Happy Birthday to the Flying V Peter Hodgson | 02.22.2016

This week marks a special anniversary for Gibson: the birthday of the Flying V.

As Ultimate Guitar reports, the Flying V was unveiled in the third week of February back in 1958, and while its initial trade show outings turned a lot of heads, the model didn't quite catch on with the public at the time; 81 Flying Vs were sold in 1958 and only 17 by 1959.

By the early '60s it left the Gibson catalog, returning briefly in 1967 before finding a new audience with the metal guitarists of the mid 70s.

Today there are many different Flying V models across the Gibson and Epiphone range, including the Flying V 2016 in Traditional and High Performance models, the Brendon Small Snow Falcon and the Epiphone '1958' Korina Flying-V.