2006 Gibson Firebird V « Anxiously Awaiting

2006 Gibson Firebird V

The Gibson Firebird was released in the 1963 as a vehicle to compete with Fender's rising fame. Car designer Ray Deitrich designed the guitar to look like an early 50's car fin--and I'd say he succeeded. The appeal of the Firebird lies in the massive amount of sustain--a result of the neck through construction--and the distinct sound of mini-humbuckers.

My Firebird has several upgrades that I consider absolutely necessary to get the gamut of beautiful tones that this guitar is capable of.

Pickups

One very important factor when perfecting the sound of any guitar lies in the pickup choice. My bird has a Lollar mini-humbucker at the bridge--which provides a nice, rounded sound that reminds me of a hotter Telecaster pickup and a Lollar Firebird special at the neck, which sounds reminiscent of a very hot neck aligned single coil. Overall this pickup combination is perfect for jazz, blues, ambient, and even rock guitar tones.

Hardware

The worst parts of this guitar are the crappy banjo tuners, the stock nickel/zinc Gibson bridge, and my bird in particular suffered from a very poorly slotted nut. I upgraded both the nut and the bridge resulting in a tighter, airy tone and perfect tuning stability. These two modifications are essential for any Gibson guitar of recent construction. Currently, I'm stuck with the tuners until I can find some decent replacements.

Electronics

This guitar has standard modern Gibson wiring using 500k potentiometers along with volume kits by Acme Guitarworks. A volume kit is basically a treble bleed capacitor wired in series with a 500k ohm resistor installed across the input and sweeper lugs of the volume potentiometers. It allows you to roll down the volume yet retain the fidelity of the pickups. Typical modern wiring schemas suffer from a dramatic dampening of the highs as the volume is rolled off and a volume kit remedies this situation without the need for cumbersome vintage wiring.