Def Leppard's Phil Collen Introduces New Guitar Based

This one's famous. I had guitar companies copying this one, trying to entice me to use them. I receive this in the post after I returned from the "Girls" Japanese tour, in 1981. Soon it became my main guitar. I mean it looked weird and was like a parallel Phil Collen Destroyer universe version of the Gibson Explorer with a bit more flash. There are three pickups (I used to salivate over three pickup Les Pauls) of which I only ever use the outer two.

My first CD I owned (not long after CD’s had replaced Cassettes) was Def Leppard’s “Hysteria”, my early memories of the band include Steve Clarke with a white Les Paul and Phil Collen with a number of custom Jackson guitars with Dracula graphics or sparkly silver paint jobs. After hearing Hysteria I started exploring their previous albums such as Pyromania and saw old videos where Phil Collen was playing a triple humbucker Ibanez Destroyer, obviously based on the Gibson Explorer, Ibanez however made that shape even more badass looking with extra features such as trems and in Phil Collen’s case 3 humbuckers!