Installation/Support
All of Bill's pickups are intended for easy drop-in replacement, so feel welcome to try the existing wiring in your guitar! Bill designed all his pickups to avoid an aggressive upper-midrange resonance (taking away edginess while bringing out sweet highs), which gives the player greater flexibility with potentiometer values and wiring.
The industry standard is using 250k pots for singles and 500k pots for humbuckers. Since our humbuckers don't suffer from typical highend losses, you may prefer them with 250k pots! Even though Bill preferred his Strat/Tele pickups with 250k pots, a small number of players may like exaggerating the uppermid resonance by using 500k pots. However, we advise 500k pots or higher for the L500XL.
Reducing the resistance value of a potentiometer is easy. While testing, Bill would start with 500k pots but wire a resistor across the outside terminals (termed "in parallel"). For example, a 500k resistor wired over a 500k control will reduce it to 250k.
Bill's hand-drawn wiring diagrams are available by type, but you may also drop in using the following color codes.
Pickup Lead Color Codes
Hot: White
Ground: Black and Blue
For 5 conductor pickups: Twist Red/Green wires together, insulate with shrink wrap or electrical tape for standard series humbucking. See diagrams for parallel and split coil options.
For Strat (excluding L45)
Hot (by position): Neck – White, Middle – Green, Bridge - Red
Ground: Black and Blue
Pickup Height Adjustment (from Pickupology)
The distance between pickup and string is a very important factor for output and sound.
As a general rule for the bridge pickup - put a nickel on top of the pickup under the high E string and play the highest note on that string. Adjust the height on that side of the pickup till the string touches the nickel. Repeat the same with the low E string, but use two nickels on top of each other. If this gives you too much output, you can reduce the height slightly.
Don't forget that twice the distance will reduce the output by about 60%, and the sound will lose some lows. NOW, you can adjust the neck pickup to match the output of the bridge pickup. For the sound test, use stage volume.
For Steel Guitars
Start with 1/8th" spacing at the high strings and 3/16th" spacing at the low strings, and then you can raise or lower the pickup accordingly, depending on the instrument, your style of playing, etc. - until it sounds right to your ears.
Contact Us
General: 951-371-1494
Existing orders/shipping: 951-310-9033
becky@billlawrence.com
Warranty
We have a 5 year warranty for all products purchased directly.