Only 250 will be made, split evenly across five gloss nitro finishes, with hand-wired 70s Tribute humbuckers and gold hardware.
Fifty years after Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released their self-titled debut, Gibson has built a limited-edition Flying V around the band logo from that 1976 album. The Tom Petty Flying V 50th Anniversary is limited to 250 guitars worldwide, with 50 in each of five gloss nitrocellulose finishes that Gibson has dubbed the “Flying Five”, and it’s available now through Gibson.
The finishes are Gainesville Gold, Graphite Metallic, Heartbreaker Red, Pearl White Metallic and Pelham Blue, so no colour is rarer than another. For Adria Petty, Tom’s daughter, the shape has been part of the band’s story from the start. “The V was an essential part of the imagery onstage for my dad as well as the band rose to fame in the 1970’s,” she says.
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The body and matching neck are mahogany, with the neck carved to Gibson’s SlimTaper profile. The rosewood fretboard has a 12-inch radius, 22 medium jumbo frets and acrylic dot inlays, while the headstock has a mother-of-pearl Gibson logo, Grover Rotomatic tuners and a Graph Tech nut. Two details mark each one as a commemorative piece: a Heartbreaker 50th truss rod cover on the front of the headstock and a reproduction of Petty’s signature on the back.
A pair of 70s Tribute humbuckers handles the sound, hand-wired to individual volume controls, a master tone with an Orange Drop capacitor and a three-way selector. The hardware is gold-plated throughout, from the aluminium Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop bar tailpiece to the Gold Top Hat knobs, set against a three-ply white pickguard and a cream toggle cap. Each guitar ships in a Gibson hardshell case.
The guitars arrive alongside an anniversary range of apparel and collectibles that Gibson and the Tom Petty Estate made with Nashville brand imogene+willie. The standout is a leather jacket built with Schott N.Y.C. and modelled on the one Petty wore on the cover of the debut album, limited to 75 worldwide. The estate’s Origins 1971–1978 box set, which traces Petty’s early recordings through the band’s first two albums, follows on 6 November.
Gibson is distributed locally by Australis
