Flying V upgrade

Letthesinbegin

Letthesinbegin

New member
Hey folks,


I'm planning on upgrading my Gibson Flying V Faded, with new pickups and a bigsby B50. I have a couple of questions..


-Do I need a rollerbridge when the bigsby is installed?

-Would a Phat Cat be a nice choice for the neckposition?

-Would a Seth Lover be nice for the bridgeposition?

Any more suggestions about the pickups? I want to have a creamy vintage kinda sound, and the aggressive 500T & 496R are starting to annoy me. My friend has the LP BFG with P90 in the neck, and I love the tones het gets out of that, that's why I picked the PhatCat. I really like the old vintage PAF tones as well, so I thought a Seth Lover might do the job.

I play in a pop/rock band, and I just wanna have a versatile guitar, nice cleans and good drive. This is my only guitar, I know I could probably buy some other guitar for the money I'd use on these upgrades, but I want to make this guitar perfect, and stick with it.
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

Have you played Bigsby loaded guitars before? Tough to mount on a V for one and two, in my opinion a tough trem to command. I think your pickup choices are great for that guitar, imo. Maybe by a second guitar Bigsby equipped to help keep the V closer to original. Then you have a guitar for tremelo needs and a guitar for fixed bridge needs.
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

i absolultly love the look of a v with a bigsby, its just an amazing look. but, like the above post states, its gonna be hard to put on a v. (im still looking for one to go on my iceman)

i would acutally switch your pickup choices around, put the phatcat in the bridge and the seth lover in the neck
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

I've recently upgraded the pickups in my Faded Flying V to a Bareknuckle Riff Raff bridge (think an early 60s Patent Number humbucker) and a Mississippi Queen (Humbucker sized P90) neck pickup. It's a great pairing that's proving to be very versatile so far :)
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

Thanks you guys, I'm going to look at the other things mentioned as well.

I don't think the Bigsby would be hard to mount, because my V has the 67' style layout. So I don't have to go through the pickguard, and with a B50 it would fit just perfectly. (the B50 is the SG kinda bigsby) Another Bigsby would be hard (think Lonnie Mack signature) to mount.
I don't feel the need to buy another guitar, so that I could have one hardtail and one tremolo equipped guitar.
Like I said, I just want this one guitar, but then a little more perfected. And I really don't care about how original and authentic it is. I just want it to be versatile, and perfect :p

@NevermindUs: The Seth Lover has bigger output, right? I really like the P90 clean tones in my friends LP BFG's neck position, so I think I really want a P90 in there.. Still I want to be able to have a powerful drive sound with a lot of clarity from the bridge position.. It's all about versatility..
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

thats cool. to my understanding, the seth lover is a very smooth sounding pickup, very vintage. in my mind it seemed better to have that vintage neck style for the fluid stuff, and the the big mean phatcat in the bridge for the more rawk tones
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

i haven't tested this and don't know anybody who has but it seems to me that even a vintage-voiced humbucker would have more output than a P90. but i have no idea.

if it was my V i'd get the CustomCustom bridge and Phat Cat neck...CC is smoothe and creamy but hotter than vintage, so it's more versatile in my opinion.

CC bridge, Phat Cat neck, with a push-pull to split the bucker...you'd have a really versatile V. Splitting a Seth Lover would be less effective cuz a 4k signal is almost nothing, whereas a split CC would be around 7 or 8k like a hotter strat pup
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

What you don't like about the 500T/496R is probably the ceramic magnets. Harsh & bright. Swap them out for alnicos, and they'll warm up & get some color. That should be your first step. $5 magnet vs a $100+ PU; you do the math. Once I started swapping magnets, I cancelled my subscription to the "PU of the Month Club."

If you buy replacement PU's, I highly recommend a Phat CatN. It has two A2 magnets, which makes it powerful & dark, and buries a lot of the single coil tones we're after. On my neck Phat Cats I've pulled one of the A2's and put in a A5, which opened up the tone and brought out those beautiful single coil sounds, along with giving it some bite. Great for chords and solos. Much better when you swap out one of those dark A2's.

