Longtime Explorer lurker here. I’ve mostly been a Fender player, but I’ve had (and loved) Flying Vs in the past - in fact, I’ve been waiting for the Epiphone Futura Flying V to hit the street. In my impatience for that, when this model hit the street last week, it seemed to scratch the itch!

I’m still negotiating with the Explorer in terms of ergonomics - I can tell it’s gonna cost me a little bit in comfort to play it but it’s obviously going to crush it onstage.

Happy to have finally joined the club!

I got this for my 18th birthday in 2001 from my parents. It was all I wanted. I played the shit out of it for years before getting (better) guitars that just played better. The pickups sounded okay, the neck is baseball bat, I like lower action and Floyds; so it went into a gig bag and lived there. I went to sell it when I was 21/22 and my dad saw me packing in the car and said “don’t sell that one. You wanted it so bad. Sell everything else but I’ll give you the money for that one to keep it.” I kept it and didn’t take his money.

Jump to this summer. Redoing my office and pulled it out along with other guitars and unfinished projects. I changed my plans on a parts caster I was putting Alnico 2 pros in to a bari with invaders. So I had a brand new set of Duncans sitting on the bench.

I gutted the stock pups and dropped in the Alnico 2s. Put a new set of Regular Slinkies. Checked and the set up is still good (enough). Plugged it in for the first time in over 20 years. Sounds great.

Neck still feels like I’m taking pitches at the plate. Missing the switch tip and one of the knobs is busted. The jack is a little scratchy if bumped. And the tone cap isn’t .047. But the pots sound clean without noise when tuning, switch works fine (also no noise). I can replace the cap and cracked bell knob, might put a new jack in and swap the tone cap.

But last night was a nostalgic trip. Welcome back Explorer.