Epi Flying V - variations, quality, value?

[poodlesrule]

I tried a well-worn one, briefly, at a local festival's music workshop room, hooked up to a tiny Marshall Micro Stack or such.
I was surprised how good it felt and sounded. It was there for kids to play with, along with keyboards, drumset, and must have been a retired older model(?)

- were there variations on the same Epi body?
- general quality within the Epi line?
- history of the model, older vs. recent models?

The setup produced a good amount of distortion, which is not my usual fare. Maybe I got seduced by that, or the amp-guitar combo happened to be a great fit?

Of course there one for sale locally for cheap...

[hubberjub***]

My first "good" guitar was an Epiphone Flying V. I bought it new in 1991 or 1992. Mine had a single-locking Floyd Rose on it and I could never keep it in tune. I only had it for a few months when one of the bridge posts started pulling out of the body. I took it back to the store and they gave me my full purchase price towards any in stock guitar. That lead to the purchase of my Les Paul Studio. I did not have a very good experience with mine but I'd chalk that up to the poorly designed tremolo. With the fixed bridge, I'd bet it's a much better guitar.

[deeaa*]

Plenty of different V's out there. Some with the the '67(?) shape that I have, i.e. with contoured body flanges extending over the neck end, and some with the original shape where the neck starts direct from the body which ends in sharp corners. I'd prefer the latter, but those have the V shaped flat stop-piece vs. a regular gibson bridge on the 67, plus an uglier picguard...I'd love to build me a V some day that would look like a 67 but with the smaller older style body, that'd be a great combination.

As for Epi quality, in the recent years, say 5-6 years back at least, Epi quality was better than Gibson in many ways. I bought me an Epi Explorer at that time, and I went thru a lot of 'em, and every Gibson I played had worse paint or finishing or something wrong with them while the Epis were nigh perfect. I also tested V's but ended up with an Explo then.

V's and Explos however came with regular covered epi pickups then, nothing spectacular if quite OK pickups. I removed the covers from mine and it worked OK, but later swapped to Duncans anyway.

[Jimi75]

I have played two variations of the Epi V. One was the Voodoo style one, entirely black version, it was quite good, but didn't match my wishes for sound. Then the gorgeous Korina Epi V. Excellent guitar, amazing playability and great looks - I like golden hardware. Of course you can swith to nickle hardware for a few bucks.

If I bought a V today I would go with the Gibson faded Studio. A friend of mine has one and it is a dream of a guitar.