OBL

While Bill was working with Gibson in the 80's, they used a substantial amount of his German-made OBL pickups on several of their Gibson models. When Bill left in 1989 to complete the R&D for a small program of noisefree pickups that could reproduce the tone of traditional single coil pickups, Gibson told Bill that they wanted to continue using the OBL pickups, so they made Bill a fair offer, both parties agreed on the price and they made a deal.

To his surprise, Gibson decided not to use Bill's original OBL designs but used the "OBL tradename" on a line of inexpensive Korean-made pickups. The Gibson OBL pickups on the Epiphone guitars are NOT designed by Bill Lawrence, and Gibson has no legal right to use his name in connection with these pickups.

See below the brochere for Bill's German OBL line of pickups plus some of the German-written advertisement:

Bill Lawrence OBL Pickups


 

 

 

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