NGD! EVH Striped Series Star

[Newc]

Hot off the truck

Very resonant. Neck profile feels like the Pro Mods. Neck was flat as a board on arrival. Can't wait to see what it looks like after letting it settle in over the weekend

EVH-logoed Floyd. Plastic back covers. Serials apparently start with 'EVH' then the year (14 in this case). Haven't taken it apart yet

[Banjowarrior]

I still want one.. I don't have any 'shape' guitars...
Although that headstock is yet a monstrosity...

[shreddermon]

If it weren't for that headstock, I'd be buying one, too. Love it otherwise!

[charvelsteen]

Cranky here and cranky there. That Headstock looks like it will go right up your ass. hahaHAH

[Newc]

Blame it on Ed, he's the one that put a Dano neck on it way back when

[Johnnyryche]

If it weren't for that headstock, I'd be buying one, too. Love it otherwise!

Consider buying a used EVH strat head neck and swap it for the ugly dano one.

[Banjowarrior]

Don't think a strat head would look right on it, Wolfgang headstock would do the job nicely.

[Newc]

I was thinking more of a banana.

[shreddermon]

Banana or pointyhead, definitely. Although, thought I heard something about the EVH heels being shaped differently? Might be difficult to find a replacement neck that fits, except the EVH stratheads?

[Newc]

Probably.

And then I got to looking at banana heads and then wound up looking at Kramer beak-heads and said fuck it

Might just leave well enough alone and rock it like Eddie and Akira did.

[toejam]

Might just leave well enough alone and rock it like Eddie and Akira did.

My thoughts exactly! Even though the headstock is not that great looking, it works. Congrats on the new guitar!

[Jackson8090s]

Well now that we all know and agree, the headstock is ugly HNGD!

That's uglier than my cousin Leroy!

Vote: Ugliest Headstock

That or the Dean Shrimpfork .... it's a tie you ask me.

[toejam]

The Dean Shrimpfork headstock is definitely better looking... just by a hair.

[Newc]

Glad to see the board back up

Review time!

So I let it sit for 3 full days, as is my method, so the neck could acclimate. Coming from CaliforniDUH to West Tenneshoe and passing through drought-ridden areas, things can go wonky if you go cranking on the truss rod too soon.

So far it doesn't look like the neck changed - still flat as an 8-year-old

The owner's manual says the Floyd is not set up for floating, per Ed's specs. Yeah, umm, it was 1" off the body, which means floating. However, the action was a touch high as a result, but that was an easy enough fix.
As well, it was sorely out of tune. No biggie.

Since the head doesn't tilt backwards, they put the retainer on to pull the strings down across the nut and give them a straighter shot to the tuners. As soon as I loosened the locks, the strings detuned even further just a bit. I fixed that as well, so now when you do the locks, nothing moves (well, maybe a micro tone, but not like it was).

The neck is comparable to the USA and Japanese Charvel ProMod neck.

Once I lowered the bridge to about a hair over the body, retuned, and tweaked the spring claw screws and got it tuned (to Eb, of course :P ), it was ready to go.
It's got what I consider really low action. I haven't measured it (and probably won't) but it works for me.

By the way, the claw has 2 springs in a V pattern. No extra springs were included.

The manual also says it comes with 9-46 strings (9, 11, 16, 26, 36, 46).

The frets are very well polished - no creaking or scraping can be heard when bending the strings. And no sharp edges!


The bar is the collared type, and it seems to be having trouble staying tight. That's a cheap-n-easy fix with either pipe tape or a new bar kit from StewMac.

The volume pot is a low-friction type that tapers off nicely, no drastic changes.

The pickup, according to the manual, is a custom-wound, custom-voiced EVH model. I haven't taken it out to look at the baseplate, but I'm sure it would say "EVH" and not whoever really wound it.
Somebody on the SD forum said it's the EVH Wolfgang pickup. Dunno, this is my first official EVH product.

It's also direct-mounted, but has a ring that's also mounted to the body. How convenient.

Fumbling along to early Van Halen, it's definitely got the tonal characteristics of the solo to Runnin With The Devil - that kinda Stratty top end thing. The low end is punchy but not muddy. It reacts well to picking dynamics, even through my rack stuff.

I also found out that for some reason my VH CDs were ripped to a slightly higher sample rate than they oughta be; my tuner shows Eb dead center, but I had to go up a semi-tone to play along with anything, but then dropped back down to actual Eb to play along to WASP. Gotta look into that shit.

It's definitely a great guitar. Not "good for the money" or "I wasn't expecting much since I didn't pay much" or "if I had paid more it'd suck", but it's a great guitar, period. It's well-made, acoustically resonant, can easily be set up for effortless action without having to shim this or that or modify anything, and it sounds great. I do think it's a tad over-priced for the features (i.e. one pickup) and being an off-the-shelf product rather than something I designed, and not including a hard case, but that's just my personal pricing criteria.

Still haven't figured out how to work the damn D-tuna, though. WTF? No instruction manual!?

[j2379]

Nice. I'm gasing for a star.