The Prettiest Birds-Eye Korina Flying V ever…

1981 Gibson Flying V Heritage 'Birds-Eye' Korina.

One of the very earliest Heritage Korina Flying V's, this amazing guitar weighs just 6.70 lbs. and has a nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a scale length of 24 3/4 inches. 'Birds-Eye' Korina body and three-piece 'Birds-Eye' Korina neck with a wonderful medium-to-thick profile. Rosewood fretboard with 22 original jumbo frets and pearl dot position markers. Headstock with silver plastic "Gibson" logo. Individual Gibson (Kluson) Deluxe tuners with single-ring Keystone plastic buttons. Serial number "A 054" stamped in black on back of headstock. Two Tim Shaw reissue PAF Humbuckers with outputs of 7.04k and 6.97k, each engraved on the underside "Pat No. 2,737,842". The neck pickup stamped in black "153 882" and the bridge pickup also stamped in black "154 882". Five-layer white/black/white/black/white plastic pickguard with eight screws. Three controls (two volume, one tone) plus three-way selector switch. Inside the control cavity is stamped "820" and also "Betty" in pencil. The bridge pickup cavity has a large 'A' and a smaller '3' stamped in red. Black plastic bell-shape "Bell" shaped knobs. Gibson 'ABR-1' non-retainer Tune-O-Matic bridge with metal saddles, stamped on the underside "Gibson Pat No. 2,740,313", modernistic "V" shaped metal tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. This thirty-year old 'under-the-bed' guitar is in mint (9.50) condition and is complete with all of the original case-candy including, the original Gibson warranty with Model number "Flying V Ant. Nat." and matching serial number "A 054" written in black ink; original thirty-six page owners manual, original case-key in manilla envelope and two other original hang tags. Housed in the original Gibson brown four-latch 'V' shaped hardshell  case with maroon plush lining (9.25).

This is the ONLY 'Birds-Eye' Korina Flying V Heritage that we have ever seen - and certainly the lightest, prettiest and earliest Flying V you will ever see…

The original Korina Flying V, introduced in 1958,was produced in very small numbers (1958: 81 guitars; 1959: 17 guitars). Legend has it that there were also a few more built in 1962-63 which were assembled from leftover parts.
The second version flying V's 1967-1970 were made with mahogany bodies - again in very limited numbers with a total production run of just 175 guitars. There were then three other versions made between 1971 and 1979 - again all with mahogany bodies. The fist time that the Korina bodies appeared again was in 1981 - and they were made in the old Kalamazoo factory in very limited numbers - again legend has it that they produced only 100 guitars in the first year of 1981 and similar numbers per year through 1984.

"Whether it was rivalry between plants or increased market awareness, the Nashville plant jumped into the reissue action in 1980. By this time, one of the most glaring deficiencies of new Les Pauls (compared to the originals) was the humbucking pickup. In preparation for its first attempt at a reissue, Gibson assigned engineer Tim Shaw the job of designing a reissue of the original Patent-Applied-For humbucking pickup-within certain restrictions. "This was 1980 and Norlin was already feeling the pinch," Shaw said, referring to Gibson's long decline through the 1970s and early '80s. "We weren't allowed to do much retooling. We redid the bobbin because it was worn out. We got some old bobbins and put the square hole back in. We did it without the T-hole, which stood for Treble." To replicate the magnets, Shaw gathered up magnets from original PAFs and sent them to a lab to be analyzed. "Most were Alnico 2's," he said, "but some were 5's. In the process of making an Alnico 5, they stick a magnet in a huge coil for orientation, but an unoriented 5 sounds a lot like a 2. They started with Alnico 2 and then switched to Alnico 5."
Shaw discovered that the original magnets were a little thicker than 1980 production magnets. "Magnetic strength is largely a function of the area of the polarized face; increasing the face size gives you more power," he explained. So he specified the thicker magnet for the new PAF. Wiring on the originals was #42 gauge, which Gibson still used. However, the original wire had an enamel coating and the current wire had a polyurethane coat, which also was of a different thickness or "buildup" than that of the original, which affected capacitance. Norlin refused to go the extra mile-or extra buck, as it were. Enamel-coated wire cost a dollar more per pound than poly-coated. Shaw could change the spec on the buildup without additional expense, so the thickness of the coating was the same as on the original wire, but he was forced to use the poly coat. The difference is easy to see: purple wire on the originals, orange on the reissues. Shaw later found a spec for the number of turns on a spec sheet for a 1957 ES-175. "It specified 5,000 turns because a P-90 had 10,000 turns and they cut it in half," Shaw said. In reality, however, originals had anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 turns, depending on how tight the coil was wound. Shaw later met Seth Lover, who designed and patented Gibson's humbucker, at a NAMM show. Lover laughed when asked about a spec for windings, and he told Shaw, "We wound them until they were full." The spec for resistance was even less exact, Shaw said. The old ohmeter was graduated in increments of .5 (500 ohms). Anywhere between 3.5 and 4 on the meter (3,500 to 4,000 ohms) met the spec. Consequently, Shaw pointed out, there is no such thing as an exact reissue or replica of the 1959 PAF pickup. There can only be a replica of one original PAF, or an average PAF. As Gibson would find out in the early 1990s, the same could be said about the entire guitar. Shaw's PAF reissue debuted on Gibson's new Nashville-made Les Paul Heritage 80 in 1980. Compared to anything Gibson had previously made (which is to say, compared to nothing), it was an excellent reissue of a sunburst Les Paul Standard....." (www.gibson.com).