Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
- mynameisjonas
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Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Lately I've been kinda obsessed with getting a phase III Hi Flier. I know from people who use them that they can sound awesome, but I've never actually played one myself.
So I'm curious about things like the neck profile and any hardware upgrades that migh be needed. Anything in particular to look out for when buying? (They never pop up around here, so I'll most likely buy on eBay.)
I'd love to find one in white or black.
So I'm curious about things like the neck profile and any hardware upgrades that migh be needed. Anything in particular to look out for when buying? (They never pop up around here, so I'll most likely buy on eBay.)
I'd love to find one in white or black.
- OffYourFace
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
hit or miss. try them out if you can.
the neck pockets can be wiggly and the necks can flex. other than that, they can be solid guitars. In my experience, the rosewood fretboard models sound & feel better than the maple board ones.
The pickups can be microphonic and the electronics are cheap. These are easy fixes. I put some cheap but well made/potted epiphone dot HBs in a friend's HiFyler and it sounded a lot better.
the neck pockets can be wiggly and the necks can flex. other than that, they can be solid guitars. In my experience, the rosewood fretboard models sound & feel better than the maple board ones.
The pickups can be microphonic and the electronics are cheap. These are easy fixes. I put some cheap but well made/potted epiphone dot HBs in a friend's HiFyler and it sounded a lot better.
- spiffy chap
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Paging Sumlin
- Maukio
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
I haven't owned a Phase III, but I have owned a black and a white Phase II. The black wasn't that great, but the white was one of the few guitars I miss.
They were both really thin. Like the heel of a normal Fender is probably around 1" but these were around 1/2". But they didn't feel toy-like or that they were going to break. The black one was heavier and had metal saddles, but it sounded kind of dead and pingy to me. The white one surprisingly sounded really good to me, even with plastic saddles. They both had thin necks meaning across the fretboard, but not unplayable. The black one had a thicker D-shaped profile with more squared shoulders, while the white one was more rounded.
My experiences match OffYourFace's observations.
They were both really thin. Like the heel of a normal Fender is probably around 1" but these were around 1/2". But they didn't feel toy-like or that they were going to break. The black one was heavier and had metal saddles, but it sounded kind of dead and pingy to me. The white one surprisingly sounded really good to me, even with plastic saddles. They both had thin necks meaning across the fretboard, but not unplayable. The black one had a thicker D-shaped profile with more squared shoulders, while the white one was more rounded.
My experiences match OffYourFace's observations.
- mynameisjonas
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Thanks guys. I've been trying to find one locally for a couple of months without coming across a single one, so I'm pretty much forced to buy without trying first.
I did actually contact Eastwood guitars about putting humbuckers in the sunburst version of their Phase 4, and they'd do it for an extra $100, but I have a feeling it would be a very different feeling guitar from a Univox. There's something special about those old budget guitars...
I did actually contact Eastwood guitars about putting humbuckers in the sunburst version of their Phase 4, and they'd do it for an extra $100, but I have a feeling it would be a very different feeling guitar from a Univox. There's something special about those old budget guitars...
- sumlin
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Hello.
The Phase III (and IV) Hi Fliers are great guitars. The combination of the pickups - awesome, under-rated design - and the very lightweight and lively body gives them a really unique tone that's way more versatile than you might think. Since I got into these guitars I use them for absolutely everything I do from session work with quiet singer songwriters (where the pickups really come into their own - playing quietly through a slightly-too loud amp) through straight, blasting punk rock and even using it as a bass through an octaver.
They do vary in quality and I have 3 Phase IIIs -
and they're all different. At some point during Phase III production Univox redesigned the neckplate so the black one has an earlier "Made in Japan" neckplate whereas the other 2 have the large "U" for Univox plate. The earlier plate is smaller and it doesn't secure the neck as well so the main thing to check when you're buying a Hi Flier is the string alignment. If you just do a quick Google image search you'll see tons of HFs (mainly the Phase I and IIs and then some Phase IIIs with the smaller neckplate) that have awful string alignment - the high E will be hanging off the fretboard usually. Here's my friend's which has the problem:
The black one came to me with 5 strings on it and when I fitted the 6th it hung a good 5mm off the neck edge because the smaller neckplate didn't hold the neck, it'd taken a bang at some point and the neck was out of line. This is the main reason people think they're badly made and they don't intonate well. It's not unfixable - my tech friends took the black one apart, filled and redrilled the holes and sanded the contact area of neck heel and neck pocket so the wood fitted flush. But obviously, if you can avoid that it's better.
