Bill Lawrence 1998 move to Bethlehem

In another article in Sept. 1998 Wili Stich aka Bill Lawrence gives details on his move to Bethleem in 1998. This is a bigger step and more ambitious plan for the future enlarging the premicies.

The company has an address in Bethleem in January 1998 already, as this fisrt contact page in web archive testifies.
Bill Lawrence Guitars company is still recorded as active at this address !

Here is nowadays streetview of this second location :

 Also a picture of "Pembroke Industrial Center" showing Wilde guitar headstock at the entrance :


This location changes in the webarchive between march and june 2000, the guitar activity also disappears from the site that focus on pickups only.

Bill Lawrence stay in Bethlehem until june 2003 .

Bill Lawrence Wilde 1997 facilities in Cooperfield.

Willi Stich aka Bill Lawrence made numerous attemps in guitar business. When he restarted business in 1996, one of his activities was guitar manufacturing, again aborted since then.

This Aug. 1997 interview  (archive) relates Willi Stich never ending hope and self assurance in his capacity to achieve great endeavour.

This location is the first registred in the webarchive of billlawrence.com in June 1997.

Funnily this factory address is still registred in Q/A in Seymour Duncan website .

Nowadays here is the streetview of the factory :

Super switch (Fender, Eyb)

Wiring options

The pickup switch on a guitar is basically a selector for connecting a pickup on the output jack.

A three way selector on a stratocaster engage either neck, mid or bridge pickup. Five way selectors introduced pickup combinations pairing pickups, usually mid pickup with neck and bridge. Fender introduced a reverse winding and polarity mid pickup to have a humbucking effect when pairing it.

Guitar with humbuckers integrate additional switch to split coil to recover single coil sound, giving in the end lots of different combination through many switches but houw many are really usable ?

A 5 way selector with two push pull allows 20 combinations, I wanted the finest sounding one only with simple access, super switch is the deal.

Five finest sound

Because finest sounding combination may no be those given by a standard selector, superswitch have been introduced to wire your own combinations on 5 positions.
I bought two different make of superswitch : Fender and Eyb. Fender design looks like rotary switches that exist with different range of poles and combination . Eyb looks like classical guitar switches ie based on a PCB. Eyb is thiner , Fender poles arrangement is more intuitive, both are quality products and cost almost the same 20 bucks.

My pickups

My neck pickup is the DiMarzio Virtual PAF neck DP196, it is the most versatile I ever used, its qualities splitted or combined with other pickups are surprisingly good.
The mid pickup is a Fender Tex Mex bridge, well balanced single and high output it pairs well with the virtual PAF.
The bridge pickup is the (in)famous Bill Lawrence L-500XL , USA flavour is dramaticaly bright and powerfull and stands no companion.

Virtual PAF arrangement

My combination uses the Virtual PAF at most because of its incredible possibilities.
5 - Virtual PAF. Classical wiring in this position, a great mid output humbucker soud with balanced low and highs in clean and lead channels. Great for soloing, arpeggios, rythm, can do anything.
4 - Virtual PAF split single coil screws. This is the hot coil of the humbucker,  nice single sound, brighter and lower output than the Fender in mid position, a butifully sounding option I would ´t miss. It Gets density in neck. Nice rythm and arpeggio thin sounding.
3 - Fender Tex Mex bridge. Thicker than usual Stratocater sigles, it reminds me the X1 of my Fender Lead II. It´s my second bridge pickup for more overdriven sound when L500 is definitively thrash bro. Louder clean also, a briter version of the Virtual PAF.
2 - Virtual PAF (parallel coils) in parallel with Fender Tex. Thin sounding with some out of phase sparkling, funky rythm but not as acid as usual out of phase strat sounds, the humbucker is still there but with parallel coils. Usual factory setup split coil of the humbucker.
1- Bill Lawrence USA L500 XL. The beast, alone, my thrash solution.

On my budget Cort Sterling I rather install the Eyb and I'm really satisfied of the overall choice. I also installed CTS pots for a quality sound chain.

I can advise those super switch for any guitarist having very good pickup and wanting to get the best sound of them, dit it.

Peavey serial #

I quote here one really interesting post from TDPRi forum about Peavey amps serial #, as I hava lot of love (LOL) for them. Thanks Larry.

Years ago, Roger Crimm of Peavey Customer Service posted to the Peavey forum about serial numbers that Peavey had used. In the decade of the '80s, serial numbers were made up of a 2 digit prefix and an 8 digit serial # following that. The prefix indicated the year of manufacture, followed by 8 digits in the rest of the serial number, which was the pattern.

