EVH Gear Super ’78

And you’ll still need to be quick off the mark if you want to grab yourself one of these highly collectable anniversary models.

Grab a super-limited-edition EVH guitar – yours for 22 grand.

There aren’t too many rock albums that can be deemed to have been genuinely game changing, but there’s little doubt that Van Halen’s incendiary self-titled debut, released in 1978, is one of them. The band’s irresistible music, laced with the incredible technique of guitarist Eddie

Van Halen, shattered the mould and inspired a zillion fans to begin a relationship with the electric guitar.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the album’s release, EVH Gear have introduced the Super

’78, an ultra-limited recreation of the iconic instrument Eddie used not only for the album but also throughout the band’s first world tour.

Eddie put together the original guitar using a neck and body he bought at legendary luthier Wayne Charvel’s shop in Azusa, California, and used the bridge from his own 1958 Fender Stratocaster and a pickup liberated from a Gibson ES-335 to complete the build. He also stripped and re-fretted the neck and gave the body its now iconic black-and-white paint job.

Highlights of the anniversary guitar’s lengthy spec sheet include a sharp-radius ash body complete with an expertly relic’d black-andwhite finish, an oiled maple neck loaded with ‘mowed down’ jumbo frets, an EVH Frankenstein humbucker and a vintage-style Fender bridge complete with a tonesome Kluson brass block.

The Super ’78 is limited to just eight pieces worldwide and the RRP of £21,929 includes a fauxaged recreation of Ed’s original G&G case that is stuffed with all manner of hyper-collectible VH memorabilia and kit. What’s more, Eddie himself has played the classic instrumental Eruption in its entirety on each of the eight guitars.

This is as close as anyone is likely to get to owning the actual instrument Ed used on that wondrous debut and, if any of his residual talent can be absorbed from the strings, that hefty price tag is more than worth it.

£21,929. More at www.evhgear.com