The stock, plastic-tipped tuners are OK. I swapped them out on the sunburst and black guitars because the tuners on them were in a real state when I got them and I prefer Grovers aesthetically anyway. Means drilling holes but I can live with that. I think because these guitars were (up until recently) cheap people often messed about with them and the original tuners (and bridge) work fine until you start taking them apart and then they're just not up to the task. But if you look at Dimtri from Off! or Asa from Lungfish, they both use HFs with stock tuners and don't have problems.
The bridges are fine too but again they fall apart when you dick with them. The bridge for the black one literally fell apart into little pieces mid-gig so I had to swap it out. I swapped it for a cheapo tunomatic roller bridge and then combined the original mounting posts and height wheels with the new bridge piece and cobbled together a replacement. The roller tunomatics work better because of the trem and the reduced friction but I always put pencil graphite in the slots as I break tons of strings at the bridge still.
Here's the old one (held together by luck pretty much and some foil and tape):
Here's the replacement bridge set up:
I'd say that the original Phase III is a great guitar so avoid anything that's been modified - there's a trend (because of Nirvana) of putting replacement humbuckers in these things and that, for me, loses the character of them. The pickups are absolutely crucial to my ears. I'm working with a pickup manufacturer at the moment to build a replica Phase III humbucker so people with the eastwoods (or people who have HFs with shitty Seymour Duncans or something in them) have an option to return the guitar to stock. Will post details once we get it sorted.
The trem arm gets lost on these a lot too. I had a Floyd Rose type in mine for a while and it was crappy - I put it down to bad trem design. But when I got an original trem arm it worked perfectly - like a Jazzmaster trem almost, lovely weight and feel.
The other thing I did to the black one was install a tension bar at the headstock and have dot markers added to the neck edge so I could see what the fuck I was playing:
of the 3, the black one is the best by far. The work done on the neck socket and changed bridge makes it really stable and resonant and huge sounding. The sunburst one is heavier (presumably a different wood as it's visible through the burst) and it sounds a little deader - maybe the plastic bridge is at fault partially but it doesn't feel lively like the black one. The natural one is somewhere between the 2. It's totally stock (except the colour I think) and feels great. I'm tempted to get the bridge and tuner mods done to it and a nice Lake Placid Blue refin but that can wait.
The thing that people don't like about them, when they play one, tends to be the neck and the 'feel' of the neck. They have insanely small necks (some Phase IVs had wider necks towards end of production) - really skinny, really thin. The frets are purposefully low as well as the guitar replicates a Mosrite which had almost no fret height at all. And the neck radius is pretty flat. It's a perfect surf guitar - fast neck but not good for bends. I love that but it throws a lot of my friends.
Anyway - I'm slightly evangelical about these guitars so any questions hit me up and I'll do my best to answer them. They are unique and wonderful things - I can spot one on a recording a mile off (despite what people have said, I'd bet my house on In Utero being recorded, at least in part, with a Hi Flier esp Serve The Servants and Heart Shaped Box) and they deserve more love and respect in the guitar world.
Chris
The Phase III (and IV) Hi Fliers are great guitars. The combination of the pickups - awesome, under-rated design - and the very lightweight and lively body gives them a really unique tone that's way more versatile than you might think. Since I got into these guitars I use them for absolutely everything I do from session work with quiet singer songwriters (where the pickups really come into their own - playing quietly through a slightly-too loud amp) through straight, blasting punk rock and even using it as a bass through an octaver.
They do vary in quality and I have 3 Phase IIIs -
and they're all different. At some point during Phase III production Univox redesigned the neckplate so the black one has an earlier "Made in Japan" neckplate whereas the other 2 have the large "U" for Univox plate. The earlier plate is smaller and it doesn't secure the neck as well so the main thing to check when you're buying a Hi Flier is the string alignment. If you just do a quick Google image search you'll see tons of HFs (mainly the Phase I and IIs and then some Phase IIIs with the smaller neckplate) that have awful string alignment - the high E will be hanging off the fretboard usually. Here's my friend's which has the problem:
The black one came to me with 5 strings on it and when I fitted the 6th it hung a good 5mm off the neck edge because the smaller neckplate didn't hold the neck, it'd taken a bang at some point and the neck was out of line. This is the main reason people think they're badly made and they don't intonate well. It's not unfixable - my tech friends took the black one apart, filled and redrilled the holes and sanded the contact area of neck heel and neck pocket so the wood fitted flush. But obviously, if you can avoid that it's better.
