FGK-1-5
Firestorm FGK-1-5 $47.95 Assembled
Put some teeth into your guitar! More body, fuller tone and a tight focused presence that can cut through a mix, that is what to expect from the BCS Firestorm. This kit is a complete electrical replacement for a variety of models from Ibanez, LTD, Jackson and any guitar with a similar lay out with a 5 way switch.
We use a 1Meg CTS pot for the volume to bring out the brightest tone and as much gain as possible from the pickups. This pot is a solid shaft and requires a knob with a set screw. For the tone pot we use a CTS 500K split shaft pot so your existing tone knob can work. We use Oak Grigsby 5-way switches for blade style switching. For wiring we use 18 gauge thick stranded wire that is wax coated and cloth covered on all of the ground connections and the conductor connections are 22 gauge solid core wire that is cloth covered and color coded for easy identification. The output jack is a Switchcraft mono jack that will give you a good solid connection. Lastly we have added a volume mod to the volume pot so your guitar will keep its presence as you roll back on your volume. This also lets your volume act as a pre-gain control when running on high distortion, as you roll the volume back it first lessens the amount of saturation before your volume starts to drop. This is a pretty cool feature but it does sacrifice some volume control while running distortion because the volume will not actually drop until it hits 2 and then it falls fast, almost like a cut off switch. While on a clean setting the volume reacts normally while keeping the presence clean. This mod can be removed by request when ordered.
At the heart of the Firestorm kits is the MOJO Dijon capacitor. These capacitors were designed to emulate the Malory 150 “Mustard” caps found in early British amplifiers and what resulted were caps that sounded great in both amps and guitars. These caps still give the same full bodied tone with more volume just like the Vitamin T’s used in our Vintage kits but these caps are a little brighter and don’t have as warm of a sound as the Vitamin T’s. These caps are not sterile sounding (not by a long way) just clean with an organic feel.
Make sure it fits! The Firestorm FK-1 kits will stretch from 2 3/4” (69.87mm) to 3 1/2” (88.89mm) from pot to pot to fit a variety of models. The distance from the tone pot to the output jack is a maximum of 4” (101.60mm). To be sure the kit will fit your guitar you need to measure from center to center of the pots, then center of the tone pot to the jack. Click on the picture to the left for a larger view of what we’re talking about.
These kits give your pickups what they need to perform at their very best. The high quality components allow for a better transfer of electricity through your guitar which brings out all the depth and subtleties in your tone. This will make good pickups really shine but will also make all the flaws of cheap pickups stand out. For example we found that the standard pickups for low end Ibanez and Jackson guitars break up badly with high gain, but the ESP standard pickups that come in the low end LTD guitars sound pretty good.
The volume pot in this kit requires a USA sized knob for solid shaft pots with a set screw for a proper fit, click here for our selection on knobs.
Firestorm FGK-1-5 Installation Instructions
Firestorm FGK-1-5 Wiring Schematic
This kit includes:
- 1 Meg volume pot & 1 500K tone pot
- 1 Mojo Dijon .22nf/630v Capacitor (.22nf = .022uf)
- Oak Grigsby 5-way blade switch
- Switchcraft ¼” mono output jack
- 1 volume mod
- All cloth covered wire, 18 gauge stranded & 22 gauge solid core
Options available for this kit: Click here for options details and ordering
- Change tone pot to push/pull pot for coil tapping $8.00
- Add mini toggle for coil tapping $10.00 each
- Change output jack to stereo output jack for active pickup grounding $1.50
