| Which Pickup to get for Fender Deluxe V?
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I can't believe that I"m actually starting another one of those million "which pickup" threads, but fact is, I've gone in circles on this for YEARS now and I'm still not sure what to do.
Bottom line I've got a MIM Fender Deluxe V. Has "noiseless" pickups. Bass itself is stellar. A real player! Love the feel, love the Fender electronics (especially the mid control) Love it all.
EXCEPT the tone. Those stacked coil "noiseless" pickups leave a lot to be desired in my opinion. And one reason I'm scared is I"ve been here before. I had an Aria Pro II with single coils. Sounded great. Hummed like mad. So I got Carvin stacked coils for it. Hum gone. Tone gone too! Hated the tone. Then I got EMG active J's for it. VERY quiet pickups. But WAY too bright and "brittle" for my taste. Could just never tame that thing down. Sold the bass.
So here I am again. 5 string bass. Want single coils but don't want hum. Don't wan't nasty tone either of stacked coil mush or uber bright EMG. But that is not saying I'm against bright.
In listening to clips here on TB I've sort of formed the opinion that the pup I like the best would be the Norstrand N5JSE. Side by side coil jazz 5 string jazz. But these are some serious coin to just play around with. In fact all the aftermarket replacements are some serious coin so you can't just buy 4 or 5 brands and pick out the one you like best.
So my question is "which pickup"? Has anyone upgraded a MIM deluxe V? I do NOT want single coil hum, and yet I'd like to have as close to the purity of single coil tone as I can get. What have you used to do this?
Note that tonally I am a big fan of Bart soapbars and a number of my basses have them. But in the case of this Jazz bass I think I'd prefer the brighter "edge" of the norstrands over the mellow Bart tone.
Anybody have any comments? | 
