anyone heard of, or tried these? as far as bass is concerned anyways...

http://www.riograndepickups.com/

I know our own Ben Strange just dropped some Pitbulls into his Steinbergers, to great effect. Posted some sound clips of the Pitbulls vs. EMGs in the Basses forum.

Here:

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132650

Ohh those sound nice. Not as clear as the EMGs, but those EMGs sounded really clacky. Those Pitbulls have much more punch to them.

The Pitbulls are incredible. Great pickups. Much more full, punchy, and warmer than my previous EMGs. True, they don't quite have the upper end sizzle that the EMGs did, but I'm finding I don't miss that in the least.

I understand the Pitbulls sound just like their standard P pickup.

Well, from your recordings, the EMGs seemed to lack a lot of low end crunch, I'd say. The Rio Grandes sounded much deeper and warmer, fuller is a good word. Sounded pretty good.

I just did my first recording with them recently; check out the song in my signature. It's kind of metal-ish, but you can hear how the Pitbulls sounded when thrown up against a bunch of guitars, drums, keyboards, vocals, and samples from Tron.

I'd look into them, but I don't see any 5 string humbuckers that'll fit an EMG 40 shaped hole. :(