How to decide wich pickups for a custom bass?

[Andersson]

I need help to decide. Here is the deal...
Im having a custom bass built for me this winter. A personal bass with my design into it.

However, i cant decide what pickup style i want.
Initially i was thinking 2 x Jazzbass style pickups, but the more i read...
Single coil, dual coil - or a mix? What do you guys think/prefer?
Soapbars or not?

The style of music im playing is within punk, grunge, rock, hardrock...etc.

 

[Stonetown Lows]

I think P or MM style yields the greatest sonic and wiring flexibility and general thickness most folks seem to associate with good bass sound for most styles of music. Also, you can get humbucking pickups (when wired in parallel) to sound very much like single coils, minus all that hum, but it's really hard to get single coils give you the thickness of humbuckers. J pickups don't provide a lot of room for windings, and as taller pickups are naturally much brighter, so it takes a bit more doing to get that thickness. Although I know a lot of folks prefer P/J, simply because that arrangement allows you to balance thickness with articulation really well. P/J is my preference as well, and I play all styles of music.

 

[Snaxster]

I need help to decide. Here is the deal...
Im having a custom bass built for me this winter. A personal bass with my design into it.

However, i cant decide what pickup style i want.
Initially i was thinking 2 x Jazzbass style pickups, but the more i read...
Single coil, dual coil - or a mix? What do you guys think/prefer?
Soapbars or not?

The style of music im playing is within punk, grunge, rock, hardrock...etc.

Hello. I think that what we prefer is irrelevant to your custom instrument.

Probably if you neither know what type of pickups you require for your custom bass nor accept the builder's recommendation (if they offered one), then you are not really ready to have that custom bass built.

 

[Stonetown Lows]

Agreed Snaxster! Expanding on my little bass pickup discourse, though, I think you'll find that split humbuckers (i.e. only one of the humbucker coils sensing string movement, instead of two full coils sensing each string on a soapbar style) makes a big difference in the pickup's note "focus" because the window's "aperture" is a lot smaller. You can always take away (dial-out) definition, but you can't add it! But these are just overall space limitation considerations in general pickup design forms.

 

[sikamikanico]

but the more i read...

Stop reading then

No, seriously, if you think J pickups will work, that's a fine choice, a classic. Not the most common for the genres you listed, but it can be made to work just fine.

If you don't know what you want, then I'd say get a P pickup. P always works.

 

[ThunderFox]

With the style you want, I would agree with the P-Bass pickup at least. You could have that on its own, but the another pickup would give you tonal variety, so a P/J configuration would be my choice.

 

[Stonetown Lows]

Seriously, hard to go wrong with a P/J. That's why they're so popular.