frontpage Posted by IndigoKnob7008 • Dec 16, 2024
Dec 16, 2024 9:41 PM
Item 1 of 3
Item 1 of 3
frontpage Posted by IndigoKnob7008 • Dec 16, 2024
Dec 16, 2024 9:41 PM
Wilde Electric Guitar & Bass Pickup Holiday Sets: L45S $138, L500 Black
& More + S&H$110
$158
30% offWilde Pickups
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Bill Lawrence designed both pickups and entire instruments for both Fender (SCN noiseless) and Gibson (the Ripper, Grabber, and G-3 basses, as well as a couple Les Paul variants). He also sold his own line of pickups, used by everyone from Dimebag Darrell to Nuno Bettencourt to Alex Lifeson. He taught a guy named Larry Dimarzio how to wind pickups, back in the day.
Bill has passed away, but the company is still run by his wife and daughter, who wind the pickups themselves on the machines Bill built.
Their pickups are an excellent deal at regular price. At 30% off they're a steal. Blade humbuckers hand-wound in America for $55 each? Noiseless Telecaster pickups for $42 each? You can pay that much for mass-produced Asian products.
I have no affiliation with Wilde. I'm just a customer who has bought a bunch of their pickups over the years and has always been happy with them. I'm happy to answer questions as best I can.
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Bill Lawrence designed both pickups and entire instruments for both Fender (SCN noiseless) and Gibson (the Ripper, Grabber, and G-3 basses, as well as a couple Les Paul variants). He also sold his own line of pickups, used by everyone from Dimebag Darrell to Nuno Bettencourt to Alex Lifeson. He taught a guy named Larry Dimarzio how to wind pickups, back in the day.
Bill has passed away, but the company is still run by his wife and daughter, who wind the pickups themselves on the machines Bill built.
Their pickups are an excellent deal at regular price. At 30% off they're a steal. Blade humbuckers hand-wound in America for $55 each? Noiseless Telecaster pickups for $42 each? You can pay that much for mass-produced Asian products.
I have no affiliation with Wilde. I'm just a customer who has bought a bunch of their pickups over the years and has always been happy with them. I'm happy to answer questions as best I can.
I'm undecided on getting the L-500 L/R set. I'm into the mid/high gain PAF style humbuckers, but I do like the Dimarzio Fred which has it's own thing going on. I also got a pair of L90 pickups I bought I believe last year's sale that I haven't even tried yet. I thinking those may be more my taste.
Bill Lawrence designed both pickups and entire instruments for both Fender (SCN noiseless) and Gibson (the Ripper, Grabber, and G-3 basses, as well as a couple Les Paul variants). He also sold his own line of pickups, used by everyone from Dimebag Darrell to Nuno Bettencourt to Alex Lifeson. He taught a guy named Larry Dimarzio how to wind pickups, back in the day.
Bill has passed away, but the company is still run by his wife and daughter, who wind the pickups themselves on the machines Bill built.
Their pickups are an excellent deal at regular price. At 30% off they're a steal. Blade humbuckers hand-wound in America for $55 each? Noiseless Telecaster pickups for $42 each? You can pay that much for mass-produced Asian products.
I have no affiliation with Wilde. I'm just a customer who has bought a bunch of their pickups over the years and has always been happy with them. I'm happy to answer questions as best I can.
I just got a Contemporary Jag HH and was looking to swap the pickups - the bridge pickup in particular sounds a bit muddy and lacks clarity. I saw the Wilde pickups before and was always curious about them. I play praise+worship on Sundays at church and so was leaning towards something with a bit more clarity but that can also be pushed with drive pedals and gain staging. It seems like the L90 4H/6H combo might work best for my needs. Do you have any other recommendations?
As far as wiring, the Jag is a bit different: there are two circuit switches on it... one that coil splits the existing humbuckers and another that switches between series/parallel. There's also a 3-way switch, vol knob and tone knob. I'm wondering if the L90s would just "drop-in" without me having to re-wire everything. Of course, it might be worth considering swapping out the knobs and 3-way. The circuit switches are PCB per my understanding...
I'm undecided on getting the L-500 L/R set. I'm into the mid/high gain PAF style humbuckers, but I do like the Dimarzio Fred which has it's own thing going on. I also got a pair of L90 pickups I bought I believe last year's sale that I haven't even tried yet. I thinking those may be more my taste.
They respond very well to series/parallel switching, as you can hear on the videos below, if you have the time and energy to wire that up.
I just got a Contemporary Jag HH and was looking to swap the pickups - the bridge pickup in particular sounds a bit muddy and lacks clarity. I saw the Wilde pickups before and was always curious about them. I play praise+worship on Sundays at church and so was leaning towards something with a bit more clarity but that can also be pushed with drive pedals and gain staging. It seems like the L90 4H/6H combo might work best for my needs. Do you have any other recommendations?
