Bill Lawrence L-609

[revelation2012]

Does anyone use the Bill Lawrence L-609 pickup? Curious if there are in sound clips or youtube videos showing this pickup?

[Derek Kiernan]

Amazing pickup, somewhere between a jazzmaster and a p90 tone (but more in the jazzmaster direction), but much clearer and with highs intact. Instead of using a large/wide coil, it has an interesting magnetic circuit that has both poles and bar magnets on either side of the top to capture the sound/feel without partially canceling out some of the harmonics, which is what happens with many of the "wide" coil designs. I have sound samples but they're through a full-range speaker setup with its inductance dropped using the Q-filter in the L-filter wiring, probably unhelpful to judge it with a more conventional setup.

[Derek Kiernan]

What instrument are you considering it for? What position?

[JayFreddy]

Originally Posted by Derek Kiernan

Amazing pickup, somewhere between a jazzmaster and a p90 tone (but more in the jazzmaster direction), but much clearer and with highs intact. Instead of using a large/wide coil, it has an interesting magnetic circuit that has both poles and bar magnets on either side of the top to capture the sound/feel without partially canceling out some of the harmonics, which is what happens with many of the "wide" coil designs.

Good description. Sounds like a Jazzmaster only cleaner. No noise. Chime forever without being icepicky. Absolutely NOT a Gibson kind of sound... Sorry, no clips to share here either. If you like totally clean tones, you'll love it.

[honeycreek]

Any idea if the higher inductance versions are more into P-90 territory?

[revelation2012]

Originally Posted by Derek Kiernan

What instrument are you considering it for? What position?

Well I am not sure. I sold off most of my guitars a while back to simplify life. All I have now is one tele and a Sheraton. I had an SG with P90s but sold it off a while back. So I am uncertain at this point.

[revelation2012]

Originally Posted by Derek Kiernan

What instrument are you considering it for? What position?

But one thing I like is a clean sweet sounding neck pickup.

[revelation2012]

Found these but this is technically the L-610?

http://guitarsbyfender.yuku.com/topic/10085


http://www.soundclick.com/bands/defa...&content=music

[Derek Kiernan]

Originally Posted by honeycreek

Any idea if the higher inductance versions are more into P-90 territory?

The L-610 is going to be a little better at achieving that. Whether a higher inductance version sounds more like a P90 than the lower inductance versions is a little complicated. Many would say that at the same amp settings, the higher inductance versions do sound more like P90s. Having similar inductance puts the coloring resonance (from the interaction between the inductance and cable capacitance) in similar areas, which is a large part of how pickups "sound" (you can achieve the same colorations with lower inductance pickups). However, P90s have a bunch of eddy currents that are introduced because of the design and materials used, which make the sound harsher or muddier. Many conventional P90s don't have real highend to speak of.

With similar designs, higher inductance generally reduces the highs, but it's far from the only relevant variable for how well the pickups deliver highs to the amp (such as with the example above). Many people think higher inductance pickups are the way to go to achieve higher output, but in truth, you need considerably more than twice the inductance to get twice the voltage output, which of course varies with frequency and would ruin the tone entirely if you started from a moderate inductance example. It's not difficult to use lower inductance pickups (such as the 1.6H or 2.4H options available here) and add coloration a 6H or 8H pickup would get with a specific cable by adding capacitors. You could put them on the tone control and then control both the amount of coloration and the level of highend above. Instead of boosting the tone stack with pickups that don't produce highs, you can turn it down and get a much fuller and balanced tonal response and avoid unpleasant accentuations of the upper midrange. With the lower inductance pickups, you may want to bump the bass control at the amp slightly to get comparable results to their higher inductance counterparts.

Unless you're looking strictly for the "classic" P90 tone and won't like anything else, it's fair to view them as a significant improvement no matter what inductance option you go for. It's worth noting that the early P90s were below 2H and were considerably better at delivering highs. The 1.6H option with the L609/L610 puts you about the same place and will give you the sweetest tone in the neck position. A good general tip is minimizing cable capacitance, but a 1.6H L609/L610 will be able to deliver sweet highs with pretty much any conventional cable.

