I have a 2016 Gibson Firebird V that I found is brighter sounding than the 1991 version I once had. I liked the sound of the 1991 'Bird, even from the dreaded ceramic bridge pickup. The 2016 though is inherently brighter and got a broad mid to it, it's probably the wood and the build of this particular guitar, so the bridge ceramic pickup was very harsh sounding.
Since I got a stash of different full size humbuckers I decided to re-route the bridge cavity to fit them. Unfortunately none of the pickups from my stash did sound to my liking in the 'Bird. So, DiMarzio to the help; first a Fantom 90 DP279, and it sounded very good in there for a while. But a bit too smooth, so after some investigating I ordered the neck Gravity Storm DP252. Now this is a very very good fit for this guitar! More bite in the mids and also got some single coil influence in there, and low mid growl! I just love it! I also tried it with a 1M pot instead of 500k and it got really interesting, very chewy and tight, fun to use for fast riffing and such. So I've decided to install a 1M pot with push-pull switch to switch in a 1M resistor across the pot to have both 1M and 500k available.
The pickup also blends very well with the original neck pickup, gets the "bell" sound together.
