I always thought KayCee was making a big deal out of nothing. I've been through a lot of SBs with J99As and I've always thought they were among the more quiet single coils I've played. I was the one that had the non reversed pickup, once I swapped it out (on Carvin's dime) it was fine. Also my current bass came with a shoddy volume pot, once replaced (on Carvin's dime) it was fine and the bass is dead quiet. I do pickup solo'ed recordings right here at home, six inches away from three computer monitors all the time and get zero hum with my J99A's. Literally just did one yesterday.
I don't know how many gigs I've been on with SB's in the last two years. Too many to recall, in several different venues and the sound guys almost always comment how clean a signal it sends to the house. (They usually think its the amp though
) I've also been in the studio several times with it as well and the engineers always go nuts. They come out of the booth and grill me about what kind of bass it because of how well it tracks straight into the board. There has only been two venues that I've noticed noise with my SB's (only when soloing pickups) and that was when my amp was on the same circuit as a neon light or sign. Being on that circuit was unavoidable unfortunately. And as Vic mentioned, I got around it by slightly favoring the pickup I wanted just enough to get the flavor and that almost eliminated the hum.
A side note, the Will Lee model Sadowskys I tried out last weekend were really noisy if you even came a hair off both pickups full. And that was in a music store. I've never had a couple of basses be so noisy in such a controlled environment before. And they were priced at $3000 new compared to my SB's $1100 new.
