flying V metal upgrade

funmachine

New member
Hello everybody!
I need to add to a Gibson Flying V (mahogany neck and body, rosewood fingerboard, standard D tuning 11-52 gauge strings) an extreme metal turbo boost, that means changing the original pickups (Burstbucker 2 & 3) with something less shy and more arrogant.
What do you suggest?
Fav genres: thrash, death, old/new school HC.
Ciao!
 
Nazgul, Black Winter, Diablo, maybe Distortion. I have a Nazgul in a Jackson 7 string and. a Distortion in my Iceman, love the Distortion, Nazgul I think is a little too influenced by the tone of Jackson to be not quite to my liking, very nasally.
 
An El Diablo would be great, but I wouldn't call it a "metal" pickup per se, despite the name. It's actually quite "hi-fi-ish." Killer cleans.

Isnt there two Diaos though, the Tony Iommi version and the Scott Ian version?
 
Do it right, either with a Black Winter set, Nazgul & Sentient, or some active Blackouts.
 
Isnt there two Diablos though, the Tony Iommi version and the Scott Ian version?

Technically, yes...the dual rail versions used by Tony Iommi and Scott Ian are the same pickups, originally designed in the early '90s. The so-called "Original" El Diablo was actually a hotter version of the Screamin' Demon made for Scott Ian by the Custom Shop before he adopted the Iommi dual-rail pickup as his own under the "El Diablo" name.

I think for off-the-shelf, thrash-laden chuggery, the Black Winter set would be a great fit for the OP. If he steps up to Custom Shop level, then the El Diablo is definitely great choice.
 
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I'd consider a PATB-2 Parallel Axis Distortion for the bridge, if you want all-out metal. There's plenty of great options, but that's my favorite. Roaring mids, lots of growl, screams for solos, ridiculous harmonics, and remarkably expressive for such a high output pickup. It's pretty similar to the TB-6 Distortion, but with less harsh a ceramic bite on top, even more mids, and a lore more lower mid growl. Absolutely joy for leads and riffs, though depending on taste you may need to cut lower mids a bit for thrash tones to prevent wool, but that'll depend on your amplifier and tone tastes. Metallica used even bassier pickups like the Invader (though this probably has more growl, vs the Invader's deep punch, though either can be flubby if the preamp can't handle those frequencies. But that's what EQ stomp boxes and tube screamers are for!).

There are subtler pickups, but if you want unsubtle but still musical, there's a lot fewer competitors.

For a neck pickup, depends on what you do with the neck. Given you are looking at replacing your neck pickup, I'm assuming you don't do the cleans from neck, gain from bridge thing so much, or at least you want a neck that can keep up for solos, even if it can clean up when backed off.

For a flexible neck pickup for a metal guitar, a Black Winter neck is a pretty great neck pickup.

A bit more distortion focused, something like the Distortion neck is pretty good, too.

If you want a neck humbucker that can do the PAF/Jazz cleans thing, but with a bit more oomph for leads, a Sentient is a great choice.
 
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