For the bridge, I think you need something brighter or higher output than a Seth. The bridge isn't loud position to begin with, the Seth is a low output PU, and it has a low output A2 magnet. That gives it some mellow vintage tones, but a muscle-bound PCN will steamroller over it. In the bridge I think you need either an A5 magnet or an overwound PU, or both. Something with power and/or cut to help balance the PU's. A '59 or Virtual PAF at a minimum (if you want a PAF sound), or better yet a medium-output DiMarzio Fred or high-output Duncan C5.
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

Empty Pockets said:
if it was my V i'd get the CustomCustom bridge and Phat Cat neck...CC is smoothe and creamy but hotter than vintage, so it's more versatile in my opinion.

CC bridge, Phat Cat neck, with a push-pull to split the bucker...you'd have a really versatile V. Splitting a Seth Lover would be less effective cuz a 4k signal is almost nothing, whereas a split CC would be around 7 or 8k like a hotter strat pup
Click to expand...
Bang thats it right there. Phat Cat neck with one of the Custom series in the bridge. I had a custom in the bridge of my V for awhile. It's alot more open than the 500T for sure. Gives it more of a classic feel or at least as classic as I hear it. Right now I have a Distortion in the bridge which is very close to the 500T but it's alot cleaner.
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

Alright, but you guys understand I wanna have low/medium outputs instead of the ubermetalhighgainsuperblaster output of the ceramics I have in it now?

Anyways, swapping the magnets sounds like a good idea. How do I do that, where do I get the magnets?
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

yeah, that's why i recommended the Custom Custom -- it's vintage in voice but hot in output. It's hot but it's mostly hot in the mids where it makes your amp crunch, perfect for a 70's hard rock tone or something like that..

you could always try a 59 or for the most versatile set up you could get some P-Rails. That would be pretty sweet.

remember that it's not as if having somewhat hot pickups immediately gives you some gained-out death metal tone...Blink-182 used Invaders for years and Kiss and Iron Maiden use Super Distortions and they're not very heavy...and swappin the magnets in those pickups you have will still result in pretty hot pickups cuz of the wind so keep an open mind.
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

The Custom Custom will just sound dead in that guitar.

The roller bridge you have to be careful with. It might kill some sound and you seem sensitive to sound.

The Seth/Phat cat combo is definitely not for high gain feedback and hum wise. I understand that's not what you are trying to do but just a warning.

The BFG is heavily chambered, you can't rely on getting the same sound out of a Phat cat, not to mention the Gibson P-90 has A5 and the Phat Cat has A2.

Overall I wonder whether a 59 or Jazz combo would do more of what you like. The A2 crowd didn't really play nice with my Explorer, I'd say A5 probably comes out better for a Flying V with the massive mahogany only design.
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

Alright, so I wanna try to swap te ceramic magnet in my 500T & 496r to A5's.

How do I do that? Can I do that (I'm a noob at pickup business)? Where can I buy an A5?
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

Letthesinbegin said:
Alright, so I wanna try to swap te ceramic magnet in my 500T & 496r to A5's.

How do I do that? Can I do that (I'm a noob at pickup business)? Where can I buy an A5?
Click to expand...

I'd think twice about this. A new-looking 500T brings good money used and since you have a large ceramic in the middle you'd need to redesign spacers.

Plus, as always, changing the magnet ruins the potting of the pickup, and obviously you need new cloth tape which is also a problem since I didn't find any Seymour/Gibson looking cloth tape on the market.

The 496R nobody cares about, I'd start there.

Also, if you ever want to resell the V it would be good to have the original pickups. Un-opened.
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

@uOpt: You have a good point, it's probably too hard to change those magnets anyway. I think I'll sell them, a friend of mine is very fond of them, he might very well buy them for a nice price.

So: for the pickup options I have:

Custom (It might sound dead, according to uOpt)
PhatCat(It won't sound like a BFG's Gibson P90, but I like the P90 kinda sound in general)
Seth Lover (might be too low output, according to several guys)
Virtual PAF (?) (really interests me as well, I'd like to know more about this one)

Out of this I can conclude, I wanna go for the Phatcat in neck position. The bigsby is for sure as well now. I'll try without rollerbridge first (uOpt says it might kill some sound, and I really consider myself a tone geek, so I'll just see what happens) and if it isn't working, I'll buy a roller anyway.

But the bridgepickup, is still a big questionmark to me. Suggestions please!
 
Re: Flying V upgrade

I can't play a V with the 500T/496R setup without sounding like Husker Du.

I love my Seth Lover and my Phat Cat (both in the bridge position), but the Phat Cat has some noise when you kick in the gain.
 
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