The stock, plastic-tipped tuners are OK. I swapped them out on the sunburst and black guitars because the tuners on them were in a real state when I got them and I prefer Grovers aesthetically anyway. Means drilling holes but I can live with that. I think because these guitars were (up until recently) cheap people often messed about with them and the original tuners (and bridge) work fine until you start taking them apart and then they're just not up to the task. But if you look at Dimtri from Off! or Asa from Lungfish, they both use HFs with stock tuners and don't have problems.
The bridges are fine too but again they fall apart when you dick with them. The bridge for the black one literally fell apart into little pieces mid-gig so I had to swap it out. I swapped it for a cheapo tunomatic roller bridge and then combined the original mounting posts and height wheels with the new bridge piece and cobbled together a replacement. The roller tunomatics work better because of the trem and the reduced friction but I always put pencil graphite in the slots as I break tons of strings at the bridge still.
Here's the old one (held together by luck pretty much and some foil and tape):
Here's the replacement bridge set up:
I'd say that the original Phase III is a great guitar so avoid anything that's been modified - there's a trend (because of Nirvana) of putting replacement humbuckers in these things and that, for me, loses the character of them. The pickups are absolutely crucial to my ears. I'm working with a pickup manufacturer at the moment to build a replica Phase III humbucker so people with the eastwoods (or people who have HFs with shitty Seymour Duncans or something in them) have an option to return the guitar to stock. Will post details once we get it sorted.
The trem arm gets lost on these a lot too. I had a Floyd Rose type in mine for a while and it was crappy - I put it down to bad trem design. But when I got an original trem arm it worked perfectly - like a Jazzmaster trem almost, lovely weight and feel.
The other thing I did to the black one was install a tension bar at the headstock and have dot markers added to the neck edge so I could see what the fuck I was playing:
of the 3, the black one is the best by far. The work done on the neck socket and changed bridge makes it really stable and resonant and huge sounding. The sunburst one is heavier (presumably a different wood as it's visible through the burst) and it sounds a little deader - maybe the plastic bridge is at fault partially but it doesn't feel lively like the black one. The natural one is somewhere between the 2. It's totally stock (except the colour I think) and feels great. I'm tempted to get the bridge and tuner mods done to it and a nice Lake Placid Blue refin but that can wait.
The thing that people don't like about them, when they play one, tends to be the neck and the 'feel' of the neck. They have insanely small necks (some Phase IVs had wider necks towards end of production) - really skinny, really thin. The frets are purposefully low as well as the guitar replicates a Mosrite which had almost no fret height at all. And the neck radius is pretty flat. It's a perfect surf guitar - fast neck but not good for bends. I love that but it throws a lot of my friends.
Anyway - I'm slightly evangelical about these guitars so any questions hit me up and I'll do my best to answer them. They are unique and wonderful things - I can spot one on a recording a mile off (despite what people have said, I'd bet my house on In Utero being recorded, at least in part, with a Hi Flier esp Serve The Servants and Heart Shaped Box) and they deserve more love and respect in the guitar world.
Chris
- OffYourFace
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
wow, there you go Jonas! I've repaired a few of these for friends and most of them had a dead pickup or a super microphonic pickup. TBH, i've never given the original pickups a chance (played one with band, etc). I suppose wax-potting them would fix that.
- sumlin
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
The humbuckers in the Phase III and IV are killer - never had any problems with microphonic stuff, in fact they're more stable and controllable than a Wide Range HB or a Mosrite pickup by comparison (in terms of high output pickups). Never had one with the sort-of p90s in it though.OffYourFace wrote:wow, there you go Jonas! I've repaired a few of these for friends and most of them had a dead pickup or a super microphonic pickup. TBH, i've never given the original pickups a chance (played one with band, etc). I suppose wax-potting them would fix that.
- rindersnoot
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
I used to own a sunburst Phase II, mine was branded as a Capri but it was obviously Univox made. The pickups sounded amazing and it played pretty well, except that it had the dreaded neck wiggle from the shallow neck pocket. I'm too heavy handed when I play I guess, because I was constantly pulling it out of tune by putting too much pressure on the neck. So I traded it for a 70's Musicmaster Bass. I miss the Hi-Flyer on occasion, and I'd definitely considering picking up another some day, but I'd want to play it first.
