Looking at it, I've a feeling this one saw more rock than indie action. Any Destroyer from 1980 onwards is distinctively different to the 70s Destroyers. And later to whack Ibanez with a copyright lawsuit - specific to Ibanez copying the Les Paul headstock design, but you can imagine that Ibanez were going to revisit their other models to make sure that didn't happen again. So good, in fact, that it triggered Gibson to launch their own "Limited Edition" Explorer in 1976. An almost perfect replica of the original Gibson Explorer. Look around, though, and you'll find Ibanez launching the Destroyer in 1975 - with the no-hiding-it advertising slogan "Explore The Destroyer". Try and buy one of those today, and you're looking at 100s of 1000s of dollars. First launched in 1958, Explorers were so far ahead of their time and market that Gibson built only a handful in the five years before they discontinued production in 1963. And it's no stretch to imagine the young U2 fan, Dave Keuning, dreaming about the futuristic angular guitar that he saw in the hands of The Edge. U2 spawned and inspired a new generation of guitar gods. The Edge bought his first Explorer when he was just 17, and Explorers have been in his hands ever since. ![]() But by the 80s, it wasn't just rock and metal gods that saw the potential. ![]() With the Explorer centre-stage with behemoths like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cheap Trick, ZZ Top, The Scorpions, Kiss, Metallica and Mastodon, and the Destroyer that Eddie Van Halen modified into "The Shark", this is hardly your retiring, indie shoe-gazer. Pick up a Destroyer - or the Gibson Explorer on which it was originally based - and you're picking up a guitar that screams "Rock Of Ages". Quite literally, this is an axe!įrom The Killers' debut Hot Fuss all the way through to Wonderful Wonderful, the 1976 Ibanez Destroyer was Dave Keuning's go-to guitar - in the studio, on video, and live. From indie to full-on metal, it looks sharp, and cuts like a knife. And no surprise that Eddie Van Halen built "The Shark" from his Destroyer. There's no more iconic a guitar in Dave Keuning's hands than his 1976 Ibanez Destroyer.
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