Arbor Explorer

This kinda has a goofy paint scheme. It has flying V and explorer guitars all over it. Looks exactly like the Gibson from a distance. High output humbuckers.

Sounds exactly like a Gibson. Very fat sound. Compares to skynard, triumph, 38 special, and southern rock bands. About the fattest sound you can get. Won't feed back unless you want some controlled harmonic feedback.

Thinnest neck and fastest action of any guitar I've played. Very heavy and will sustain seemingly forever. Very fun to play.

I bought this guitar with a cracked headstock 15 years ago. Been playing it ever since without a problem.....amazing

This is my 2nd Arbor guitar. I play them proudly, even though they're a fraction of the cost of Gibsons. One thing about these guitars, they resemble Gibsons more than most, and the pickups are really hot. Too bad they don't make them any more.

I bought this guitar from Ebay about 6 months ago and as far as features I was really impressed the only complaint I have about the features are the tuners that were on it they were the ones arbor put on it and were horrible. the tremolo system was cool it was called rock lock the wiring was a little weird the locking nuts are great and when I got it it had gibson pickups in it they are great

I love the sound I use a fender 100 watt vintage head and a randall 4x12 cab with a digitech df-7 distortion and a crybaby wah I play lead guitar in a metal band. the guitar sounds better than any other I have ever owned it is my main my back ups are a washburn dime 32 and a Kramer 1984 reissue the arbor completely blows the other 2 out of the water

the action isnt what i wish it was the strings sit kinda high off the neck when i bought the guitar the hardware was a little rusty
but cleaned easily the paint is two tone red on top and black on bottom and chipped off pretty easily every thing else was good

I have been playing about 1 or 2 shows a month I am really active on stage and I throw my guitars around my back at least 1 time at every show I have only dropped it once due to faulty strap locks and it has never let me down I would play it at any show with no backup
the hardware rusts pretty easily but it is really rasy to clean it off with out damage to the instrument

I have never found info about arbor anywhere their customer service sucks

I have been playing for around 8 years and have owned many guitars but my arbor explorer is the best sounding guitar I have and i am really happy with it i have had les pauls BC rich warlocks and a few j.b Players and even a gibson explorer and the arbor sounds best.

I think it was made in southeast asia . Most of these copies are laminated alder and maple but that might not be right at all its obviously not one solid wood . It has a set neck string through body bridge , a 3way pickup selector to switch between the dual humbuckers
,two volume and one tone control, crappy tuners and a set mohagony neck .

I put in a duncan distortion in the bridge position and heavy danelectro baritone strings on it, (jimmy rigged i know) but until that point the stock pickups were a little dark sounding . Now it rocks it with a sock in it . Im not really a metal head but i like to get down once in a while and the big laminated body and set neck
make it sound huge . For a pawn shop guitar it fits the bill .

Finish is a root beer brown transparent finish that reveals the cheap laminated woods below, good comedic value . The action feels pretty nice,good fast neck . I should probably replace the tuners soon , they wont hold a low b for anything , but i guess thats not what its made for .

bad electronics but if you have a solder iron and common sense youll straighten it out. Id gig with it though, but thats just how i roll .

Pawn shops in kalispell mt. are not notoriously great with customer support .

Looks to be about a mid 80's guitar. 22 fret solid body guitar, 2 volume knobs 1 tone and a 3 way switch. 2 DiMarzio humbuckers, I don't believe they are stock. Not sure what type of wood. Black Finish with a few chips here an there. Stop tailpiece and tune-o-matic..Original case came with, a little beat up.

I got a great deal on an Arbor Les Paul copy and I loved the guitar so well I just had to try another. I found this Arbor Explorer on Ebay and got a great price for it. It suits my music style no matter what mood I am in. Right now I am running it thru an Art SGX 2000 into a Carvin Amp and Speaker Cabs, seems able to get about any sound I want, from screaming bright leads to mellow, full sounding rythems. Hitting harmonics is no problem...not much to dislike about this guitar unless your reeaaallly picky.

I bought this guitar used, what all is original I do not know. But overall, for being 18 years old, I can tell it was one sweet playing guitar brand new. A few tweeks here an there and I had this one playing close to new...

