Pick-up Upgrade Suggestions?

[Progniss]

Recently I had been contemplating if I should purchase a new custom bass, or upgrade my old existing one. The bass in question, I have had since I was 13, so it has sentimental value for sure, being my first bass. It's a P-Bass Special / Squire; with the pair of stock P-Bass picks-ups and a Jazz-P to compliment. The sound is decent enough, but not fulfilling.

Honestly, I know very little about pick-ups. I stumbled upon this forum in trying to find out information about pick-ups. I've been perusing this site for a while, reading about various models of pick-ups, and decided I should ask for some in-put...

I know what kind of sound I want, I am just not sure what to use to get it!

I play a lot of styles of music, but the group I am currently in is a piano rock group with an underlaying focus on jazz.

I really want to get a warm creamy sound that is smooth and has power, where the highs can be separated from lows enough to where each can stand on their own. Right now my highs get lost in the full band sound, and I am mostly just mid and lows. While having my highs stand out, I don't want them to be bright and sparkly sounding. I am really not a fan of the punchy-metalic-ting of overly bright tone. Also, on the same side I don't want my lows to be extremely overpowering, but still powerful enough that you could feel it boom in your chest if you needed to push it there.

I have an AMPEG SVT-4 PRO amp head at the moment. I can only get so far with my EQ and the pick-ups this bass has.

If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate them!

Thanks!

[tbassist4]

I would suggest looking at a new bass. I recently dropped some Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounders in a old Yamaha bass. It helped the sound a lot - really, it was pretty drastic. However, all of the things that were lacking before were still there after the pickup change - just less pronounced. The bass has a weaker low end, and poorly defined highs. It's better now, but definitely lacking. People will tell you the pickups account for 95% of the sound - This is simply not true. If you're playing a five piece plywood body imported Squire, you'll notice a pretty big tonal improvement if you took the same pickups and put them in a nice two piece Alder/Ash American instrument. Your bass is probably great, but it can only go so far.

It sounds like you should be looking at a Jazz bass or a Stingray. I don't like an overly bright sound either, but that's what the tone knob is for. It's way better to have too much so you can roll it off with the knob, rather than not enough and have nowhere to go. Go to your local store and try a bunch out - if you've only had one bass, its hard to know exactly what kind of instrument will give you the sound you want. Spend a day at a store and go nuts.