As far as wiring, the Jag is a bit different: there are two circuit switches on it... one that coil splits the existing humbuckers and another that switches between series/parallel. There's also a 3-way switch, vol knob and tone knob. I'm wondering if the L90s would just "drop-in" without me having to re-wire everything. Of course, it might be worth considering swapping out the knobs and 3-way. The circuit switches are PCB per my understanding...
Keep in mind that the BL wiring colors may be different than the Fender wiring colors! I recommend taking notes and pictures before you desolder the originals, so you know which wire needs to connect where. I also find it easier to leave a bit of the wire from the old pickups attached to the pots and switches. Then you can twist the wires of the new pickups onto the old wires to make sure you have them hooked up correctly before you solder them in place.
I agree that stock Squier pickups tend to be extremely hot and muddy. If you want more clarity, the L90 4/6H set should help. If you didn't have a series/parallel switch and coil split, I might ask for a lower-inductance set like 2H/4H, to get more high end. (Wilde sells the L90 anywhere from 2H to 8H. The others aren't on the Christmas page, but I bet if you contact them and ask nicely they'd give you the Christmas price on a 2H/4H set.)
Here's a clean tone demo of the 8H L90 in the bridge, with a series/parallel switch. Note that the parallel tone is similar to the 4H tone from the next video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O_bSEo
Here's a clean tone demo of 2H/4H L90s, which have less output and more high end than the 6H or 8H. These are both wired series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JlJfY4
Here's a clean tone demo of the 4H/8H L90 with coil split.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBHkaQy
This L500L video has a little bit of clean playing at the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RPBbrT
Here's a demo of the L-45 Stratocaster rail pickups. These are seriously underrated and sound great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta0GmXP
There are plenty more demos of the L500L and XL, but they're mostly with high-gain metal tone.
As you can hear, both parallel wiring and coil splitting get you less output and more high end clarity. This is true for all humbucking pickups.
Note that all Wilde pickups are sensitive to height adjustments, and moving them up or down will change tone as well as output. This is true for any pickup, but even more so for Wilde designs.
They respond very well to series/parallel switching, as you can hear on the videos below, if you have the time and energy to wire that up.
All BL humbucking pickups are 4-wire, so they should all drop into your Jag HH without any modifications, and the coil split + series/parallel will still work.
Keep in mind that the BL wiring colors may be different than the Fender wiring colors! I recommend taking notes and pictures before you desolder the originals, so you know which wire needs to connect where. I also find it easier to leave a bit of the wire from the old pickups attached to the pots and switches. Then you can twist the wires of the new pickups onto the old wires to make sure you have them hooked up correctly before you solder them in place.
I agree that stock Squier pickups tend to be extremely hot and muddy. If you want more clarity, the L90 4/6H set should help. If you didn't have a series/parallel switch and coil split, I might ask for a lower-inductance set like 2H/4H, to get more high end. (Wilde sells the L90 anywhere from 2H to 8H. The others aren't on the Christmas page, but I bet if you contact them and ask nicely they'd give you the Christmas price on a 2H/4H set.)
Here's a clean tone demo of the 8H L90 in the bridge, with a series/parallel switch. Note that the parallel tone is similar to the 4H tone from the next video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O_bSEo
Here's a clean tone demo of 2H/4H L90s, which have less output and more high end than the 6H or 8H. These are both wired series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JlJfY4
Here's a clean tone demo of the 4H/8H L90 with coil split.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBHkaQy
This L500L video has a little bit of clean playing at the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RPBbrT
Here's a demo of the L-45 Stratocaster rail pickups. These are seriously underrated and sound great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta0GmXP
There are plenty more demos of the L500L and XL, but they're mostly with high-gain metal tone.
As you can hear, both parallel wiring and coil splitting get you less output and more high end clarity. This is true for all humbucking pickups.
Note that all Wilde pickups are sensitive to height adjustments, and moving them up or down will change tone as well as output. This is true for any pickup, but even more so for Wilde designs.
So it sounds like the 4H//6H would probably work out best due to the series/parallel and coil-splitting options. I am still wondering if it's worth updating the 3-way and pots though - I *believe* the stock pots are 250k and I've heard going up to 500k can brighten the tone up a bit? Maybe I'll try the L90 4H/6Hs in 1:1 without touching any of the other electronics initially. I may still get some new pots and a switch though. I'm actually wondering if it would make sense to get a 5-way switch? Although I'm not really sure what I'd do with that haha. It seems like you could potentially open up a confusing array of tonal options on this guitar by adding push/pull pots as well. Again, not sure what I'd do with all the options. And it seems like it could unnecessarily complicate the wiring... as of now, I would be super uncomfortable when it comes to intermediate to advanced wiring. The most I've done to date is swapped out a broadtron for a BT filtertron on my cheap Gretsch and also swapped out a Nashville Strat set with Bootstrap pups (and also updated the pots and switch on it) but I didn't reconfigure any of the switching. It was enough of a challenge trying to upgrade all the switches and figuring out how to wire it up so that it stayed in the same configuration.