This one could take some abuse, and I believe it has. I had to do some touch-up painting around a few edges and on a few spots on the body, but it has held up excellently for it's age. Everything on this guitar seems to have been made to last, strap buttons are solid, wiring is great, I would use this one without a backup without even a thought.

Arbor seems about as hard to find Info on as Harmony guitars...but my experience with both tells me I do not need to shell out $1000.00 for a Fender or a Gibson when my Arbor's and Harmony's can stand side by side with them. Why pay $700.00 just for a Name? Next on my list is the Arbor Flying V...anybody have one they want to part with, email me!

I have been playing for about 15 years now, mostly as a hobby. I have too much gear to list here...But I do have 18 used guitars, 15 are currently playable. If my Arbor Explorer were ever lost, I would see about replacing it as it is a great guitar overall. I have played the higher end Gibson Explorers and other than them having that "new" feel, there is not much the Gibson has that my 18 year old Arbor doesn't have...other than a price tag a thousand dollars higher!

Basically it was a yellow and black zebra striped explorer. I paid 220 brand new in 1985 i believe. It had a basic fender style tremelo on it.

It was kjind of muddy sounding. I was using boss anolog effects with it back then. Stereo chorus, digital delay, distortion pedal and EQ.

The action was great on this guitar. The next felt very good. The finish did chip easily..but i loved the graphics

It made it through my little bit of gigging when i was 16. i dropped it a few time too. But sold it before long. Now that im touring with(rock City Morgue)w/ sean yseult (white zombie) ive decided to collect the old guitars i had. If anyone has one for sale or knows the wear abouts of one...please email me at Johnnyhotwheels@hotmail.com or rockcitymorgue@hotmail.com

my connection to this guitar is purely sentimental now. Arbor made affordable cool looking guitars like this explorer and the randy rhoads v as well for beginners back in the 80's. Rock ON!

probably early 80's not sure.
solid body, two volume and one tone. with neck/both/bridge switch.
with 2 hums, bridge pick might have been modify with another pickup, and neck pick still has orginal silver metal cover. im not sure what the body material is made from. nice black finish with trmolo bridge

great sound i used a DOD mystic fuzz, and a orignal wah/dunlop. and im runnign it through a marshall mg30cd. sound great with everthing, huge tone, with just a solid state amp. but i think it will give more with a tube. with just my amp volume and gain settign half way it still gave a waling of a sound. great with some distoration. and maybe some blues and jazz put to it. but might not fit into the look of the guitar.

i like the setup,no warping or any discoloration of fret board and body. action is low and very fast. you might want to do a setup and tonation chk before using it. to better utlize all the capable sound from it. hardware and wood looks great after years of use, but again look and chk for setup, and intonation.this would be a plus.

great, takes a beating and still on ticking!!

never dealt with them i think they ran out buisness in the late eightys not sure though

i think with a little care and full attention you can make into a great guitar, depends onhow you use and how you modify it and utlizing it to the fully extent.

It's sollid red. The action is lightning fast and smooth, and it sounds better than my $700 Ibanez. The stock hardware was not so great, but not bad for a cheap guitar. I bought it for $120 used at some small pawn shop in Phoenix Az. I had a shim put in the neck to lower the strings and a $100 Gibson Pickup on the bottom. The top pickup and the switch I had disabled. The cheap tremelo I locked in place by replacing the springs with coat hangers (I kid you not) so it won't go out of tune. The machine heads are now Grovers.

The sound is crunchy, loud and excellent for metal. It puts my Ibanez to shame outright.

I never heard this guitar with factory settings so I have no idea. After about $150 in mods though it just screams and is the easiest guitar to play that I have ever played.

Not much is original anymore, but I've had the guitar since 1988 and it still looks the same and plays great in 2002.

I found this site searching for info on my guitar.....still haven't found it so I guess support is non-existant as the company that made it seems to be.

For the total of $270 invested after customizing vs great sound (though customized) I have to give this cheap little Explorer copy a resounding 10. The sound is just awsome for metal and the guitar is like my old faithfull friend. I have a $700 Ibanez that sounds horrible compared to this cheap, cool looking little guitar. I can't even stand to play the Ibanez, and after all, is an Explorer not the coolest looking guitar ever made?

