Time to upgrade my Spector...

[Josh Pelican]

Please excuse me as this is a lengthy post!

I posted some similar questions in the Spector Club thread, but figured I should post it here for a chance of more/different opinions.

I have a Spector NS2000/Q4 that still has the stock preamp and pickups. The pickups are the EMG HZ. For a while I was thinking about going with the Aguilar and Nordstrand combo, but I've realized that the HZ pickups aren't THAT bad... I just feel like there's something lacking from the bass.

I would like to have a bit more growl and punch to it. I'm setting it up for BEAD and want some good bite to it.

I was thinking about just swapping the HZ out for some active EMGs, but then a thought occured: What about BQC control? I'll have all the same controls, but now I've got more mid control.

I could add the control, but another problem arises. The HZ have such hot output that it's hard to get a good overdriven/fuzz tone with them. I can't get anything too good out of the Catalinbread SFT I have. I can't get any delicious tube growl out of my Ampeg, either.

I might get an Aguilar AGRO soon and I'm told that works just fine with active electronics, where the Catalinbread seems to be better for passive. I haven't used many EMG pickups, so don't excuse me for being a noob here... but will the active pickups be as hot?

How much difference would I be looking at if I just add active EMGs? Would I be better off just adding the BQC control? Or should I just chuck in actives now and put the BQC system in later down the road?

Thanks for your time!

[darkstorm]

Yes upgrading the preamp to the BQC control would make for nice upgrade. It'll also give you selectable treble and mid freqs. Paired with the hZ emgs could be very nice. If your still wanting to change the sound some more after that, then switching to active emgs could be good route. Never had a problem getting great heavy overdrive sound with emg hz and other high output passive pups thru onboard preamp myself. In my experience and trys ampegs have never worked well with high output basses to my ears. Have you tried rolling off your bass guitars volume control by about a 1/4 turn? That might help.

[Josh Pelican]

Actually, I always have one of my volume knobs rolled off slightly because it gives a little more kick in volume. I haven't tried it with both volume controls.

In another thread, JPSbassist seemed to lean more towards changing the pickups to the DCs instead of the preamp. I'm really on the fence here. The DC seems like a good choice, but the mid frequencies are ideal.