My 70's Flying V was one such guitar. The pickups on it were made just for the recent run of 70's Vs and Explorers. Gibson calls it a "70's Tribute" humbucker. They're wound to 16k and are unusable muddy for my purposes.
So, a pickup change was in order. The original aesthetics were leaving me a bit cold though, so I decided to change up the plastics as well.
Here's how it started out. The white pickguard and truss rod cover on the off-white body weren't particularly flattering, and I think it's silly putting pickup rings on a pickguard if you don't have to.
It took a while to get all the parts together...my first pickguard I ordered just didn't remotely fit at all, so I had to wait for a new one to make it all the way here from the UK. Fortunately, it fit like a glove. It also took a little longer to put together than I had hoped, because one of the volume pots died on me. I can't tell you how many times I traced the circuit, measured continuity and resistance everywhere and reflowed solder joints before realizing it was a bad pot. Fortunately, I had the right value/length/knurled pots on hand in my parts drawer, so at least it wasn't another multi-week delay like the ill-fitting pickguard.
Here's what I did:
1) Black pickguard (cut for PAFs without pickup rings).
2) Black truss rod cover
3) Fralin Twangmasters in covers
4) Full copper tape shielding job
5) Fretboard cleaned and oiled
I'm thrilled with the results.
The fretboard darkened up so beautifully and I love the high contrast between the plastics and the finish.
Jury's still out on the pickups. They're a massive improvement over the mudfest that was in there before, but it's taking some tweaking to find the right amp settings. This V is my darkest/warmest/thickest sounding one acoustically, and the Twangmasters don't sound quite the way I imagined they would.
They seem to be their own thing, at least in this guitar. They really want their own amp settings - running them through any of my patches set up for single coil guitars leaves them sounding dark and uninspiring, but running them through patches set up for humbuckers makes them sound reedy and thin. They're in-between, but not in the way I'm used to. My Firebirds, P90s and Filtertrons all fall into one camp or the other, where they play nice with similar amp settings to at least some of my other guitars.
Not these. I was initially a little disappointed that they dont sound all that Fendery to me. It took some time to start figuring out how to bring out their best qualities. But now that I have, they're sounding pretty great. The closest thing I've ever heard to them are DeArmond Dynasonics, which have much more bass and midrange than you'd expect from a single coil with alnico polepieces.
But I have Fenders that sound Fendery, so it's probably good that these have their own vibe. I've started getting some great tones that have been inspiring me to play different things ("Gretschy" things, mostly, since that seems to be the direction they lean). Oh, and they take heavy fuzz like nobody's business.
The shielding job was also worth its weight in gold. The original pickups were so frigging noisy with even moderate gain that my wife actually said, "but I thought those were humbuckers" when she heard them. They were nearly as noisy as single coils, and if I took my hands off the strings at any point, the loudness of the buzz was almost comical. Between the covers on the Fralins and the shielding job, it's now just about silent under high gain. I can even take my hands off the strings without any increase in noise. This is the first of my Gibsons to get a shielding job and it won't be the last. I'll be shielding every other one whenever I happen to have it opened up for a pickup or pickguard swap.
FYI, I used this brand of copper tape:
It's sold as a slug repellant for trees, but the adhesive is conductive (I had continuity on my multimeter throughout the entire cavity just from the adhesive connecting one piece to the next). A 1" wide, 66' long roll cost me $12 CAD, whereas the "guitar shielding" tape from places like Stewmac costs $30 for 18' of 3/4" tape, which is more than 10x the price per square inch.
That $12 roll is probably enough to shield every guitar I own. I think I went through roughly 2 of the 66 feet.
Gibson doesn't attempt to shield their guitars in any way, and it's been a while since I've shielded a totally bare-wood guitar. I nearly forgot how massive a difference it makes. Most of the Fenders I've shielded were at least partway done to begin with, like my Jaguars with brass plates in the cavities and chrome plates on top.
I did an A/B with one of my still-unshielded Flying Vs, and my '66 Jaguar is honestly quieter than that V under high gain, despite the V having humbuckers. I guess my house is just that noisy an environment.
Anyway, that's enough gushing about the virtues of cheap copper tape. I'm gonna go back to playing and staring at this Flying V. It's just 2 years old and still has that vanilla smell to the nitro finish. Between the smell and the new look, it gives off strong cookies 'n cream vibes while playing it.
I've titled this "Flying V Makeover #1" because some parts are in the mail for my other Vs. All the high output pickups are going, and various pickguards and hardware are making their way onto them while I'm at it. Hopefully I'll be able to post those soon.
