Bill Lawrence mod needed

[BenPerkins]

Hi guys,

Gibson Marauder with a humbucker in Neck and another humbucker (?) in Bridge. The stock pots and input jack need to be replaced anyway - I was wondering what my options were for mods? Thank you [emoji106]

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[BenPerkins]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

I’ve got 500k pots BTW


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[Chistopher]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

Hold up, we got a guy for you. Dave Locher on this forum has modded one of those things within an inch of it's life and can tell you anything you need to know about it.

Other than the broken pots and jack, what don't you like about it? What could be improved?

 

[BenPerkins]

Bill Lawrence mod needed

The neck HB is a bit dark - I believe the stock pots are 250k or 300k. So I’m thinking of using 500k pots. The bridge pup is almost perfect. No real complaints with that one.

I’m wondering if it’s possible to split the neck HB and bridge pup and run one coil each in series? Basically where it’ll add a little boost. That’s one idea I’ve thought of.

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

Hold up, we got a guy for you. Dave Locher on this forum has modded one of those things within an inch of it's life and can tell you anything you need to know about it.

That is flattering! Unfortunately, the very first mod I did was to replace both pickups so I really don't know anything at all about them. I had the original neck pickup until a couple years ago but I only remember it having two wires so no splitting possible, I think.
Just putting 500k pots in there will make things a bit more sparkly. Like pulling a blanket off (to use the common cliche!).
The only wiring mod I can think of with the stock pickups is the one Gibson actually did for at least a year or two of Marauder production: they put a blend pot in place of the toggle switch. All the way one direction = full bridge pickup, no neck. All the way the other direction = full neck pickup, no bridge. Everything in between = varying amounts of each. I would imagine you can dial in some interesting tones with that.

Ironically, I am just about to make a new tort pickguard for mine and swap in a new bridge pickup, but it is still going to be standard "two humbuckers, master volume, master tone, standard three-way toggle" wiring.

Sorry I can't be more helpful, Ben.

 

[BenPerkins]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

Thank you, Dave and Chris [emoji106]

I’ll report back when I get the guitar back - should be next weekend


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[BenPerkins]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

Looks like the pups are both two conductor, so really can’t do a lot. New 500k pots, 3 way selector and input jack have been installed - to my ears, the guitar sounds better than before. Some people prefer original pot values, which is okay.

Would adding an orange drop make any difference, and if so, where would it go? Thank you


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[jeremy]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

Do you use the tone control much? If you leave it at 10 all the time a cap swap won’t make enough difference to be worth it.

 

[BenPerkins]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

Do you use the tone control much? If you leave it at 10 all the time a cap swap won’t make enough difference to be worth it.

I mostly use it between 4 and 6, or I’ll turn it all the way down. It’s rarely all the way up to 10.


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[Dave Locher]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

I did not notice a difference between the original disk capacitor and the orange drop I replaced it with. But there are guys all over The Gear Page who will swear it is a huge difference they can hear. It's just a different tone capacitor - you unsolder or clip out the old one and replace it with the new one.
If you had the pots replaced there is a good chance the tone cap was also replaced anyway.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

You could use a push/pull pot for the tone and buy a q-filter from Lawrence. That would give a wide range of tones without changing the switching.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

But there are guys all over The Gear Page who will swear it is a huge difference they can hear.

That can be said about most anything over there, from the angle of the headstock to the color of the finish. There are 4 guys in particular over there that I would like to do a few blind tests on to see if there is any stock in their hearing abilities.

 

[Dave Locher]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

That can be said about most anything over there, from the angle of the headstock to the color of the finish. There are 4 guys in particular over there that I would like to do a few blind tests on to see if there is any stock in their hearing abilities.

Indeed! I don't track who is who but some double-blind tests would sure cut through a lot of..."discussion"!

 

[BenPerkins]

Bill Lawrence mod needed

You could use a push/pull pot for the tone and buy a q-filter from Lawrence. That would give a wide range of tones without changing the switching.

Both pups are two conductor

I’m cool with leaving it as is. Not a show stopper by any means; I was just curious to see what different options I had

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

Both pups are two conductor

I’m cool with leaving it as is. Not a show stopper by any means; I was just curious to see what different options I had

A Q-filer is a mod for a tone control that replaces a capicitor with an inductor. No 4-conductor necessary. It gives a dark neck pickup a wider range of tones.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=q+filter+bill+lawrence

 

[EDX]

Re: Bill Lawrence mod needed

the main reason to put a orange drop cap it's their thermal change relience, passive electronic components vary their electric characteristics (resistance, capacitance and inductance) depending on temperature, orange drop caps have a militar rating so extreme temp changes don't affect them, in other words if you have a show on texas tomorrow at noon and you flight to a night show on winnipeg canada on friday your orange drop cap will behave just the same, other caps prolly yes, chinesium 6000 caps pack a dime from alibaba not so sure...