Stingray 5 pickup--early vs late design?

[jellymax]

any of you talkbassers ever do an A/B comparo of a stingray 5
pre 1992 vs post 92? please share your opinions on the
pickup & preamp.

apparently they went with the current design (that has a
dummy coil for noise cancelling the single coil mode) &
supposedly the preamp changed as well, around 1992.

mine is an early design i guess, since its about an '89 or '90 sr5

i have been thinking about a preamp change & i want to gather info about how good or bad the stock pickup is

[73jbass]

All the preamps are good in any MM bass. The early SR5's had alnico magnets,and then changed to Ceramic in the early 90's IIRC. And recently went back to Alnico in 2008 with the introduction of the Sterling 5.You can get better info over at the EBMM boards.Sterling himself chimes in quite a bit.