The new pickups made a serious difference in the sound of the guitar, but the old ones probably weren't as bad as I thought. The problem is, I have Lawrence pickups in my Explorer and when I compared the two guitars I was not happy. Even with the pickup change, they sound pretty different, so some of what I was hearing was just the difference in the guitars and the amount of wood in them, etc.

I took the Flying V to rehearsal today and played it through my ADA MP-1 rig, and I can tell you it SMOKED! I'm very happy with my new axe and will be playing it a lot.
~Rich
See my gear at the link!
http://community.webtv.net/one4rich/RichsGuitarPage