Hey folks! Wanted to share my modded FFDB as well as some thoughts on the stock instrument. I’ve been wanting to mod a firebird-style guitar for a while now, and decided to pull the trigger on an FFDB since the price is relatively low compared to an Epiphone or Gibson. The guitar came in earlier this week, and I’ve been having a blast putting everything together.

Stock

I messed around with the guitar a little bit before pulling it apart. I noticed a few things off the bat:

1. It is the incredibly lightweight. The guy at the FedEx store who grabbed the box commented that it weighed a lot less than he expected, and there was a part of me that was wondering if they forgot to pack the guitar in the box while I was driving home. Nope, it just doesn’t weigh a lot. It’s probably the lightest guitar I own. Nevertheless, it feels durable.
2. Firefly must have changed the pickups they’re using in these. In the pics on the website and in posts I’ve seen about the guitar, it seems like they have used mini-humbuckers in the past. The pickups in mine don’t have visible pole pieces, which makes me wonder if they might be actual firebird pickups. I haven’t bothered to open them up yet, and they don’t have any markers on the back indicating what they could be, so I don’t know for sure. They are very low output and don’t sound particularly good, but that could be a byproduct of the wiring, which I’ll touch on later.
3. Fit and finish is fantastic. Very impressed with the fretwork, and the guitar itself looks great. I’m always a little wary of burst finishes on cheaper guitars since they have a tendency to look not-so-great, but I really like this one. The guitar was very playable after tuning.
4. The stock wiring was not great. There was at least one joint that had come undone while shipping, maybe more (didn’t bother to check). Interestingly, Firefly used linear taper pots for the volume pots and audio taper for the tones. I think this was also the case on an FFSP I got a few years ago. The pots themselves feel cheap. Definitely worth upgrading if you buy one of these.
5. When I ordered the FFDB, I had planned on putting a Firebird pickguard on it. I saw people talking about how they weren’t quite the same size but assumed that they’d be close enough that I could make minor alterations to it to get it to fit. Nope. The FFDB pickguard is tiny compared to the Firebird, and the holes don’t line up at all. You’d be better off getting a blank and working with that.

Mods

1. Swapped out the bridge, stoptail, strap buttons, and tuners for gold ones. I grabbed all of these used, so they were pretty cheap. The stock bridge and tuners were fine, and I would have kept them if I hadn’t wanted the aesthetic change. The Gotoh lefty tuners dropped right in.
2. Routed the body for P90s. I wanted a P90 in the bridge, so I had to do that route. I decided to do the neck as well for aesthetic reasons (minihumbucker rings look cool). Not my best routing, but it’s whatever. I 3D printed the template and stuck it to the body with double sided tape. My first go, I didn’t use enough tape, so it shifted a bit. I ended up 3D printing pickup mounts to screw into the cavities to make it easier to attach the pickups. Firefly’s routes were super deep and messy (bridge was like 35mm), so the mounts helped deal with that.
3. Swapped out the pickups. I used a Mojotone hot quiet coils in the bridge and an Epiphone firebird pickup I got off EBay in the neck.
4. Cut a new pickguard. My original plan was to use an anodized Firebird pickguard I got, but as previously mentioned, the size was way off. I thought I could cut it down, but that wound up being a huge pain I didn’t want to deal with. I ended up cutting an old scratched up record I had lying around. I used a heat gun yo soften it followed by scissors and a utility knife to cut it. Finally I sanded down the edges. Vinyl is super prone to warping when cutting it that way, so it was hard to get it super clean. I’m mildly happy with the results. Having “temple of doom” written on a guitar seems rad to me though, so I’m going to ignore the imperfections.
5. Swapped out the wiring. I used 500k volume pots (with push pull on one for series/parallel switching) and Tbx pots for tone. I reused the toggle switch that came with the guitar and swapped the jack for a puretone.

Verdict

This thing rips. This is my second Firefly, and I’m once again blown away by the playability. The Epiphone Firebird pickup sounds great in the neck, especially with the volume lowered and the tone pot cranked up. Very clear and articulate. The P90 sounds fantastic as well. I had heard good things about the non-hot version of the pickup, and only went with this one because I found a good deal on it used. I’m glad I got this version though, it really sounds fantastic.

Hey folks! Wanted to share a project that I finished up last week.

Recently, I've seen some posts on r/offset where people have put Epiphone Thunderbird pickups into Jazzmasters. I thought it would be fun to try putting a pair in my Bass VI to see how they sounded. In addition to swapping out the pickups, I made a few other changes:

1. Got rid of the stock trem and put in a Herad hardtail plate. I never used the trem all that much, but I held off on changing it out because I wasn't sure I wanted to invest the money into changing it. I've actually found it to be a worthwhile change. The Bass VI felt kind of "rattly" before, which going to a hardtail resolved. I was hoping that the hardtail would let me use strings with a shorter taper (specifically the EB 9-string set), but no dice. Seems like the taper length is still about 32.5 inches vs the EB's 31.
2. Installed a 3-way Telecaster switch and (neck-only) strangle switch using a Herad control plate. Telecaster switch is pretty self explanatory; I like it better than the individual slide switches. I used to have a 10-position Freeway switch in my Bass VI, but I found I kept forgetting which position did what. Three positions is good, partially because it's hard to forget. The strangle switch has three positions (off, on, and half-way-ish). I stole the idea from this post. Having it be neck only works really really well with this pickups, as I'll get into.
3. Routed new pickups cavities, shielded them, and routed a new pickguard. I made some templates using Blender and 3D printed them. You can kind of see from the pictures, but I designed the templates so that they could attach to the body/pickguard using the existing pickguard screw layout. This made it pretty easy to keep it in place. It took a decent amount of trial and error to get the size right; the Epiphone pickups are a smidge bigger than the dimensions I found online for Thunderbird pickups. I got the pickguard blank off of Ebay and only had to route for the pickups. The fit of the screw holes is ok, not great, but it looks fine after you get it attached.
4. Installed a TBX pot for the tone knob. I did this on another guitar a while back and loved it. If you're not familiar, it's worth looking into. It gives you the ability to cut highend or lowend instead of just highend. I've previously used PTB circuits, but this is sort of the same thing in one knob. It lets you go from bass territory to baritone guitar quickly.
5. Installed what I'm going to call a "Dustin Kensrue" mod. If you're not familiar, Dustin's signature Music Man has a stereo jack with a switch that lets you route the individual pickups straight to different parts of the jack so that you can route the signals individually. EG you could send the neck pickup to a clean amp and the bridge to a driven amp. I did the same thing with a stereo jack and a (250k) S1 switch; neck goes to ring and bridge goes to tip. I've only gotten to mess with this a little bit (just got the stereo cable in). I've mainly been sending the neck pickup to a bass amp and the bridge to a guitar amp. I'm looking forward to dialing in some sounds with it; it seems like it'll be pretty cool.

I'm pretty stoked with the end results. Beyond the stuff mentioned above, the pickups sound great in a Bass VI. The neck pickup makes the instrument feel like a proper bass guitar, but the bridge is thin enough to do low-tuned baritone guitar stuff. I think the real magic (as other people have observed with these pickups) is the middle position. In particular with the neck strangle switch engaged, it sounds massive without being muddy. I'm very pleased with how it came out.