Hum or single?

[micgtr71]

Hello. I have a Mike Dirnt p bass that I had converted to fretless and I changed the pickup to a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound and upgraded the pots/jack.

I want to put a jazz pickup in the bridge but I am not sure if I should go single coil or humbucker. Please weigh in with your experiences with each. Thank you.

Also, there are flats on the bass.

 

[JimmyM]

Humbucker for me. Not a big fan of single coil noise, and while you can wire two J single coils to buck hum when both are at the same level, you don't get that option with the PJ setup.

 

[Sparkdog]

What Jimmy said...plus there's the option of adding a high output humbucking J at the bridge that actually has a chance of approaching the output level of that P pickup. Most P/J configs I've tried (and I've tried many) are not all that useful in live gig situations because the bridge pup always sounds weak compared to the neck pup and you can never balance them.

Drop a hot J pickup in there, or a preamp, and you get a lot of really usable tone options.

 

[micgtr71]

Thanks guys. I did not consider that the p and j would not cancel the hum. I am definitely going to drop a split coil j pickup in there.

Thank you for the info on the balance. Never having owned a pj setup I was not aware of the volume difference though it makes perfect sense to me now.

I will post pics when I am done.