Which fully Active P pickup sounds most "traditional"?
 

I want a traditional sounding P pickup that's fully active. What's my best option?

The better option would be to use a passive pickup and a transparent buffer. There aren't many active pickups on the market, and most are not voiced to sound traditional.

MEC are excellent at this game.

that would be the duncan lightnin' rods; they even have the exposed alnico magnets.

they sounded so "traditional" that it was a hard sell for my customers; "so it sounds just like a vintage-style passive pickup, but it costs more and i have to use a battery? why do i want that again?"

Do you educate them on the joys of low impedance outputs and constant input impedances on coils?

Lighnin' Rods! Yes, those are exactly what I want!

Ironically I also have both a set of MEC P/J pups and a Wald Electronics TPC1 buffer sitting on the shelf doing nothing.:D Decisions, decisions.


If it helps, this'll be going with a Mike Pope Flexcore, with an EMG Soapbar bridge pickup.

In that case, you might want to stick with EMG for the P pickup, too. Different brand active pickups might have different output impedances (one might be "more active" than another in a manner of speaking) and thus might not blend evenly.

EMG has an alnico-magnet P pickup that might be more like the classic passive.

At that point you are basically using the Victor Wooten setup. That is a PAX P pickup, and a JVX Bridge pickup with a Mike Pope Flexcore 4 band Preamp.

That is clip worthy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve37F3Ee9Ow

Yeah, copying the Victor Wooten setup is definitely not an accident, except that I've realized I really want to get a more traditional P tone when I want it. I'm using an EMG PAX right now with a John East BTB-01 http://www.bestbassgear.com/btb-01-preamp.htm and I'm not that happy with the setup.

I love it on stage through my stage rig (a pretty beefy setup of SWR & Eden cabs with an old SWR preamp and 2500 watt Crown power amp) but when PA support gets involved it doesn't seem to cut through as well.

These tracks are the PAX/BTB-01 setup, loaded into a Highway One with Gotoh 201 bridge.

http://archive.org/download/FMF2012-...e_Dynamite.mp3

http://archive.org/download/FMF2012-...Your_Heart.mp3

This one is from the same show, but I used a parts-P with older American Standard neck and traditional bent-steel Fender bridge, with an unknown pickup and P-Retro:

http://archive.org/download/FMF2012-...ggae_Woman.mp3

To me the tone in the second clip came out a lot nicer - maybe because the soundman was a bass player and knew how to set the more traditonal P in the mix? Seems like guys are taking a while to dial in the EMG setup.