i was just wondering.. since i was tw oseconds away from buying barts for my ibanez, but still would love to try villex, what do villex sound like?

more modern? or nice and passive. or a nice mix of both?

To my ear they are a mix of both. They are clear and produce a big bottom right up to a very high pitch top but they don't sound harsh.

I have humbuckers with double pole peices but there are other options.

i'd be getting a p/j combo. sounds like they are the perfect combination of emg meets bartolini.

hmm... do you run them with an eq, or full passive (as intended)?

Mine are run passive. They somtimes don't seem to be quite as high in output as my jazz single coils but maybe just because they have a different accent (less of the high mids that catch the ear). There is loads of bass though which might be because of the particular type that I have.

I am no great expert on pickups though and yuo shuoldn't make a judgment based on my word allone. But I don't think you will be dissapointed with Villex.

EDIT:

If you go here:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=34564944

You can hear some of my bass playing. I forgot to vary my pickup selection so both are full on for all the tunes which makes some of them sound a bit too big perhaps. Anyway, it should give you a reasonable idea of what they sound like. They are in a Yamaha TRB1 5 string which is a bolt on with a big neck pocket... made of ash, (I think). I told the producer to keep the compression down and he complied. Don't know if that is a good thing but it is how I like it.

There are also some clips here recorded into my crappy soundcard:

http://johnkeatesart.com/

Click on "music" at the bottom left. You will notice that I play very hard most of the time which often gives that "snap" sound.