For the price of an original Korina* body fifties Explorer, you could buy at least one house today. Ted McCarty’s design was every bit as futuristic as intended – perhaps slightly too futuristic, as Gibson were not exactly inundated with orders at the time, however the small number that were produced are today up there in the Top Five of the world’s most collectible and desirable guitars.
Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton was one of the artists who brought renewed interest to the Explorer, when he acquired an original 1958 model in the early seventies, using it to record his 1975 album, EC Was Here. He collected a second Explorer in the early eighties, using that one extensively for live work over subsequent years. Another Explorer is credited with giving Lynyrd Skynyrd their distinctive guitar sound, courtesy of Alan Collins’ ’58 model.
2022
By the 1980s, interest in Gibson’s “Jetsons” guitars had grown to the point where they were put back into production, this time around finding a more receptive market. And so we advance to 2022, when the company announced the launch of the Lzzy Hale signature model Explorerbird, in Cardinal Red: LZZY VIDEO
Hard-hitting guitars
With the limited edition run of the Explorerbird now ended, prices are on the way up, and with other Gibson signature models as a guide, it won’t be long before these hard-hitting guitars begin commanding serious investment.
Specs
So, what do you get for your money? Well, a really, really cool guitar, obviously, but here’s your specs:-
Solid Mahogany body
Solid Mahogany neck, (slim taper)
Bound** Indian Rosewood fingerboard, with medium-jumbo gold frets and brilliant yellow dot inlays
23¾” scale
12” radius
GraphTech nut
Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners
Cardinal Red nitro finish
All gold hardware
‘70s Tribute’ pickups
3-way selector switch
2 volume controls and a master tone, (black speed knobs)
Orange Drop capacitors
Tune-o-matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece
Lzzy Hale’s signature on the truss-rod cover
Explorer hard shell case
Full sonic potential
The Explorerbird comes factory fitted with 10-gauge strings, but we’ll pop some 11s in the case, so that you can really explore the guitar’s full sonic potential. And something not everyone realises about Lzzy’s desire for the Firebird headstock, is that it gives a straighter string-pull than the regular Explorer design.
Demolish a building!
The necks on the Explorerbirds are famously fast; the pickups fairly belt it out – you could probably demolish a building with them cranked all the way up; and, perhaps most importantly, these are seriously cool axes!
Free courier delivery
Complete with its original Gibson hard shell case and case candy, (pics 7 & 8), new RRP on these was $6.5k, “discounted” to $5.5k, however you can grab this extremely lightly used model for just $4850, with our FREE COURIER DELIVERY included to any address in Australia. ($100 airfreight to New Zealand, and $175 to the US, Canada, UK and mainstream European countries)
Weight: 8lb 13oz / 3.99kg
*Also known as Limba
**The fingerboard cunningly features almost invisible black binding, so that you don’t have Gibson’s regular aged white binding clashing with the Cardinal Red finish
Just Guitars
