I (sort of) tried to do this when I swapped my T16000M stick for a VKB Gunfighter. Other peripherals stayed the same, so mappings to KB&M and the TWCS throttle (that was part of the original Hotas).
I guess I could have spent the time to try and edit the file in notepad, but in the end, what I did was back up my existing bindings (just in case), print out my existing bindings to a PDF file, plug in the new stick to see whether I could somehow persuade the game to just let me bind new control mappings that were no longer there... Didn't work, wouldn't see old binds file, nor the one I hopefully renamed to VKBCustom...
In the end, I simply started from scratch, going down the list from the PDF file and setting the new stick up from scratch. Took perhaps an hour or so, so your mileage will vary depending on how much time you want to spend editing the binds file as opposed to just running down the list of what you currently have bound and re-doing it.
Also, some of the things I had bound I realized that I no longer used / needed, and other things changed a bit because the new stick had two additional hats that I could use for things currently bound elsewhere, so basically I cleaned my bindings up as well. This may not be the case for you of course.