We have seen Adam Jones playing it. We have seen Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian playing it. And now electric guitar collectors with deep pockets will have the chance to play it too as the Adam Jones Flying V Collector’s Edition is officially out of the Murphy Lab and available to purchase.
You’ll need $19,999 to spare, but then this is a collector’s grade high-end electric guitar, and they’re only making 50 of them. Chances are, by they time you read this they might already be sold out.
The Flying V is like nothing we have seen before and yet it seems so familiar, borrowing from designs gone by, taking the Antique Silverburst of the Tool guitarist’s previous Gibson signature guitars and reversing it. The headstock is instantly recognisable to any Gibson historian or brand aficionado; it has the split V shape that was seen on the Futura prototypes of 1957 as the brand looked to inject a little modernism in their designs.
In 2023 it still looks all kinds of radical, with this Adam Jones Flying V is the most audacious of his Gibson brand signature models so far, taking the Flying V through the looking glass with that Reverse Antique Silverburst finish.
Expect this to be heavier than your average Flying V. When Jones posted a video to his Instagram page of the prototype he said it was “one of the heaviest Flying Vs Gibson has ever made to date”, and that is by design. Jones says he needs that weight to make the guitar perform like his Les Paul Customs.
“The heavy body weight also helps me control feedback and sustain just like my vintage LPCs [Les Paul Customs],” he wrote. “I played this epic instrument on stage during the last 2022 Tool tour and it sounds and performs killer!”
Like Jones' Les Paul Customs, this has the Custom treatment, with the bound ebony fingerboard inlaid with mother of pearl custom blocks, and seven-ply binding on the body.
Notably the Futura headstock is left unbound. There is however a ‘Dog Daze’ artwork on the bell-shaped truss rod cover plate, with a matching brooch on the signature guitar strap that’s inside the guitar case. Elsewhere in that case you’ll find a certificate of authenticity and a signed photo.
Seated in a non-weight relieved mahogany body there are two humbucking pickups, a reverse-mounted Gibson Custombucker at the neck and a custom-wound Seymour Duncan DDJ at the bridge.
The three-way pickup selector is by Switchcraft, it’s mounted on a black poker-chip washer and mounted on the bass-side wing of the body, with dual volume and tone Speed-style knobs controlling your tone.
There is more than meets the eye here. Jones has the bridge pickup wired to a 500K DiMarzio volume pot, with the other three all CTS pots with 047uF Orange Drop capacitors as standard.
The strings are fed through ferrules in the body, with no V-shaped plate. The bridge is Tune-O-Matic, the tuners Schaller M6 with large buttons, and the hardware finish is lightly aged chrome.
The neck has been fashioned into a medium C profile. The scale length and fingerboard radius measurements are on-brand at 24.75” and 12” respectively. There are 22 frets of 18 per cent nickel-silver. The nut is made of bone. Hide glue has been used to stick to glue the neck to the body.
There’s no question that the Adam Jones Flying V Collector’s Edition is a lot of guitar, bold, original, and with that Murphy Lab je ne sais quoi applying the cherry on top. But you’ll have to dig deep; $19,999 is a lot of bread. For more details, head over to Gibson.
