I Got One! | 2021 Gibson 1958 Collector's Edition Brazilian Rosewood Korina Explorer Review + Demo

welcome back troglodytes to your daily dose of guitar information the trogley's guitar show the day has come the karina explorer review i haven't been this excited to unbox a guitar since the adam jones les paul you know the aged and signed big video you guys didn't make that 10 000 like challenge but hey i'm not gonna punish my faithful viewers so thank you for getting it to about 5 000 likes but today is the day that we look at the karina explorer so just in case you missed this video you can check it out right here but gibson just recently released a new karina explorer and flying v set it was twenty thousand dollars for the flying v and this bad boy if if you were lucky to even get one was thirty thousand dollars retail price now as far as the used market i think it's going to get pretty crazy on these because unless you were a gibson artist or a guy who buys all the high-end guitars at a certain dealer i did not see a single one of these ever get listed for public sale so unfortunately it wasn't really a fair fight for these and they only made 19 because that's how many of the original ones they made in 1958 like this guy over here they made 81 of those so if you wanted one of those you could get it as long as you heard about them within a week but this guy even if you had the money you really didn't have a chance of getting one unless you had an in somewhere and thankfully since i review a whole bunch of guitars i work with many different dealers i had a good fighting chance to pick one of these things up so kind of like the v it the case has a gig bag over top of it to make sure that it stays nice it's kind of like a brownish greenish gray color i guess you could say because that's how these originally shipped but instead of having like a triangular case the explorers they naturally get a rectangular one and everything is you know period correct specked out on these guys two locking latches on either side that are clasps and just a regular clasp right here same thing with the other ones they even got the hinges right back here but man i've been wanting to open this for so long but since i have to react to it live i had to wait until i could actually film this episode here it is the thirty thousand dollar modern day karina explorer look at that thing i have wanted a karine oh my that is so light i love it okay so i've wanted a karina explorer for the longest of times because this is that one guitar i just haven't ever owned and the reason i love these things comes down to the headstock the clues and tuners sticking out on the top i know some guys don't like it but i do because it's just such a weird quirky 50 spec and i think it looks way better than like the mini grovers or whatever a lot of the other ones get but what's so fantastic about these things is it is a single piece of karina i mean the v's were two pieces it's a center scene because i mean that's just how they did it back in the day but do you do you realize just how big of a piece of karina this thing had to be because it's not just this body shape i mean it's got to be a pretty good sized slab right there and then they carve it up into this explorer shape they give it all the pick guards they give it the pickups they make it into a beautiful guitar but what makes these things ultra special besides being limited edition only 19 of them being made well you got the murphy labs aging this one it looks pretty good it's got the finish checking i feel like they could have done a little bit more on the knobs that almost looks like they did hardly anything to those but they at least gave it like the yellowed aging to it and they try to age our hardware here but you also get a sweet brazilian rosewood fretboard on these so unlike the flying v the explorers really did not change too much but to understand these a bit more let's do some explorer history here so in 1957 that namm show they introduced the explorer prototype known as the futura it has this really big clunky horn right here that's like squared off i'm not a big fan of those i mean they're cool when they come in custom colors like that neon green run i think i've seen a purple one before once too and there's been limited edition reissues here and there but generally i think they knocked it out of the park the second time when they started to produce these in 1958 and the main run lasted until about 1960. they made less than 50 original 50s explorers you know somewhere around there but you can't find these korean explorers sometimes similar to those flying vs as like parts guitars up until about 1963 but then the explorer disappeared for a lot longer of time than the flying v the flying v kinda got popular remember this came back in 1967. this one you gotta flip those numbers they came back in 1976. and the 76 explorers they really aren't that much different i mean the body's shape i think it did change just a tad but the biggest thing is they're just now made out of mahogany as far as the control layout it didn't really change it's not like the flying vs where they were string through and now they have like some trem bar or they're just a stop bar tail piece these things they pretty much just turned into mahogany and they got the tuner swap so you can check that out right here so the 1976 ones the very first run has limited edition on the back of the headstock and then they switch it over to just a regular serial number and then the next big explorer change are the alder bodied explorers they start around you know 83 84. that's like the thrash metal ones so you've seen metallica use them all the time especially james hetfield when i see an explorer i think about hetfield but for karina one