Only thing I can think of, if this is even possible, is to coil split only one of the pickups (rather than both at the same time) I guess I could a push pull for that? And then adding a 5-way switch would allow more variations/combinations between coil-split and non-coil-split pickups ?
So it sounds like the 4H//6H would probably work out best due to the series/parallel and coil-splitting options. I am still wondering if it's worth updating the 3-way and pots though - I *believe* the stock pots are 250k and I've heard going up to 500k can brighten the tone up a bit? Maybe I'll try the L90 4H/6Hs in 1:1 without touching any of the other electronics initially. I may still get some new pots and a switch though. I'm actually wondering if it would make sense to get a 5-way switch? Although I'm not really sure what I'd do with that haha. It seems like you could potentially open up a confusing array of tonal options on this guitar by adding push/pull pots as well. Again, not sure what I'd do with all the options. And it seems like it could unnecessarily complicate the wiring... as of now, I would be super uncomfortable when it comes to intermediate to advanced wiring. The most I've done to date is swapped out a broadtron for a BT filtertron on my cheap Gretsch and also swapped out a Nashville Strat set with Bootstrap pups (and also updated the pots and switch on it) but I didn't reconfigure any of the switching. It was enough of a challenge trying to upgrade all the switches and figuring out how to wire it up so that it stayed in the same configuration.
Only thing I can think of, if this is even possible, is to coil split only one of the pickups (rather than both at the same time) I guess I could a push pull for that? And then adding a 5-way switch would allow more variations/combinations between coil-split and non-coil-split pickups ?
If you still find the tone a bit muddy after the pickup swap (even in parallel or single coil mode), you could definitely go for 500K pots, or even 1 Meg. The easiest way to test that is to snip or desolder the wire going to the tone pot: this will leave 1 250K pot in the circuit, which will load it the same as two 500K pots, at the price of having no tone control. If you don't like the new sound you can reconnect the wire, if you do you can swap the pots.
I once did the Brian May thing with a Strat (added individual phase and on/off for each of 3 pickups) and honestly the only option I use is neck+bridge with no middle. All the out-of-phase options do is produce various flavors of scratchy. Maybe if I added individual pickup volume I could fine-tune the tone, but at that point I'm spending so much time fiddling with knobs on my guitar that I'd rather just use an EQ pedal to approximate whatever I'm going for and not have to worry about accidentally bumping a knob.
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If you still find the tone a bit muddy after the pickup swap (even in parallel or single coil mode), you could definitely go for 500K pots, or even 1 Meg. The easiest way to test that is to snip or desolder the wire going to the tone pot: this will leave 1 250K pot in the circuit, which will load it the same as two 500K pots, at the price of having no tone control. If you don't like the new sound you can reconnect the wire, if you do you can swap the pots.
I once did the Brian May thing with a Strat (added individual phase and on/off for each of 3 pickups) and honestly the only option I use is neck+bridge with no middle. All the out-of-phase options do is produce various flavors of scratchy. Maybe if I added individual pickup volume I could fine-tune the tone, but at that point I'm spending so much time fiddling with knobs on my guitar that I'd rather just use an EQ pedal to approximate whatever I'm going for and not have to worry about accidentally bumping a knob.
(Honestly, a lot of the differences between the million kinds of Duncans and Dimarzios and Fralins and whatever are minor, and can be compensated for with minor EQ changes.)
Bill Lawrence designed both pickups and entire instruments for both Fender (SCN noiseless) and Gibson (the Ripper, Grabber, and G-3 basses, as well as a couple Les Paul variants). He also sold his own line of pickups, used by everyone from Dimebag Darrell to Nuno Bettencourt to Alex Lifeson. He taught a guy named Larry Dimarzio how to wind pickups, back in the day.
Bill has passed away, but the company is still run by his wife and daughter, who wind the pickups themselves on the machines Bill built.
Their pickups are an excellent deal at regular price. At 30% off they're a steal. Blade humbuckers hand-wound in America for $55 each? Noiseless Telecaster pickups for $42 each? You can pay that much for mass-produced Asian products.
I have no affiliation with Wilde. I'm just a customer who has bought a bunch of their pickups over the years and has always been happy with them. I'm happy to answer questions as best I can.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
which of the humbucker sets would generally go best with downtuned metal? picked up a les paul clone and the craftsmanship is superb but the electronics are lacking.