I'm with Dean here too (they're a hair metal guitar brand, but they stuck to their guns, that has my respect, I even have two Dean basses, V shapes of course ...), but of course the Flying V in its Ted McCarty design is the most eye-catching, original, radical and idiosyncratic look of an electric guitar ever produced in substantial numbers. Yes, it's a Gibson design, no doubt. But Gibson sat on their asses for years and decades watching Dean become a competitor in the niche of metal audience instruments and now want to disrupt their business. That irks me. Cheap shot.
IIRC, there were phases when Gibson lapsed production of the Flying V in the 60ies, but ever since the 70ies they have always produced Flying V guitars in one shape or form. I guess Hendrix playing one had a lot to do with that. And come the 70ies, it of course became the signature guitar of the heavy brigade (ironically, because it is not such a fat sounding guitar and allows for a tidier sonic picture even with harder rock) - no guitar cries
"R A W K !!!" like a Flying V though other musicians have always used it too.
Yet much as I like Neil Young ...
it's not quite the same as our blond
stromtrooper, nein?