 1983, and can be seen in “several of the early photos at 5150 when 1984 was being recorded”. The writer and Van Halen expert also confirmed the pickups are single-coils made by Harvey Citron.
“Gettin weird (and heavy as fuck) with this baritone today,” teased Wolfgang in the caption.
“Less than a dozen” of the ultra-rare baritones were originally made according to Gill, with the Veillette Citron brand closing in 1983. On Wolfgang’s post, some commenters speculated Eddie Van Halen had used his own natural-finished model for a variety of bass parts on 1984.
It remains to be seen whether Wolfgang will pull out any more guitars from the Van Halen six-string collection, but if he does, we imagine he’ll share a snap or two over on his Instagram account.