I bought an Arbor Explorer off of Ebay about half a year ago. This thing is great, this thing is better than any Fender strat around. It is 2 tone in color. The top half is red, and the bottom half is black. The paint job is well done, but chips easy. I had never heard of "Arbor" before, so i thought, what the hell, it was $120.00 the guy selling it said it had a wiring problem. I got it and it only buzzes when you take your hands off of the strings, not grounded properly or something..it sound clear as ever when you ground it by putting your hand on it..

other than the bad grounding, it is my best guitar ever, better than my jackson V, my two Fender strats, and one el cheapo i had when i was younger. It has great tone, good pickups and a decent 3 way toggle. It looks feels and sounds like a gibson, but in a way, rarer...if you have a chance to get one, i definitly recomend it!

everything on my explorer was perfect on the outside and in.. not a bad tremelo, like a beefy strat i'd say

it has been very reliable to me, it saves me money on strings, because it is made better than all my others so the strings last a long time, good if you play hard core metal

i bought it from ebay, what the hell are you talking about?

um, i love my guitar, well worth it. But sadly i would only pass it up for one other guitar...a B.C. Rich BEAST BABY!!!!

I also had a black and white zebra striped explore just like the other review before this one. I saw it in a hole in the wall guitar shop in Southern New Mexico in Augist of 1985. It was brand new. I played it often. It sounded pretty good and looked pretty cool for back in those days. It had a Fender type 6 screw tremelo bridge in black as was the rest of the hardware. It had 2 buckers of marginal quality. The neck was a good one though. My aunt promised to buy it for my b-day which was only a couple of weeks after I had discovered this beast, but it never got to me. Oh well. I did however end up with it or one just like it 5 years later in January of 1990. It was a little battle worn, but dressed up nicely. A Warmoth hockystick neck which was matched to the body by having the neck and head painted in the same zebra pattern was added with a really nice ebony 24 fret fretboard. A black Floyd Rose copy was added and a pair of Di Marzio super distortion pickups were dropped in as well. The volume and tone pots were replaced with higher quality as well as the switch and jack. The finish was still in new condition. The body was plywood, but had decent tone as it was a very large explorer shape. It was a pretty killer guitar after the modifications.

Before the mods it was ok, after the mods it shredded sick! I loved it.

Very poor in it's stock form, very good after the new neck was added.

It withstood the test of time and continues to do so even now. I sold it to this guy about 9 years ago and he still has it. Plywood can be good sometimes.

Not then and not now. No more Arbor to contact. Too late anyway.

The cheapest crap can become something great with a litle work. Some of the crappiest guitars have become collectors items. Look at Danelectro. They suck very much, but people still play them. If it works for you than its a great deal if it sucks for you, it was a rip off or an impulse buy. Beuty is in the eye of the beholder.

This is a zebra-striped, explorer bodied guitar with rosewood fingerboard. I replaced the crappy dual humbucking stock pickups with Ibanez V2s and upgraded the tuners to Schaller micros. It has a tremelo system that I don't use. The bolt-on neck has 22 medium frets and seems pretty narrow. Controls include 2 vol, 1 tone, three way switch. I am guessing it was made around 1986 since I bought it about then.

The V2 pickups sound fantastic for what they are. Great for overdrive and 80's metal, their sound is now somewhat outdated. Playing this guitar through my DOD grunge pedal and Fender Evil Twin Amp I get great 80's metal sound. If you like Iron Maiden, you would like this guitar.

The quality of the stock parts on this guitar were poor, but what can you expect for a guitar that cost $200? Factory set-up was poor (from what I remember). The one thing that stands out about this guitar is it's fast action. I can really fly on this guitar.

I have owned this guitar over 15 years. It was my first electric guitar. It has been through world war III and back. The finish has survived everything and anything. I must give it a ten for durability.

Customer what? Support who? What????

I must be sentimental to have kept this guitar around for so long. It is cheap, ugly, and outdated, but I have also poured my soul into this guitar on numerous occasions. How can you part with an old friend? Amazingly, she still is very playable and she sounds great. Maybe I will keep her around a little longer......