Bill Lawrence (guitar maker)
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Bill Lawrence (born Willi Lorenz Stich on March 24, 1931 in Wahn-Heide (near Cologne), Germany) is a recording musician and an electric guitar pickup designer/maker and guitar designer/maker[1] in the musical instrument industry, designing pickups and guitars for Fender, Gibson, Peavey and other companies from the 1950s to the present.
[edit] History
Lawrence started as a violin player but moved to guitar, playing jazz, after a teenage accident and in 1948, he made his first pickup; in the jazz bands he played, he needed to be heard over the horns and drums. For a few years, he played on American military bases in Europe by the stage name "Billy Lorento" and was endorsed by the German guitar company Framus, with a signature model. By the early '60s, his professional name had become "Bill Lawrence," he have moved to the US, and was designing pickups; by 1969 he was working with Dan Armstrong on the see-through guitars the latter was building for Ampeg. When Armstrong moved to England, Lawrence took over his shop in Greenwich Village.[2]
In the early 1970s, Lawrence was hired by Gibson. Their earliest collaboration was the L6-S (designed 1972, first issued 1973), and his next job was to design pickups for a new model, the Gibson Marauder.[2]
Lawrence currently manufactures pickups identical in design to his original 1970s-series pickups under the Wilde Pickups brand.[3] Due to a legal dispute with a former partner of his [4] he is currently prohibited from using the Bill Lawrence brand name for his pickups. The trademark is owned by Jzchak Wajcman,[5] who produces pickups using the same tooling as the aforementioned vintage models under the name "Bill Lawrence USA". It is a point of contention as to which of these constitutes an "authentic" Bill Lawrence pickup.
[edit] References
- ^ Carter, Walter (2007-09-01). The Gibson Electric Guitar Book: Seventy Years of Classic Guitars. Hal Leonard Corporation. pp. 84–. ISBN 9780879308957. http://books.google.com/books?id=p5f2rT3kUscC&pg=PA84. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
- ^ a b Wright, Michael (November 2009). "The Gibson Marauder M-1". Vintage Guitar: pp. 52, 114.
- ^ http://wildepickups.com
- ^ http://billlawrencereview.com/faq-some-frequently-asked-questions-about-bill-lawrence-electric-guitar-pickups
- ^ http://www.billlawrenceusa.com/
