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Gibson tone from a single bass pup?

Thanks for all the detailed responses! Yes I have the tone on my basses all the way down. Only on a few of our songs do I actually go with like a “2” on the tone.

Btw, we also tune c-g-c-f and that westone is still too bright with the geezers and stock emg wiring.

Like I mentioned before, rolling off the tone won't really do much if you've used the GZR solderless kit with it's .022 uF tone cap. I think you might like the GZR pickup a lot more if you replace the tone cap with .047 uF, or maybe even .068 uF for an even darker/beefier tone. Replacing the tone cap in the GZR kits isn't easy though. Unless you're comfortable with soldering tiny surface mount components it's probably a better idea to replace everything (except the pickup itself) with traditional P-bass wiring.

But I also suspect you might like those Lollar Precision 90s even more. They won't sound like a Gibson but they definitely have a hint of T-bird "heft" in the low mids. Probably as close as you're ever gonna get to a Gibson'ish tone with a split coil in the P-bass "sweetspot".
 
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Btw, I'm assuming you want a bit of that massive, deep, lower mid "Gibson growl". If you simply want a darker sounding P-bass (when rolling off the tone) you can probably achieve this by replacing the tone cap with a higher value. Especially if you've used the solderless wiring kit with the Geezers. For some reason EMG has decided to use .022 uF tone caps with these kits. That's pretty useless for bass guitar IMO. The stock GZR kits are only suitable for players who don't roll off the tone much. The stock GZR is still quite bright with the tone control all the way down. Replace the tone cap with .047 uF (or higher) and the GZRs will start to behave the way a P-bass is supposed to. The stock wiring kit is totally useless IMO. Of course, replacing the tone cap isn't easy when EMG has used surface mount components on circuit boards instead of traditional wiring. It's probably faster/easier to just re-wire everything using standard components/wiring. I would use 250k audio/log pots and .068 uF tone cap with the GZR. A .047 uF tone cap would also be acceptable. The stock .022 tone cap is more suitable for humbucker equipped GUITARS and more or less useless for bass guitars IMO.[/QUOTE]

like this?Allparts CTS 250K ohm Solid Shaft Audio Taper Pot I couldn't find the .068 cap
JFC why are you trying to make a not-Gibson sound like a Gibson? Just get a Gibson and have exactly what you're looking for.
JFC, it’s like I said, I have a 1979 Gibson RD bass and I want to use a cool looking Japanese 70s bass as an emergency backup. And I don’t want to spend $2k for another gibson as a backup.