EMG upgrade for Fernandes Sustainer

Hello all, I am new here and hope there is someone out there that can give me some advice on an upgrade I'm going to be performing. I recently bought a '05 Fernandes Revolver Pro. It's equipped with the Sustainer system and an awful pickup in the bridge position. I just won a brand new EMG 81 on ebay and I am going to be replacing the stock bridge pickup. According to the Fernandes site it's not that difficult, but I really wanted to hear from other people first before I performed surgery on my new guitar. The current pickup is not active, but I know for a fact that both the Sustainer and a pickup will function on one 9V batt.

It shouldn't be difficult at all... just make sure you ground everything correctly. In all honesty... you should have sprang for a complete set of EMG's and ran the set seperately from the Sustainer... but that's only my opinion. Sounds like you should have a pretty nice axe after you get the mods done. Let us know how it goes.

Thanks for the advice...it's now 2am here and I have to be up in 4 hours!!! Mod went really smooth though...you were right, not that difficult. It took me about 3 1/2 hrs., I figured I'd restring it while I was at it...Licensed Floyd Rose...next time I will pay someone! First time was a winner, no hum, feedback or crackles. I just need to adjust the trim pot settings on the board for the Sustainer (tomorrow)...but I do agree, I should have just gotten twin 81's...but I'll amuse myself with the Sustainer for now...If I want to upgrade in the future, it'll be a breeze. Just in case anyone wants to know...the Fernandes pots must be replaced with the set from EMG. I talked to EMG today and they said the pickup will not sound proper with 500k and 250k pots...EMG uses 25k only. So I changed them and all is well...besides the EMG pots are a lot better quality. The only issue I was faced with was the damn braided ground wire in the 81. What a pain to seperate for soldering. Anyway, thanks again for the advice and I hope someone else can benefit from my experience with this mod. It was really worth it...sounds 110% better!!!!

PS: I bought the guitar for $200 on a close-out sale a local store...to make room for the '07 models (mine was the only left over from '05) the '07 Fernandes Revolver Pro 81 is listed around $650...so I don't think I did bad...spent $289.00 including shipping for EMG 81...not bad!!!

my suggestion would be not to get twin 81's but rather an 81/60 combo. 60 at the neck that is. the 60 is awesome clean and the 81 is the **** distorted!