Gibson Flying V - Flying V2

Flying V2

When Tim Shaw arrived at Gibson in 1978, one of his first assignments was to help with designing a companion Guitar to the newly designed E2 Explorer Guitar. This companion guitar would be the new Gibson V2. The general shape of previous Flying V's was retained by Gibson, but the new V2 would sport a new 5-layered sculptured walnut and maple body. Initially these guitars came in a natural finish to accentuate the layered effect, with either Maple or Walnut for the top & bottom layer. This layering was known at Gibson as the "Sandwich" and the sculpted body gave the layering a 3D effect. Knobs were moved off the pickguard, and a Pearl Gibson logo was inlayed into the black headstock, along with gold Gibson Tuners. Two solid brass 5/8 studs known as the "Sustain Sisters" were fitted into the body to anchor the "Tune-o-matic" Bridge along with a brass nut and brass "V" shaped tailpiece. Gibson felt this would provide the sustain and brilliance they wanted for the new V2.

The 1979 through 1981 models used the "boomerang" humbucker pickups that were designed to sound like single coils with lower noise. Beginning in 1982, the pickups were changed to the "Dirty finger" pickups that were available on just a select few models in the early 1980s including the Explorer, ES-347, ES-335S and the Flying V. The V2 with case retailed for $1199 in 1979, Gibson's 3rd most expensive guitar. Only 157 V2's were shipped in 1979. Besides the high price, some players complained about the non-traditional sounding humbucker pickups and the weight of the guitar. Sales were poor for the first 2 years of the V2's availability, and Gibson was scrambling to find ways to increase demand for these guitars from the dealers. It became apparent by the early 1980s that the maple top version wasn't selling as well as the walnut top guitars. To move the maple-top inventory, Gibson began to offer fancy colors to supplement the initial offering of natural finishes. Custom colors included: Pearl white, Blue sparkle, Blue sparkle metallic, Candy apple Red, Sunburst, Goldburst, Silverburst, Black, and Black Sparkle. The Majority of these finishes were applied to maple-top inventory between September 1980 and April 1981.

It soon also became apparent to Gibson that the V2 wasn't meeting sale expectations and production would soon have to be discontinued. In 1982, several hardware changes were made to reduce the cost of producing the guitar and to use up the remaining available inventory. The most important change was replacing the relatively unpopular "boomerang" pickup and pickguard, with the more conventional "Dirty Fingers" Pickup found on many E2 Explorers. The boomerang pickups were more expensive to produce and required more costly routing to the guitar body and a "V" groove to the fretboard. More importantly, boomerang pickups with their single coil-like sound (despite being humbuckers) never really "caught on" with the public. Also, the standard conventional humbucker rout allowed players to swap out pickups easily. Gibson covered the laminated bodies (usually Maple top) of the second variant V2 "Dirty Finger" humbucker versions with Candy Apple Red or White finishes.

A final cost-cutting variation eliminated the inlayed Pearl Gibson headstock logo with a gold decal. Once the majority of the remaining inventory stockpile was used up, Gibson officially discontinued the V2 model in 1982. The Explorer version E2 lasted a year longer, but it too was discontinued by 1983.