I just got my Bill Lawrence P-46 / J-45 set in the mail and installed them in my squier P bass special today... I had done copious research on talkbass and other places about doing such work, and i felt confident that i could do it well. Several things to learn from:
1) The J-45 is a bit too long for the Squier P Special... So i had to sand down the cavity a bit to fit it in. everything i read online said "do not do this yourself" but it was SO close to fitting--and really it's not visibly noticeable that i did anything now that the thing is back together other than a minor scratch on the bass next to the pickup...
2) The Bill Lawrence P pickups look much taller than the stock P pickups, so i took off the smaller piece of the 2-piece foam risers that go under the P pickups. I shoulda left them on, it could use some extra lift in the middle...
3) These pickups are made to work with either 4 or 5 string basses. as a result the P pickup is just a bit (like a millimeter or two) wider than the slot in the pickguard... so... i cracked the mirror pickguard trying to fit it over the new pickup...
oh well, a replacement won't be too expensive...
4) I know how to solder, and I can follow a wiring diagram, no problem. I tinned the wires nicely and was 100% certain that i got all the wires in the right place and there were no cold-soldered joints. the volume knobs work and the tone knob works. no buzz from any of the pickups. But it now has about half of the output of my other bass (a squire VM jazz). and the J pickup has almost nothing... VERY low output compared to the P. the knobs are also a little scratchy and somewhat microphonic (i can hear it through the speakers when i tap on the tone knob). i can tell that these pickups
want to have great tone... but i must have screwed up the wiring.
on the P pickup i connected the red and green wires together and electrical taped them as instructed by Mr. Lawrence's site. I connected the two blue wires from each P pickup together and e-taped them together as well (i saw that the original P pickups were connected like this). the white and black wires got connected to the volume pot in the same way as the original. on the J pickup i connected the white wire to the volume pot and twisted the black and blue together as instructed and soldered them to the back of the volume pot. other than the blue wire not existing on the original pickup, this is also exactly how it was wired before.
So it looks like my local guitar repair shop gets some work, and I may think twice about trying to do this sort of thing again, as i thought i did everything (other than cracking the pickguard) the right way and yet it does not sound good...
