Beginning life in ’58, this ultra-rare solidbody finally left the factory some five years later
This is a 1958/1963 Gibson Explorer. I’ve just come on the heels of delivering Big Ed [a 1958 Gibson Explorer] to Gibson. I delivered it by hand. [Edison] ‘Big Ed’ Thompson was a well-known blues guitarist. In 1958, he and his brother acquired matching guitars – Ed got an Explorer and his brother got a left-handed Flying V, which is one of a kind
I have it here at Well Strung Guitars. When Big Ed died [in 1993], Rick Vito from Fleetwood Mac bought both guitars and kept them together. They went from Rick Vito to a guy I know, and I bought them as a pair about four and a half years ago. They’ve always stayed together, and I had a deal in place to sell them to a client who wound up only being able to take the V.
Meanwhile, Gibson was waiting in the wings, and they bought the Big Ed Explorer. They flew me out last week to deliver the guitar by hand. It was next to me in a seat all the way there.
Gibson’s late-50s ‘modernistic’ electric guitars comprised the Futura, the Flying V and the Moderne. But the Moderne never made its way out to the public; at least I have no reason to believe one exists.
Gibson released the Explorer and Flying V models in ’58, but they had trouble selling them and so they were abandoned by the following year. Later on, they started assembling what they had left just to get rid of them.
They made 19 Explorers in ’58 and a few in ’59. Then in ’63 there were less than a couple dozen more put together, mostly with ’58 serial numbers. Gibson don’t have concrete records of these early ’60s Explorers, but it appears they made 22.
Flying V was formally reintroduced in the late ’60s, but the Explorer didn’t reappear until the mid-’70s.
The biggest differences between the original run of late ’50s and these early ’60s Explorers are that most of the later guitars no longer have gold-plated hardware. And they did away with the six separate tuners in place of specially made six-on-a-strip tuners that don’t fit any other guitar.
This guitar sounds absolutely amazing when it’s plugged in. To me, an Explorer doesn’t sound like any other guitar. They don’t sound like Les Pauls. It’s somewhat like a Flying V, but it has more bottom-end. They’re thick- and chunky-sounding. I think that’s why a lot of metal players love them. Sure, they look funky, but they also sound deep and rich.
Old-school Metal-head 