generally people think of alan collins you know from leonard skynyrd he actually has his own signature one that you can check out i used to think those things were expensive until these came out so since about 1976 they've never really went out of production and this is my second favorite body style as compared to the les paul because les pauls they're just iconic but after that i just love explorers so much they feel so right to me when you play them your arm rests just the right way that hoists them up they're really great for metal you can do blues you can do everything i love me a good explorer but now as far as critiquing the aging job they actually went a little bit more extreme than the v like that is a pretty deep gouge into the top and you've got some arm wear areas right here this is very similar to my flying v over here but on the back side it wasn't quite as chewed up here but i like that white output jack guard thing it just it looks so off put and out of place but man i just love that headstock they did that thing justice sometimes these look a little bit weird and they have like a big old headstock and they have the logo at the wrong angle these things are right now granted i've never actually had an original explorer but from photos that's right so if you're curious how these guys are serialized they started after the flying v serial numbers that ended in eight one zero eight one because they made 81. so these guys lead all the way up to 100 so that means the very first explorer is actually serial number 82 so this is the fourth one made not too bad i got number nine and number four i think i lucked out on this whole review and demo situation for getting pretty good serial numbers so that's enough about the guitar for the time being before we throw it onto the workbench i'm curious did we get swapped over pick guards on this one too like this that started life as a white one but they included the black one in the case but it looks like we get the same pennant right here same style of coa booklet it's more of like a very dark brown but light colored at the same time kind of hard to show you but i think you can see it here in the lighting and in here you just have your serial number nothing too fancy 1958 karina explorer murphy lab aged traditional case candy pre-pack checklist this was birthed june 5th of 2021 and get your case keys your gibson strap over here the gibson plectrums and the vintage style cable right here that nobody will probably end up using so why was the explorer ten thousand dollars more than the flying v i think it really comes down to it was one piece of karina and they made so few and honestly they probably could have priced them double and people probably still would have bought them they're collectors guitars these were not meant to be played played just played lovingly in home obviously you can buy a regular explorer for 2 000 bucks from the usa lineup if you want to gig something or you can save yourself 20 000 so the talk on the street right now is gibson is also going to do non-aged ones ones that don't have the brazilian rosewood fretboard at about ten thousand dollars a pop so if you happen to have missed out on one of these but really need a karina explorer you can still get them now as far as alternatives on these you're kind of limited just like the flying v there was a 2008 50th anniversary run there was also some done in the heritage series but they are ridiculously rare in and of themselves like you can find the heritage flying these but there were only a handful of the explorers done and finding any karina bodied explorer they're just hard to come by because there's more explorer collectors in the world than there are flying v's so i think i've rambled on enough about this i'm trying to teach you as much as i humanly possibly can but i am so excited to finally get to take a look at this thing it's a beaut the fun begins already i take the pickguard off and what is this is this a small little fact that i don't know about original explorers did they really cap off this little area right here with a small piece of wood that looks like maybe spruce in order to keep the pickup wirings where they need to be because that's exactly what they did in here i guess it also could be mahogany it must be i've never actually seen a 50s one in person but that is like my one time all-time guitar that i would love to own an original explorer like i feel pretty elite just being able to have gotten one of these for review and documentation right but this guitar its scarcity is artificial gibson could make thousands of these if they really wanted to but they decided to limit it down to 19 and that's why they became heavily collectible because people's collector's senses are tingling and now they're fighting over it and even on the used market i've yet to see a single person want to part with theirs but anyways the more you know apparently that happens but as far as our pickups in here same thing as the flying v you've got custom buckers in your neck and bridge pickup however in this one the cavities are not quite as clean as that flying v you've got a little bit of uh something in here it's actually kind of nice to see that to be honest because those other ones were just way too clean but here you can see the neck tenon goes all the way here that's why the pick guard cuts in here to kind of cover that over and you can see the maple truss rod capping off block right here too that's what this is right here you know now looking at that that is almost the exact same width as what you need right here is that really maple and they just use that from the same blank of wood as they use for that maybe as far as the pickup readings themselves 7.48k ohms in the bridge your neck position 7.5 and the