Pickups and external pre-amps

[xsrossiter]

Hi,

I am putting together my first bass (4 string) and wanted to hear what strategies others have tried to get a wide range of tones to experiment with.

From past posts the two routes I see are, (1) finding some combination of pickups, coil taps and switches in an active electronics set-up or (2) using two middle of the road pickups in a passive model with an additional external preamp to do the tone tweaking.

I like the idea of simplicity at the guitar level and wonder if it is asking too much of any set of pickups and onboard electronics to try and range between a Fender and Rickenbaker sound.

For an external pre-amp I am hoping something up to $300 would do be able to create enough tone variety to approximate the sound of players in the classic / prog genre (Tony Levin w/ Peter Gabriel, Jeffrey Hammond w/ Jethro Tull).

I actually have already bought the amplifier, the Carvin B1500, which has a simple set of six tone controls. My thinking is to get dedicated pieces that excel in their individual task rather than try and overload any component with too many expectations.

Thus my question, are pickup combos alone able provide a wide range of tones or is a passive set-up and external pre-amp more likely to create believable representations of classic / prog players. There has been a lot of pickup combination discussions but not so much on external pre-amps so any additional input in this area is appreciated.

With time I hope to build something from the ground up dedicated to the particular sound that works best for me, once I have found it.

Thanks for the help, Steve.