Kirk Hammett Flying V by Gibson

Gibson honors Metallica's lead guitarist with a limited run Kirk Hammett signature Flying V, based on his first ever Gibson.

Kirk Hammett

Only 150 guitars will be made available, with the first 50 signed by Kirk himself - the #11 in Rolling Stone's "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.

Kirk Hammett's original 1979 Flying V was digitally scanned by Gibson Custom to carefully mimic the guitar in full detail. This series also follows the current "aged" look hype - capturing the dents, scratches as closely as they can.

The guitar itself is basically the same as a regular Gibson Flying V - it has a body crafted from a single chunk of mahogany with a glued-in, three-piece, quarter sawn mahogany neck. The rosewood fingerboard is littered with 22 jumbo Jescar frets and pearloid dot inlays, as it was in KH's original Flying V.

The headstock showcases the same '70s V headstock with no headstock veneer, with the Gibson logo being engraved on the truss rod cover. The neck profile is shaped to follow Hammett's original, with 1.562" nut width and widening to a 1.975" at the 12th fret. The body is then hand-sprayed with a black ebony nitrocellulose lacquer finish, and hand-aged to copy the overall appearance of Kirk's original axe.

The Gibson Kirk Hammett Flying V is equipped with an EMG '81 in the bridge position and an EMG H in the neck position. These powerful active pickups are KH's own personal choice and has helped him create the famous lead tones found in Metallica songs. The pickups are then controlled by two independent volume knobs and one master tone control, along with a traditional three-way pickup selector.

Even the chromed hardware is aged to match the details of Kirk's favorite axe, and it includes a modified tune-o-matic style bridge (using Stars engineering with permission), a stop bar tail piece and Schaller M6 tuners with 14:1 tuning ratio.

Kirk Hammett Flying V

Since these limited run instruments come at a hefty price, it is packaged with a red fur-lined custom shop case with adjustment manual and is covered by Gibson's Custom Limited Lifetime Warranty.

If you want to get your hands on one of these guitars, be prepared to shell out $9,880 for the artist signed version, while the non-signed version has an MSRP of $7,527.

For more information about the Kirk Hammett Flying V, you can visit Gibson.

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