“It can sing like a Les Paul, bark like an SG and spank like a Flying V”: The Explorer chugged for Hetfield, sang the blues with Clapton and made the Edge sound ginormous – is it still Gibson’s most underrated electric guitar?

James Hetfield of Metallica plays his white Gibson Explorer, onstage in 1986.

Back in 1958, when the first Gibson Explorer guitars appeared on the market, there was no heavy metal, hard rock, Marshall stacks or overdrive pedals. Distortion was something that amp manufacturers and players generally frowned upon, embraced only by a handful of hooligans and raucous rebels.

Gibson president Ted McCarty conceived the Explorer’s design as a modern, space age-inspired competitor to the Stratocaster, but its radical sharp-angled “arrowhead” (on the earliest version) and “hockey stick” headstock shapes and pointy geometric body that resembled Thor’s lightning bolt were just a little too futuristic for musicians who still considered crew cuts and suit jackets the height of rock ’n’ roll fashion.