middle should be in between 3.75 as far as our toggle switch cavity route it looks pretty much the exact same style as like a 76 explorer or any other one that you might have seen before just your regular routes and here's what your toggle switch looks like on the underside and yes the pick guard is black on the underside because it's four ply white black white black and the reason why you don't get the option to swap over to a black pick guard on this one is someone in the comment section was saying the very first flying vs that were to come out like the first handful of them actually came stock with the black pickguards and the rest came with the white so they wanted to be accurate for that i guess there's no lore behind that on the explorers but you have two volume controls and a master tone for both pickups right here and you can see they even gave us the sharp thumb bleeders right there that point to what number you're on on these knobs now as far as the aging on the pickup covers i'll be honest not the nicest looking aging on these ones i think they did a much better job on the flying v i'm just gonna go ahead and say whoever aged number nine flying v at the factory give yourself a promotion that is the nicest one i've seen yet but as far as the rest of the relic job you can see you got some nicks and dings in your regular locations that you'd expect to see it they've got all the finish checking up and down and keep in mind this is a murphy labs light aged i thought for sure light aged would be nowhere near as heavily aged as this one looks so i would hate to see an ultra heavy relic by them and when i say hate to see i mean i would like to see just how absolutely trashed that thing becomes because this looks pretty heavily aged to me but i guess they're just trying to create a lightly played guitar that has you know been alive for a long time it's experienced a lot of weather changes and whatnot now some of these i've seen they get deeper wear right here similar to like right here and then it gets darker so this one is kind of light but what i really love about this one take a look at that side profile the wood grain looks like sand at a beach or something that's pretty darn cool as far as the bridge and tail piece it's just an abr one no wire retainer or anything like that just reads gibson abr one on the bottom as far as the tailpiece it looks like this it is lightweight aluminum and they aged that pretty heavily but the one thing i forgot to point out on the flying v is what really bugs me on these is your covers are aged right they give it the blacked out pole pieces they try to age it some here like yeah it looks okay but they don't age your height adjustment screws you'd think they would lose their gold it just really stands out once you notice it how they're so perfectly gold whereas everything else is like a dulled over brass like gold but anyways moving on from our karina body we have a carina neck with the brazilian rosewood fretboard nothing crazy with the specs here 22 frets 12 inch radius you've got the dot inlays but what i really appreciate about this fretboard is it looks like it's been played you can see how it kind of goes that's simulating somebody's hand you know rubbing against this and playing it for quite a while that's what they call a rolled fretboard edge but some of the vos job or just however the way this wood particularly looks just makes it look slightly aged you get a little bit of that characteristic redness right here it's quite a cool looking fretboard now you could condition it and probably clean some of that up but honestly i'm just gonna leave that as is because it's pretty darn cool as far as our next specs it measures 1.69 inches at the nut and 2.06 by the 12. now this neck is not as big as you might think it would be so 0.95 at the first fret neck depth and 1.01 by the 12th i was fully expecting this to be like r7 baseball bat neck it's not quite like it's full it's a big neck but it's not massive here's what it looks like at the first fret and the 12th fret so you can definitely tell it chunks up the further up you go but just widens up kind of like a normal guitar moving on to the face of the headstock here that is a nylon nut here you can see the truss rod in here everything's looking the way it should be you got some nicks and dings here from where would like hang on a stand artificially done of course and you have your fancy fancy fancy looking truss rod cover here i love the historic style and you get all the relic finish checking here with a nicely yellowed over gibson logo and what they did particularly well on these explorers is they aged the tips so the vintage tips will age and they'll crumble and they'll fall apart and on the flying v they took the time to like dirty up some of the edges which they've also done here but they've really aged these tips into like a very dark vintage looking yellow they did a fantastic job on that but man i just love explorer headstocks with these goofy looking clues and tuners sticking out the top it's such a vintage looking speck if you appreciate history you'll love it moving on to the back side here we do have a control cavity back here and it's just gibson branded pots they use that really cool looking phone book style capacitor but the fact that these pots say gibson kind of bugs me like the vintage originals wouldn't have done that they have historic pots that don't say that so that leaves me a little bit confused on their choice of that but whatever then you have your output jack located on the side over here with your strap buttons in these locations so one right here and one over there we'll see if that's balanced or not but something else i noticed i'm not sure if this is a vintage spec or not but this route is