- mynameisjonas
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Thanks Sumlin, just the kind of info I was looking for!
The neck thing worries me a bit, I usually prefer quite chunky necks. But my Yamaha SA-20 has quite a slim neck and I've been playing that a lot lately, so I'll probably be able to get used to it.
The neck thing worries me a bit, I usually prefer quite chunky necks. But my Yamaha SA-20 has quite a slim neck and I've been playing that a lot lately, so I'll probably be able to get used to it.
- sumlin
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Update on the pick up front -
my pickup making buddy is a week or so away from getting me some prototype Phase III replica pickups ready to A/B test against the real ones. In taking the real ones apart we found some cool stuff out. There's 2 phases of Phase III pickups - the earlier guitars had clear pickup covers so you can see the pinky coloured coil through the cover but the later ones have a moulded beige inner cover covered with a clear plate. The earlier ones have different sized pole pieces and screws as well and they sound a little different when you are able to compare them. They all measure around 7.5K output but we noticed they appear louder and there's some idiosyncrasies in the manufacture that we think account for this and that my friend is going to copy.
Not only will be be making the Phase III replica humbuckers but he's also making some surrounds with the 2 holes on one side and one on the other that are snapped in almost every HF I've ever seen.
It's exciting!
my pickup making buddy is a week or so away from getting me some prototype Phase III replica pickups ready to A/B test against the real ones. In taking the real ones apart we found some cool stuff out. There's 2 phases of Phase III pickups - the earlier guitars had clear pickup covers so you can see the pinky coloured coil through the cover but the later ones have a moulded beige inner cover covered with a clear plate. The earlier ones have different sized pole pieces and screws as well and they sound a little different when you are able to compare them. They all measure around 7.5K output but we noticed they appear louder and there's some idiosyncrasies in the manufacture that we think account for this and that my friend is going to copy.
Not only will be be making the Phase III replica humbuckers but he's also making some surrounds with the 2 holes on one side and one on the other that are snapped in almost every HF I've ever seen.
It's exciting!
- Gonkulator
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Interesting about that, I wonder what made them change the process.sumlin wrote:Update on the pick up front -
my pickup making buddy is a week or so away from getting me some prototype Phase III replica pickups ready to A/B test against the real ones. In taking the real ones apart we found some cool stuff out. There's 2 phases of Phase III pickups - the earlier guitars had clear pickup covers so you can see the pinky coloured coil through the cover but the later ones have a moulded beige inner cover covered with a clear plate. The earlier ones have different sized pole pieces and screws as well and they sound a little different when you are able to compare them. They all measure around 7.5K output but we noticed they appear louder and there's some idiosyncrasies in the manufacture that we think account for this and that my friend is going to copy.
Not only will be be making the Phase III replica humbuckers but he's also making some surrounds with the 2 holes on one side and one on the other that are snapped in almost every HF I've ever seen.
It's exciting!
The pickups from the Phase III's are my favorite humbucker. I would spend hours going through eBay trying to find them and then using them builds when I was a teenager.
- sumlin
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Available parts I'd say. They don't sound enormously different and the difference could be any number of other variables. It'll be interesting when I put the new copies of the pickups from my favourite HF into the one that never sounded quite as good.Gonkulator wrote:
Interesting about that, I wonder what made them change the process.
- Gonkulator
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
I'd love to hear a recording of it.sumlin wrote:Available parts I'd say. They don't sound enormously different and the difference could be any number of other variables. It'll be interesting when I put the new copies of the pickups from my favourite HF into the one that never sounded quite as good.Gonkulator wrote:
Interesting about that, I wonder what made them change the process.
If it's a success, would your friend be making more of them?
- sumlin
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Re: Univox Hi Flier phase III - tell me everything!
Yep - the plan is for them to be a production item. I'll post links as things progress...Gonkulator wrote:I'd love to hear a recording of it.sumlin wrote:Available parts I'd say. They don't sound enormously different and the difference could be any number of other variables. It'll be interesting when I put the new copies of the pickups from my favourite HF into the one that never sounded quite as good.Gonkulator wrote:
Interesting about that, I wonder what made them change the process.
If it's a success, would your friend be making more of them?