My first electrical guitar ever was an Ibanez Flying V (copy of the Gibson Flying V). I got it back in 1977 I think, the memory is vague, saved money for close to a year to get a guitar and an amp. At that time Ibanez was doing excellent copies of American models. Well, the American companies sued them, forced Ibanez to make their own models such as SG, RoadStar and so forth. The rest is history.
I think I did all the wrong things with this guitar. For example, I switched out the plastic nut to a brass one — the idea was to get more sustain. What I got instead was worse tuning stability, when metal moves to metal the steps to get out of tune are bigger than when metal moves against plastic. Oh well.
Otherwise it was a real live show guitar. As for playing in the studio, it was indeed a drag.
I’m still annoyed that I used it for a trade to an Ibanez RoadStar II Strat-like copy. It would have been fun to keep it around. It’s the only guitar I ever sold or traded, all the other ones are now in my studio. Of some reason most of my guitars are Ibanez ones. One exception is an SX bass that I got for $100 used and it’s one of the most fun bass guitars I drag around to gigs. If it gets scratched, Ok. No need to worry about that.
If you have gear you like, keep it.