actually too large for this you can see how it moves a lot i know sometimes they have issues with that on gibson usa products and things get sold at seconds for that reason maybe that's a vintage thing maybe it's not maybe somebody can fill us in on that we'll just go ahead and take a look at all of our artificial aging here it's pretty convincing they're definitely getting better at their jobs you know some of them are better than others is this the nicest one i've seen i've only seen photos of about four of them and i would say this is like you know the third best so it's not the best looking one but if you like the really lightly aged ones it's looking pretty good and i thoroughly enjoy it i mean you're lucky if you even have one of these so you can't really be too picky on these because from a display case they all look about the same anyways so now we run up the back of the neck here they also did some aging but what i found really unique is you've got like finished checking all up and down this neck right no so there's like a small area right there where there's just no finish checking it looks just so strange and out of place because every square inch of this thing is covered in finish checking now i know on vintage originals you don't get checking absolutely everywhere i just find it strange how they relict all this other stuff and they didn't get it right there i think that really just depends if they really are doing the freezer aging technique or if they're doing razor blade whatever they're doing i think they're kind of keeping that hush hush at this point in time that is murphy age secrets at this point but we'll go ahead and take a look at all these edges for your guys's viewing pleasure but now the backside of the headstock it's also got the aging and once again our serial number 81085 making this the fourth one made of the explorers well i don't know if it was the fourth one made but it's the fourth one in sequence of their serial numbers let's say it that way and just like the v you've got some scuffs at the top a few on the edges but surprisingly pretty clean on the farthest horn which normally gets all beat up but our last spec to capture is the weight mine is eight and a half pounds i've seen these weigh as much as nine and a half however i only know the weights on two of them so i don't know if mine is like crazily ridiculously light i mean that's an alright weight for this big of a guitar i certainly noticed picking it up it was ridiculously light so let's go ahead plug this in and hear how it sounds [Music] okay let's go ahead and walk through the tones of this beast i just got done playing this for like two hours i love this thing it's great i mean don't get me wrong the v's are cool but this has that limited edition nature and i just love explorers in general so let's go ahead and explore the tonalities of this one starting with our neck pickup [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] beautiful bridge position [Music] so [Music] [Applause] now we'll try that middle position [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so i think you'll agree it sounds nice clean but i don't know whenever i think explorer karina i think james hepfield because i know he owns a real one so let's go ahead and pay tribute to that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] there's [Music] so [Music] so so yes [Music] [Music] i'll try that neck pick up [Music] [Applause] [Music] middle position [Music] that's what's nice about this guitar cleans up pretty well [Music] ah [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] hey [Music] now [Music] so [Music] so what are my final thoughts on what i'm pretty sure is one of the most expensive gibson guitars that has ever been offered in the history of the company it's absolutely fantastic i thoroughly enjoyed my purchase i had a great time with this thing i guarantee you 95 of my love for this thing just comes down to how many people want it and i happen just to get it because i like collectors items things like this that gets me excited i was so happy when i was able to secure one of these for myself here it's a fantastic guitar but i'm sure you could buy just about any karina explorer that weighs about the same as this one and be just as thoroughly happy with it so yeah i paid a premium because i'm a collector and i'm very happy that i got to share this with everyone because there were very few people who could actually get their hands on this unfortunately the set i purchased did not come with the all-expenses-paid trip down to the gibson garage and get the tours and all that stuff i wish but no i didn't get one of those so troglodytes i hope you enjoyed getting to take a look at this thing up close and personal i doubt you will see one of these out in the wild but you never know you never know don't forget to like comment and subscribe and we will catch you tomorrow on the next episode take care [Music] as always if you're interested in being the next owner of one of these demo guitars you can check them out on my website trogleysguitarshow.com there's some links in the description foreign so so you

Channel: The Trogly's Guitar Show

Views: 112,170

Keywords: the trogly's guitar show, trogly, gibson, gibson explorer, korina explorer, gibson 2021, gibson korina, 1958 explorer, gibson korina explorer, Collector's Edition, collectors edition unboxing, collectors edition korina explorer, 1958 Gibson Explorer Korina, Collectors edition gibson explorer, 30k explorer, most expensive guitars, 1958 gibson korina explorer, brazilian rosewood gibson, brazilian rosewood, 2021 gibson korina explorer, gibson summer namm 2021, korina gibson

Id: 8I7c0aZ7f_U

Length: 34min 53sec (2093 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021