[Tele-phone man]

I don't think they are making all the various inductances on these pickups available right now. I think they only have the 3.6N/4.8B option available right now. You can call and ask Becky to be sure, but that was the last I heard.

I would love to have a set of 609s or 610s in a semi-hollow guitar, like your Sheraton. I think it would sound fantastic.

[revelation2012]

Originally Posted by Tele-phone man

I would love to have a set of 609s or 610s in a semi-hollow guitar, like your Sheraton. I think it would sound fantastic.

I'd love to see/hear an example in a semi hollow guitar. 609 neck and 610 or 600 bridge?

[honeycreek]

Originally Posted by Tele-phone man

I don't think they are making all the various inductances on these pickups available right now. I think they only have the 3.6N/4.8B option available right now. You can call and ask Becky to be sure, but that was the last I heard.

I would love to have a set of 609s or 610s in a semi-hollow guitar, like your Sheraton. I think it would sound fantastic.

The web site lists them as available in the drop down menus as I have been looking at them for a little while now...

[Tele-phone man]

Yeah, but the note above says "available in the standard inductance 3.6H neck position and 4.8H bridge position." For a while last year the Custom series (L600, L609, L610) were unavailable altogether. They put a note at the top of the page to that effect, but kept all of the remainder of the page intact. Before they brought the line back, Becky had told me that they were streamlining it with fewer choices. I would call her to be certain if this is still the case.

[bigandtall]

Has anyone been able to try these yet?

[Tele-phone man]

I recently put a set of L609s in my Washburn HB35. I still haven't made up my mind yet. On the upside, they have great clarity, which I needed. On the downside, they have far less bass and overall output than I expected. They sound like a fat single-coil, but definitely not like a P90. Way less midrange and bass. I'm still not certain if they are staying in that guitar.

[honeycreek]

I put 610's (6.2H and 4.8H) in a Agile AS820 (semi-hollow body). A lot of output but I still end up rolling off the tone knob quite a bit in some cases (so plenty of highs for me...). I'm still a little on the fence with them. I like the neck pickup but then I liked the old neck humbucker sound also. I'm not sure what is bugging me about the bridge pickup but I still need to mess with height adjustments and pole pieces. They don't sound like humbuckers but they are a long way from from say a strat single coil. The high inductance values I got were a special order though so I'm not sure what the "normal" inductance pickups sound like.

[Derek Kiernan]

Tele-phone man, what amp are you using and how are you setting it?

[Tele-phone man]

I have several amps. My main gigging amps are a Yamaha G100112III, a Fender HR DeVille 410, and a Peavey C30. I use a Peavey Bandit 75 in the practice room. How do I set it? On all my amps I start out with the knobs straight up and adjust from there for the room. I usually don't have to tweak more than a little bit on either bass or treble to compensate and get a perfectly fine and balanced clean sound, which is all I ask of any of my amps.

All of my impressions are based on direct A/B comparisons with my other guitars, which are a Hamer Les Paul style w/ L90s (4H/6H), and my two Teles and Strat w/ L280s in each position. Compared to the latter guitars, the L609s sound a tad fatter with a similar output, maybe just slightly louder. In contrast, the Hamer sounds dramatically louder (even with the pickups MUCH lower in relation to the strings), and has substantially more bass. I bring the bass settings on the amp down for the Hamer and up for the Washburn.

This is probably just a case of me expecting something different than the L609s can deliver. I was expecting a fuller sound. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with them; they just aren't L600s or L90s or any other kind of side-by-side humbucker. I think I may have overshot my tonal target with these, which was something with better treble than the stock pickups, and slightly lower bass and output. The L609s have MUCH better treble, and WAY lower output and bass.

At one time I had a SD Jazz in the neck position of this guitar. It was just about perfect. I sold it separately when I decided to sell this guitar. When I couldn't sell the guitar without practically giving it away (and thus deciding to keep it), I bought the L609s because I was curious. I may go back to a set of SDs eventually.

[Derek Kiernan]

Are you setting the L609s with the nickel method?

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.


