Lately I have been craving a tremolo-equipped something mighty, but not for anything other than light vibrato and chord bending stuff.
SO;
Do any of you guys have much experience with Bigsby vibratos?
If so, what are your opinions?
I'm really thinking about installing a Bigsby on it and a new bridge (it currently has a one-piece wrap around dealie).

I've also pondered putting old school arcade type buttons for different switches and shit.
Onboard boost, phase, pickup switching, etc.

I've really though about putting different pickups in the fucker too.
Something definitely single coil based.
As it stands I have a really twangy interesting Dimarzio bridge humbucker in there and some pretty dark single coil sized rail 'bucker in the neck.
I have thought about putting a Strat neck pickup instead along with two single coils next to each other in the slot taken up by the bridge humbucker.
All just ideas, but they have been nagging away at my brain for the last 48 hours.

I figure it's a real bastard already so fucking with it more couldn't do any real harm.

I had, am was not a big fan of bigsbys. I personally am a big fan of the JM style trems. I feel like once you have them set up right they stay in tune better an are just easier to use.

Yeah, i don't love the standard Bigsby trems. They don't stay in tunes all that well. Certain ones, like the Mosrite style are similar and a little better, but overall, the Jazzmaster trem is probably my favorite, aside from ones for crazy divebomby shit, like Floyds.

The only upside to the Bigsby is that you don't need a huge hole cut in the guitar to install it.

The Jazzmaster trem needs a relatively large cutout, and the body has to be thick enough to allow the depth of the trem rout. A standard Mustang/Duosonic should be slightly too thin to allow that rout, though i know you said that yours is thicker. The standard Mustang trem is much less invasive, and works on thinner bodies. The Mustang trem is probably my second favorite to the Jazzmaster. When it is new and tight, it works well. Once it gets old and sloppy, it can be a huge pain in the dick to keep in tune and intonation. But for thinner bodies it is a good solution.

I would probably keep it fixed bridge if the only option was a Bigsby though, myself. They are okay bridges, but they don't allow much bending in the overall scheme, and especially not when you are trying to keep the thing in tune.

Bigsbys do look really fucking cool, though.

Probably 90% of their charm

Yes, they kind of have that Machine-gun-mounted-on-a-desert-rat-patrol-jeep thing going for them. Super cool looking but will it really do it's job?

I prefer the looks of a trapeze tailpiece to those of a Bigsby.

Any machine gun is better than no machine gun at all.

A machine mounted on a Musicmaster. Now that I would like to see. Of Course for coolness, a gatlin gun would be victorious

An old-school Civil War Gatling gun mounted on, like, a Marshall 1960B.