Although Bill Lawrence is recently deceased, his pickups are still being made. His wife Becky runs the business end, and they're being made at the Lace pickup factory. He has always had a refreshing "no-B.S." approach to pickups.
There is a fake Bill Lawrence making pickups as "Bill Lawrence USA" - Musicians Friend, Guitar Center and others sell them - Lawrence has always sold direct, if you see one in a store, it's a "U.S.A." counterfeit. He got bamboozled out of his own name, somewhat similar to what happened to Leo Fender. The real Bill Lawrence taught George L, Larry DiMarzio, Kent Armstrong how to make pickups, he made the "real" L500XL which Seymour Duncan pilfered and sells as the "Dimebucker." He just didn't like spending time in courtrooms. He set up the Gibson Nashville plant and invented the wiring system that matched coils from different pickups in the Gibson L6S, he invented Fender's "noiseless" series with the little underwound coil underneath - kills the buzz but not the tone, idea since "borrowed" by the usual suspects. If you google around the Telecaster forums some (TDPRI.com) you'll run into his pickups over and over. There's discussion of his various pickups on this forum too:
http://guitarsbyfender.yuku.com/forums/11/t/Bill-Lawrence-Wilde-Gate.html#.U1Xa-1eKCic
http://www.wildepickups.com/Wilde_Bill_s_NF_Singles.html
I use his twin blades mostly, both "Strat" and "tele" sized and the Big Kahuna, the L500's.
http://www.wildepickups.com/Wilde_Bill_s_Twin_Blades.html
The information needed to make really great pickups has been available for a good 20 years now, and there's a huge number of makers. It's hard to beat the Lawrences, but the (Asian) GFS pickups are also real good and really inexpensive. Lindy Fralin makes a great Tele/Strat pickups, on this forum "Troubled Tele" has been knocking 'em over:
http://www.roadhousepickups.com/RH_Special_Tele.html
But DiMarzio, Duncan, heck, Fender all make great pickups, you can't really get more perfect than... perfect. I just figure, if you're going to buy a "stacked" pickup with the little hum killer coil in there, you might as well get it from the company that invented them, instead of DiMarzio, Duncan, GFS and all the other imitations. If you know anything about electronics, things like "scatterwound" and "vintage wire varnish" and secret "mojo" have no place in a discussion about how to make a component work right. Paul Reed Smith found a spool of wire in a Russian factory! Seymour will wind you a pickup with silver for $400! Down the rabbit hole we go....
