Re: All ur know-how on Bill Lawrence Pickups for a guitar please!
Just another voice in the mix - I have the L-90 2H and 2.8H set in a strat-style guitar. I also have a set of L-45s when I discovered how to use single coils in a strat style guitar.
The L90 series are explained by Becky and designed by Bill as being the PAF pickup that corrected flaws in the production/design of all the original early humbuckers. So they are warm, fat, mid-flat, and have a clean high end. The L500s were Bill designing "moderning sounding" pickups without changing his basic sound design principles.
Becky said the L90s were originally a 2.8H set (neck) and a 4H set (bridge) originally as PAF style replacements back in their original days, and that they also offered an "XL" version of the L90 which was a 6H, if I recall correctly from what she said on the phone.
I hate nasty high end, and do not tolerate hum. My 335 has a Custom Custom in the bridge to that goal--warm, fat, with sweet highs.
I couldn't bond with single coils for anything crunchy, and eventually made my strat a dual HB guitar for a long, long while.
But from some recent tonal experimentation I landed on the Lawrence/Wilde pickups, gave the L45s a shot and then the L90s after being so impressed.
I love the L-45s in my guitar. The details of Bills design preference for clear high end and a 'flat' tone from the pickup is that he says - control it. He didn't necessarily like it either as-is (he was a jazz player!), but having a high end frequency peak in a high-midrange spot, flubby lows or overwhelming mids "built in" to the pickup is very limiting.
All these pickups are designed to reproduce everything they can, and then, you as the user can shave off what you don't like (highs), with variable control. There's also no high-mid spikes to work around as there often are with other pickups that are meant to have a definitive "EQ" of their own.
I've got the fattest sounding tones and fattest, singing lead tones with his pickups. I went with the 2H in the neck and 2.8H in the bridge--for a strat style--to get the clearest middle-ground between my 335's pickups and single coils, and it works with my rig and my tweaks. These are the lowest inductance (think "lowest output"/clearest) option available for the L90 series, and I don't think many people try this combo, but I figured if I needed too I could (or can) expiriment with a 4H version in combination with one or the other later one if it was a mismatch tonally, etc.
Since all these pickups are around the inductance level of a vintage single coil (even the L90s I selected), do note that I've got a 47n (not 22n) tone cap on my control pots with both the L-45 and L-90 pickups. The 22n works OK but the 47n caps seemed to add more versatility, and one might note that once you get down around 25k of resistance on the tone knob (low), the cap and the pickups inductance start creating their own midrange resonant peak, so the 47n helps cut the highs when and how I want without getting to close to that zone where there begins to be a resonant frequency peak.
With the L-90s, I now have this vintage+ PAF humbucker tone with sweet, clear, highs that are not at all offensive with the tone wide open. No comparisons really explain it. With the tone control back to about 6, I've got the general sound/vibe of my Seth Lover pickup in my 335 with the tone control "wide open." I prefer that option - I can have the PAF tone, or effectively "add" more highs. It's especially useful as I can turn "up" the tone control to get more highs back with the volume control down.
Then, comparing the bridge positions - the custom custom is a great pickup, but I can get a really great alternate tone that has highs as dark as I want, dark as or darker highs than the custom custom by rolling the tone control back to 3 or 4, but the mids "sit" better and make everything sound fat and singing compared to the CC tone (which was also in my strat formerly). With the tone on ~6 it's like a bridge PAF, yet I can roll the tone back up for a clearer sweet sound just as well, which is surprisingly useful on the fly.
As for output - I build my own circuits etc., so I have a booster to add clean output if or where I feel the L45s or L90s need output since my rig/gain were based on pickups with higher output than the Wilde pickups I choose, so with the flat boost adding output, they can simply hits pedals/amps etc harder as do the CC/Seth Lover. All else being equal, since most pickups get higher and higher in output/winds the highs dull a bit (probably less so with Wilde/BLs) , the mids boost a bit, and the lows don't sound as piano-like. So I've discovered that my preference is to get the tone I want from a pickup and if I want a higher output signal, I use a dead-flat clean boost and let the pickups be the sound, circuits provide any needed additional output, and darken it with the tone knob. It's working amazingly well for me!
The Q filter is an inductor designed to be used with a resistor and a capacitor. The pickups inductance determines the frequency, but basically it acts to notch a midrange frequency determined by a combination of the pickups inductance, the inductor, and the capacitor. The resistor(s) determine how MUCH it can scoop. IMO, since I work with circuits, it's a little "crude" as it can be done with graphic/parametric EQs rather easily, but the Q control be tweaked on on the guitar. To me, I kind of just want a midrange cut on/off (which I do with the 335 that has the aforementioned pickups, to get them sounding clearer for certain tones). Honestly, I'd likely be replacing the 335s pickups by now if it weren't for the drama involved in rewiring a 335! But now the 335 has the "unique" sound compared to the others...and I can get a unique and slightly less organic, but reasonable imitation of a sound closer to the L90s from it by cutting a little midrange in the right frequencies and in the right amounts via a circuit that does that on/off, which offers another tonal variation. Ironically, all the circuits and gain levels etc were tweaked around my 335 so such a dramatic change wouldn't have stood a chance if the BL weren't really amazing pickups that can do all they do (and with a little know-how and reading about Bills design philosophy, etc.).
Bill had something like the Q filter built into the L6S series Gibson guitars he designed, and many people did and do like those guitars and the tones available, even though they far from fit into the "traditional" Gibson mold most people think of when they think of Gibson electric guitars... (no affiliation with Wilde/BL, just a satisfied customer!)