Typically, with the L45s/L280s/L609s (which I've only had the moderate inductance versions of, but no big difference), I tend to set the treble on Fender-style amps between 2-3 and turn up the mids between 7 and max. The L45/L280 might not surprise most people looking for a Fender tone with sparkle and highs, but the L609 might be quite surprising to someone expecting a P90. It's a far more versatile pickup, and it's not because the string is being magnetized by the pickup in a different way, but rather because the core material is not destroying the highs through eddy currents (which also happens in P90s because of the baseplate). The L610s have a little bit more in the lowend than the L609s, but it's not a very pronounced difference. I think you're right in finding the L90 to be "louder" at lower volumes.

When you get a "fatter" sound either through the introduction of eddy currents or higher inductance pickups, it's typically not because they have much stronger lows, but because the highs are rolled off. Mids up, treble down can help a lot to get a closer sound while still maintaining clarity and not becoming "muffled" or "muddy" as many P90 and PAF pickups are. With some pickups, capacitors may be a good option to color the sound and balance the highend, or lower value pots may be useful.




What inductances do you have? What pots are you using?

[Tele-phone man]

This reply is to Derek.

As I stated before, I started with the pickup height approximately at the "nickle" method, and then brought the pickups a bit closer to see if I could get any more output. I didn't get much, but they are now as close as I dare bring them.

I have the 3.6H/4.8H set, which is all they offer at this time. My guitar has a unique wiring scheme: the pickups go first to the selector switch; from there they go to the bass control. This is wired much like a volume control. Between the input and output lugs I have a 1nF cap. The "ground" lug of the pot goes to the Q-filter inductor. The other lead of the inductor goes through a 100k resistor to ground. When this control is all the way up, the cap is shorted out, and the signal "sees" approximately 600k ohms in series with the coil to ground. In other words, this controls represents very little load and thus very, very little effect. I have the same circuit in my Hamer. It is very effective at cutting bass for spanky rhythm sounds; so much so that I had to put the 100k resistor in series with the coil. Otherwise, it would thin the sound so dramatically at lower settings as to be unpleasant and unusable. This setup gives me a usable range throughout the entire rotation of the pot.

From the output of the bass control, the signal "sees" the tone controls and the volume control in parallel. In other words, the tap for the tone controls is taken from the input of the volume control, as opposed to the output lug (as in the Ted Greene scheme). I have two tone controls, selectable via a SPDT switch. The first is a standard tone control with a 250k ohm pot and a 22nF cap. The second tone control uses two smaller capacitors, 2.2nF and 1.2nF, each tied to ground off of one of the outside legs of a 500k linear taper pot. The wiper of the pot attaches to the SPDT switch. When this control is selected, you set the pot to the middle for full brightness. Moving the control to one extreme or the other brings in the respective caps. The treble is reduced and a peak in the upper midrange shows up. I've found this control to be very effective and unique. This was the best I could do simulating a varitone switch, since I cannot fit one of those switches in this guitar because all the controls have to go through the f-holes.

The volume control is a standard 500kA pot, but I do have a treble-bleed network of 470pF in SERIES with a 180k resistor. This gives me a very gentle treble bypass, and full range of the control (no "instant-on" at the lowest settings the way that parallel cap/resistor networks do).

Because the L609s don't have metal covers like the stock pickups, and because you cannot shield the control cavity of a 335 style guitar, I needed to add shielding to the pickup routes. I used copper tape over as much of the surface of the cavities as I could, as well as on the backside of the pickguard (which turned out to be absolutely necessary). In addition, I put aluminum tape over the copper behind the pickups. Now, we've gone around and around in this forum about the possibility of tonal impact of shielding, especially aluminum. I've NEVER heard of a loss of low-end due to proximity of shielding, just high-end. But just because I've never heard of it, or experienced it before, I will concede three points: I'm not a genius, I don't know everything, and just about ANYTHING is possible.

As for my amp settings, I'm using the settings that work with my other guitars. I'll make slight adjustments for different rooms, but I draw the line at having to make drastic adjustments to accommodate one particular guitar. And the settings you describe sound drastic to me. But that's just a matter of taste.

I appreciate that you want to help, and I recognize that you have a lot on the ball for such a young guy. But also please recognize that I've been doing this stuff for a LONG time, and I have a bit on the ball myself, so I'm not likely to make a mistake like setting up my pickups far away from my strings and expecting stout output.