Pickup switch

[IAmTheWalrus]

I made a rant thread recently and my last post made me think of something, but I figured it would be better to post it here

I play a Jet King and the pickups (both of which are some kind of soapbar, not sure what kind though) seem somewhat out of whack to me: the bridge pickup is really clear and tight but has absolutely no low end at all while the neck pickup has LOTS of low end but on a clarity scale of 1-10 it's about a 2. I can get a clear sound with low end by playing with them both but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I really like the sound of P style pickups, both when other people use them and from the P basses I've messed around with at stores, they were all really clear and had a nice low end to them

So my question is how difficult/reasonable/destructive to my bass would it be to replace soapbars with P style pickups? And if it's not going to be that big a deal to do that, then would you recommend putting in only one P style or making them both P styles?

[Crater]

Personally, I wouldn't do this. P-bass pickups are split and won't fit into your JetKing without having the top routed. And then you'd probably have to have a custom pickguard made to cover up the holes, because there's probably no way to rout out for a split pickup without there being extra space leftover where the soapbar used to be. If it's done properly, it will look OK but the 'upgrade' probably won't add to the resale value at all. If it's done poorly, it will look like crud and make your bass difficult to sell.

My suggestions: see if a EQ pedal can tweak the tone of your JetKing to your liking. Why not just use both pickups if you like the tone? Or just sell or trade your JetKing for a Squier P-bass if you're looking for a P-bass tone. They're perfectly fine basses and it's easy to upgrade the pickups and electronics if you want to.

[IAmTheWalrus]

I kinda figured it wouldn't be a good idea but thought it couldn't hurt to ask anyway. I don't plan on selling this bass though, at least for a long time. It's a good bass with the exception of the neck dive, but I've gotten used to it and have managed to cut that down quite a bit. It's probably gonna become a back up bass if/when I end up getting a new one

But both pickups at the same time isn't exactly what I'm looking for, it's as close as I can currently get but still different enough to my ears to warrant looking for other possibilities. I probably will end up getting a pedal and/or an actual P bass though