Epiphone has unveiled the latest top-of-the-range electric guitar from its collaboration with the Gibson Custom Shop and it is the Jimi Hendrix Love Drops Flying V, a stunning Ebony finished model with psychedelic floral graphics, and some serious firepower in the pickup department.
We’ll get to the pickups in a moment. First, the provenance of this instrument, a signature guitar that seemingly came out of nowhere and comes with the blessing of the Hendrix family, who took a hands-on role in its development.
As with the Inspired By Gibson Custom edition of Kirk Hammett’s Greeny 1959 Les Paul Standard, this is a high-end Epiphone guitar that could stand side-by-side with their US-made Gibson counterparts.
It even has a pair of Custombuckers in the neck and bridge positions – one of the finest Gibson USA electric guitar pickups on the market – and under the hood you've got Mallory caps, CTS pots, and Switchcraft jacks and switches, all of which you might notice once you've stopped admiring the finish.
Like the original late ‘60s Flying V that Hendrix played between 1967 and ’69, its aesthetic is wholly in tune with the flower power zeitgeist of Woodstock, Monterey and the Isle of Wight festivals where Hendrix redefined popular culture with his incendiary playing.
Hendrix’s Gibson was originally a sunburst model, refinished in ebony, and ultimately decorated with his own artwork, reproduced here. This Epiphone version nails the look – especially with that ’67-style double-sided three-ply white pickguard, the black ‘Witch Hat’ style control knobs with silver reflector inserts.
It even has a Maestro short vibrola and a LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge with nylon saddles. And, appropriately, Epiphone is offering this model for left-handed players, too.
Okay, the fingerboard is laurel, not rosewood, but we’ll let that slide. Everything else is as you might expect; solid mahogany body, a chunky C profile neck, carved from a single piece of mahogany and glued to the body with a long heel. Jimi Hendrix’s signature is applied to the back of the headstock in gold. Dimensions are very much on brand with a 12” fingerboard radius and a 24.75” scale.
There is a set of Epiphone Deluxe tuners with ‘double ring’ Keystone buttons, a 43mm Graph Teq nut, and three strap buttons just in case any southpaws – or righthanders – fancy playing this guitar upside down as Hendrix did originally before getting his hands on a left-hander – the most iconic being his Isle Of Wight Flying V with gold hardware, that Billy Gibbons recently played on Jimmy Kimmel in 2022.
In 2020, Gibson released a super-limited run of Murphy Lab replicas of the Jimi Hendrix Isle Of Wight Flying V at a cool $9,999 apiece.
The good news is that the Jimi Hendrix Love Drops Flying V is a lot cheaper than that, and a lot easier to get your hands on. Priced £1,499, it is available now, and it ships in a hardshell guitar case, with a custom Hendrix guitar strap. For more details, head over to Epiphone.
