gibson HB-L HB-R pickups

[Dmoney]

yo!

anyone know much about these pups?
I originally had these with gold covers in my les paul custom.
they have the PCB style underside with the 4 core cable soldered to that, rather than coming out from the pickup.

was going to bosh them on ebay but i thought id ask what the deal was. I wasn't into them.

[Tellboy]

I had them on my 1989 Les Paul Standard. I believe Gibson only fitted them for 2-3 years and were designed for them by Bill Lawrence. If I remember the bridge/"L"ead pickup was around 14k DC - so reasonably high output. They have the word 'Original' stamped on the bottom of the pcb. They were OK but I replaced them with a calibrated set of Crawlers. As they were only produced for a limited time you may be lucky and get a good price if someone is looking specifically for this type of humbucker.

Here's my ebay listing pictures.

[gwEm]

Apparantly they break sometimes - Tim has them in for repair from time to time. He recommends Rebel Yells to replace them.

They are the precursor to 490R/498T. I had one in my V90 - it was "ok", tried a Rebel Yell replacement, but thought the Holy Diver was alot closer. Both pickups wasted the HB-L anyway!

[Tellboy]

Apparantly they break sometimes - Tim has them in for repair from time to time.

That doesn't surprise me as there's no metal baseplate and it is pretty easy to flex the pcb. Also lack of a metal baseplate presumbly affects the overall tone? Didn't like the idea of the leads being soldered direct onto the pcb (without going through a baseplate hole) as it is easy to accidentally break them off.

[Dmoney]

rebel yells where what i went for, after a set of emeralds.
emeralds were real nice, but i wanted some more power.

I found they squealed a bit. the wax potting on the emeralds and RY's has always held off those demons super well.
hence why i won't be going back!

ebay it is then!

[sgmypod]

I had them in my sg 89-90..think was bill lawrence and gibson alliance..sg sounded muddy, almost like a karaoke Sg..changed them for crawler set...now has a crawler neck and riff raff bridge.
The orig pickups were rewound and found out why they were noisy because one of the wires wasn't soldered originally..now sound great

[mikeluke]

You should get around £80 for the pair on eBay - they were fitted on Gibsons and also Orville By Gibsons from around 88 to 92 - some folks really like them, so you should get a few bids - others don't - I had some on my 89 Standard and also my 88 ObG SG - Standard now has Mules and the SG has a Riff Raff in the bridge and HB pup in the neck position.