Valentine pickup swap - Fishman Fluence Classics

[msquared]

I've had a pair of Valentines for a couple years now and have really enjoyed them. Ever since I got my first one I haven't played a gig without one of them along for the ride and they get the majority of the playing time at home.

I've always been over the moon happy with the Valentine's stock pickups so I've never really felt it necessary to change them but it's a popular mod and I always end up curious about the results when I read about them. I decided recently that I'd like a HH guitar for a project I'm in and figured it'd be nice to be able to A/B the stock version versus the modded version. I love the brighter humbucker tones of Alex Lifeson's early '90s PRS CE24s and Mark Lettieri's Fiore, I felt that with the Valentine's wood combo this mod would get me close (but not too close) to those guitars.

The process was pretty straightforward and I had a good time with it. Despite their relative complexity I love working on EBMM guitars. The design tweaks beyond the original Leo ideas are clever and the quality of the work "under the hood" is at as high a level as you'd expect.

I wired it up to be functionally close to the stock Valentines. The volume knob changes the voicing of the humbuckers and the tone knob will disable one of the neck pickup coils. Because I have so much functionality from the multiswitch and the two DPDT switches and the Fluence's available options, I will be doing a lot of experimenting over the next month to dial in specifics beyond the basic humbucker voicing stuff.

The guitar sounds amazing with the new pickups. It's a nice contrast with the sound of the BFR Valentine. I'm looking forward to hearing it in a full band mix.

 

[Virtuoso]

Great idea! I love the dual voicings on the Fluence pickups.

Where did you get those cool pickguards?

 

[msquared]

@Virtuoso thanks!

I got them here: Van Dyke-Harms Premium Guitar Parts

 

[Mosswalker]

Hey there. Really nice looking Valentines you have. I have that same blue BFR (#3). I'm happy with it but I've been needing an HH guitar and have been thinking that it might be excellent with some PAFs or SG pickups in it. I've never modded a guitar myself, never swapped pickups. Not sure why, just usually keep things stock or have paid to have it done.

All that said, is this beyond the skills of a beginner in your opinion? I have basic soldering skills, as long as it is not too detailed. Or should I just pay for the swap?

Thanks for any thoughts you have.

 

[Mixolydian82]

I've had a pair of Valentines for a couple years now and have really enjoyed them. Ever since I got my first one I haven't played a gig without one of them along for the ride and they get the majority of the playing time at home.

I've always been over the moon happy with the Valentine's stock pickups so I've never really felt it necessary to change them but it's a popular mod and I always end up curious about the results when I read about them. I decided recently that I'd like a HH guitar for a project I'm in and figured it'd be nice to be able to A/B the stock version versus the modded version. I love the brighter humbucker tones of Alex Lifeson's early '90s PRS CE24s and Mark Lettieri's Fiore, I felt that with the Valentine's wood combo this mod would get me close (but not too close) to those guitars.

The process was pretty straightforward and I had a good time with it. Despite their relative complexity I love working on EBMM guitars. The design tweaks beyond the original Leo ideas are clever and the quality of the work "under the hood" is at as high a level as you'd expect.

I wired it up to be functionally close to the stock Valentines. The volume knob changes the voicing of the humbuckers and the tone knob will disable one of the neck pickup coils. Because I have so much functionality from the multiswitch and the two DPDT switches and the Fluence's available options, I will be doing a lot of experimenting over the next month to dial in specifics beyond the basic humbucker voicing stuff.

The guitar sounds amazing with the new pickups. It's a nice contrast with the sound of the BFR Valentine. I'm looking forward to hearing it in a full band mix.

View attachment 42249

Nice man! I'm down in Wichita if you're ever wanting to jam

 

[msquared]

All that said, is this beyond the skills of a beginner in your opinion? I have basic soldering skills, as long as it is not too detailed. Or should I just pay for the swap?

The operation is pretty simple. I'm going to dump a fairly wordy post on you but it's mostly overexplaining to cover all the bases. If you have any further questions feel free to post them here or DM me.

The nice thing is that as long as you don't do any soldering on the circuit board itself, you can screw it up and any tech should be able to fix the issue. Give it a shot and know that it's not a huge deal if it doesn't work out. Take pictures of your progress to refer back to it if necessary.

From an electrical standpoint, if you're swapping in passive pickups you should be fine. The existing Valentine pickups are a passive set so that's what all of the circuitry in the guitar is expecting to be interfacing with. This is great because it means you won't need to change any components other than the pickups themselves.

From a mechanical standpoint, the pickup mounting system is quite elegant. Putting new pickups into the mounting rings is difficult to screw up. They are made to accept pickups with covers, so be aware that uncovered pickups will work but those pickups are rounded at the corners so it may look a bit weird. Make sure you're following the directions on the pickups to point them in the proper direction.

As far as your procedure is concerned, my advice is to cut the wires coming from the old pickups about 1cm away from the shrink tubing, strip the insulation off of the wires that are soldered to the board, and solder the wires from the new pickups onto the old wires. This will keep you from having to do soldering to the board itself, thus minimizing any possibility of damaging the circuitry and making for an easy repair path if you screw something up.

When soldering the wires together, plan to use some sort of heatshrink insulation or electrical tape to completely cover the solder joints and exposed wire. I like heatshrink insulation quite a bit but you need a heat gun or high powered hair dryer to get it to shrink properly.

As you can see there are two heatshrink wrapped cable bundles coming from the pickup cavities. One is labeled "N" (neck pickup) and one is labeled "B" (bridge pickup).

The neck bundle has all four signal wires plus the ground wire from the cover. This is so you can do the coil split with whatever new pickup you get. I don't know offhand which wires coming off of the neck pickup are for which coil but you can use this handy guide to pickup testing with a multimeter to figure it out once you've pulled the old pickups out.

The bridge bundle has only two wires and a ground as it's just a single coil. Normal wiring conventions would suggest that the white wire is the hot wire and the red wire is neutral. You can go wild with pickup choices here, PAF humbuckers work of course as well as humbucker sized single coil such as Lollar's Novel pickups or Bareknuckle's HSP90 pickups.

If you get a humbucker to put in here you are pretty much stuck with leaving it as a humbucker unless you add extra switching to defeat one of the coils because the DPDT switch banks on the push/push pots are already fully used by the circuit board. Make sure that you solder the coils together (or order them this way, most companies will sell them pre soldered with heat shrink on the joint).





The caveat to all of the above: if you're doing active pickups like the Fluences that I put in, the operation is considerably more difficult. Clearly not impossible but there's a lot more involved with it.

 

[jazzyitalian]

I need to put this VanDyke / Harms in my favorites folder. Nice looking stuff!

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www.vandykeharms.com

 

[Markcarl]

I have a pair of the Fishman Fluence Classic pickups in an Emerald Virtuo guitar. I love the sound of the pickups. They sound good for both clean and distorted tones. I notice lately I mostly have been using them in split coil mode.