The first digit of the prefix was a number, indicating what year in the decade the piece was manufactured. That was followed by a letter, which IIRC ("If I Recall Correctly," in case you were wondering) indicated the type of gear in question. And in the lower right hand corner there was a number and a letter corresponding to the year the prefix indicated.

So, for example, my Bandit 65's serial # is 4A-01900152, so my Bandit 65 was an amp manufactured in year 4 of the 1980s, i.e., 1984. And in the lower right hand corner of the nameplate is the designation 84C, which corresponds to the year indicated in the serial number.

IIRC, some time in the early 1990s, that serialization system changed. My Peavey Studio Pro 112 TransTube (1995 or 1996, I believe) has an 8 digit serial number without a prefix. But then again I have an old Peavey Envoy 110 teal stripe that is a 1990, and uses the serialization system of the 1980s.

The Solo Series Bandit 112 was manufactured after the Bandit 75, beginning in 1988, continuing to 1995. In my limited experience, a teal stripe such as yours would date from 1990 on. Your serial # 1A-05016114 still follows the system used throughout the 80s, and apparently into the early 90s. So that prefix indicates an amplifier manufactured in year 1 of the decade. Also, that number in the lower right hand corner, "91B," corresponds with a 1991 date.

__________________
Larry G

The soon to be famous musician/Cranks out Top 40 tunes in a bar/While his mind is somewhere on vacation/Far away from his voice and guitar
Bob Bennett

Following this review, my old Bandit 112 was a 1989 product !

Precision Bass PJ "American DeLuxe" upgrade

The inspiration

All started with an ad for a modded Squier, I knew I finally found the model of my future bass.
First thing was to determine the humbucker model and where to get one. This black Squier seems to have a Blacktop Precision humbucker.



The owner said in his ad he asked a pro for the modification. As a newbie bassist I didn't want to invest a lot but getting however a singular model, so I'd do it by myself, routing a bass body.

This article close to my quest showing how a Precision got a jazz bridge pickup showed me the way : A Fender MIM P-Bass Gets Upgraded




Mother of this design is the Fender American DeLuxe Precision Bass, having active electronics.

The works

My search for a pickup quicky drove to the Fender American DeLuxe Precision Humbucker: quality, easy to find and cheap (40$ !!!). Strangely, current Precision Blacktop pickup is just nowhere on the web whereas  the DeLuxe has lots of eBay offers, so I bought it. The simple way to install it in a cheap Squier Affinity Precision, is to get the PJ model that already has all material to implement the bridge pickup (volume on drilled pickguard, side mounted jack) to route in place.

 Then, making a routing pattern from the pickup. I used 10mmm plywood.



Position for the template is centered on the existing routing. Fix it with double sided tape, route and just replace the weak Jazz with its fat brother and then :

As for body building he it is :

before

after

Spirit of Angus

Black Ice World Tour - 9 June 2009 - Marseille - Stade Vélodrome

Some (hell's) angel sometimes passes through a mobile phone cam (Sony Ericson k530i).

One hour before I took the kind of poor pic I usually get, forget.

Let's Dance (David Bowie) - 1983

Probably most underrated Bowie's album.

Years ago it came during so called New wave era, a generic bag enclosing people like The Cure, Depeche Mode, U2, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, a renewed British pop wave that will give major "rock" band of the next decade.
Bowie is an ex-star of the 70's looking somehow old school in this new generation, and to get in contact he just makes a masterpiece. I've always been badly finger-pointed citing this album as my Bowie fav's.
I admit the main song Let's Dance is not a monument like Life on Mars or Space Oddity , but it's also not the best song of the album. Because there are no stuff song in it, just premiums.

The biggest is Ricochet, a heavy jazzy song with bass/percussions/horns slow but intense, love it.  
Criminal World follows, it's simple, so simple that the melodic line holds it entirely, a Bowie signature, the voice is deeply mixed as he sings nearly whispering. The bass line beats and rythm this apparently cool song which is more dramatic than it seems first.
Steevie Ray Vaughan is invited on a revisited version on motion track Cat People to build a real version of the song. The association result is impressive sending original Moroder's version in the Kindergarten of music. All SRV's here : rythm, melody, inspriration- the right note at the right moment, I would rather say, this one is the masterpiece of the album, too difficult to choose...

Okay, Iggy Pop's China Girl's is the song of the album as numerous covers of it attest, but the radio spamming has made it also an old tube. Just the Chinese intro is ridiculous as on Iggy's.
Modern Love made also a great tube, nice saxo chorus, it rocks and opens the album, just nice !  
Let's Dance eponym song is a total renewal fo Bowie, cutting with songwritting, it's radio-video pop tube of the New Wave. Amateurs don't like ? People love.

About the style of the album, Wikipedia when I wrote says rock/dance/post-disco, to sumarize, it's just New Wave