bass pup upgrade; gsr200 std to bill lawrence p46 & j45L

 after finishing the rewire, i decided to test my factory pup values, & they were lower than the reported factory numbers (p_6k, j_4.5k vs p_8-10k, j_7-9k). as the last ditch effort to get rid of muddy underwater tone, i decided to just replace them, & put on new a500k minipots & a new 223j orange drop tone cap for good measure.

apparently theres like 3 fucking options on the planet for bass pup replacement, all practically the same & overpriced. i found this brand called Bill Lawrence, who advertise as having transparent tone, which would be ideal, for $150 for the set.

apparently they dont measure their pups by ohms  they use inductance, which im not able to measure, but for posterity, these were p_8k & j_24k.

the j pup didnt fit, straight away with the problems.

i had to shave off the ends with an orbital sander to fit. i very nearly obliterated the plastic housing off the end, but managed not to. 

theyre incrediby tall, & with the bend of the exiting wires (3/8") included, theres basically no adjustment at all. the pups are the height of the pup cavity, so the wires make it impossible to site flush in the cavity, & they end up about as high as id personally possibly want them by default.

i didnt use the crappy shorter silver flathead coarse thread screws that came with them. i used the original longer black philips fine thread screws. they didnt come with springs for adjustment, & theyre too tall for springs to work correctly anyway, since the pups bottom out early in adjustment.

i ended up putting together custom foam pads, which was a total pain & still wasnt as uniform as id like, but good enough.

they didnt come with foam either, & i couldnt use the factory foam since the bl pups are way taller.

they come with a fuck ton of wires, which i guess is to cover all bases (might be easier to just offer different configurations since theyre apparently made to order anyway).

the p has: 1st half; white (hot), black/blue (ground), red (connects to 2nd halfs'green). 2nd half; white (hot), black/blue (ground), green (connects to 1st halfs' red).

the j has: white (hot), black/blue (ground).

the bundle of wires had a hard time fitting through the routing hole to the pot cavity, so i had to connect the red/green in the pup cavity.

instead of connecting the grounds with a dozen solder joints to the pot cases, i soldered each pups' grounds to a single bus lead, then soldered that single lead to one of my new ring terminal ground lugs. perfect continuity all over.

the final result was a bit underwhelming, but i did notice an ouput boost. my tone pot still seems like a fucking placebo knob, but the volume knobs feel like they have a better handle on the tone control than before. i think i was just getting 80% neck with the factory pups all the time.