Stereo Flying V Demo

I've not been up to much in the guitar realm of late.
Winter has not been favourable for working outside, mostly due to the lack of dry weather and daylight.

For this post I'm revisiting the Stereo Flying V mod from May 2011.

I did a rough demo a few weeks ago, but have only just got around to uploading it.
The recording was done straight into the desk, with a couple of amp plugins and some out of the box drum loops. Before the guitar signal hit the mixer it passed through a pair of Bad Monkeys with a cheap octave down pedal on the Mustang Bass pickup.

My guitar playing is far from perfect and the sound quality one I uploaded it has changed a bit, so your mileage may vary. Despite my shortcomings, I feel as though the sound clip demonstrates the mod effectively.

StereoFlyingV by TheAwesomePowerOfRockets

Enough talk - Action! Manito Flying V Stereo Mod

I finally got around to modding my bargain Flying V from last year. Inspired by a blog post on Tym Guitars website. The mod is pretty easy to do if you have the tools. I used me Dremel and Router attachment. First thing to do was place the pickup on the guitar and drill the holes for the screw adjustment. Next was to flip the pickup upside down and trace the outline with a sharpie. I had to eyeball the line to make sure that I didn't go over. For the most part I kept within the line and did the final filing and shaping by hand. The Mustang Bullet Bass pickup fits nice and tightly in the hole. Once that was ready, I needed to make space in the body. The manufacturer promised a solid mahogany body, it's low grade, but it looks pretty similar to the photos in my woodworking book.  

Routing out the hole was done with the neck in situ, I just made some rails out of ice-cream sticks and masking tape to allow the router edge to glide over the fretboard. A little bit of soldering and a re-string(the proper way) and it was all roses. The nut needed to be replaced and is close to finished, though I need to spend a bit more time on it to make it just right. Once it was strung up I fired up a few effects, with the mustang bass pickup feeding an octaver. 

 It needs a little noise suppression to kill the bleed over from the 5th string, but nothing to worry about in any real sense. A fun project, that I recommend to anyone brave enough to get into cutting scratch plate material.

2011 - Manito Flying V

My first instrument purchase of the year was the Manito "Dakota" or Flying V copy (obviously).

This thing is about $240AU new, and I got it for $85 from the local pawn broker.

It needed a replacement nut, but that was no biggie as I had a spare in the house, it just needed some filing to sort it out.

The guitar is incredibly cheap, but well made for the money.

According to this website the guitar has the following features:

Body: Solid Mahogany
Neck: Maple - bolt on
Fingerboard: Rosewood
Controls: 1 Volume, 1 Tone, 3 Way Switch
Pickups: 2 Humbucker
Bridge: Vintage Tremelo

I removed some paint from the pickup cavity, and sure enough, the body is solid (not laminate).

The pickups sound ok, nothing amazing, but noise free and pretty rock.

Switches pots and jacks are off the shelf and all feel solid.

The bridge is a tune-o-matic style (not tremolo as listed in the specs), the holes for the posts to go through into the bridge are a little larger than the posts they're sitting on. Not a huge deal, maybe half a millimeter, not precise but not a deal breaker either.

The neck has a truss rod adjustment, and seems to be setup for 10-46.

It's a wide flat profile and for the time being it is nice and straight.

I bought this guitar for two reasons:

A: It's a Flying V 

B: To experiment on!

I'm planning on adding a couple of features to it that are far from standard.

One is a sustainer driver and the other is inspired from Tym Guitars "Jazzmaster Bass thingy".

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a cheap mustang pickup like Tim used, so I'm going with removing the pole pieces on a humbucker.

This has the effect of reducing the overall signal to the coil/magnet, but isn't 100% effective at removing the signal from the unwanted strings, especially since the pickup I used has an 11.5k dc resistance (IE: very loud/sensitive pickup).

There are ways to deal with this problem that should prove advantageous to making the sustainer coil. I'll detail my solution at a later date.

Note: Images are stock photos, though look exactly the same as my guitar.