Ibanez GSR 390 - Pickups

(Double post)

 

Without knowing for sure, I would guess that the pickups are passive and that it might have active electronics, like a bass boost knob. Do you know what kind of controls the bass has?

If you were to look at the Ibanez website and click "Support," you would find wiring diagrams, manuals, and parts lists for their basses. With a little research there it would be easy to find out for sure.
My experience is that most basses have passive pickups and some kind of active boost or something, which can make it confusing. So for example if you took out the active electronics and left a simple volume and tone setup, the pickups would still work, maybe with a slightly different sound. The majority of pickups are passive, with some exceptions like EMG's.

As for the knobs or pots, are they scratchy when you turn them? I would get some electronics cleaner from a place like Radio Shack or maybe even Walmart. If you take the control cover in back off and can get to the pots, spraying a little of that cleaner inside and turning them back and forth to work it in should help. People suggest different things to use but that cleaner has worked for me. If the knobs don't work well or are still noisy, you may have to replace them.

 

I am going through a similar situation - I bought a Seymour Duncan P bass pickup that probably sounds similar to the Fender, and I'm still looking for a J pickup to match. The issue with P/J basses is that the P pickup will almost always be louder or more powerful than the J, so most people tend to use the J pickup to "color" the tone of the P instead of trying to use it as its own sound. If you search around, there are probably lots of threads about this - I have a thread right now about looking for a matching Jazz pickup.

As for what would match? Depending on the sound that you're looking for, I would try to find either a Fender Jazz or something like it, or maybe something a little "hotter" or more powerful. Many people like to get a hum-cancelling or "noiseless" Jazz pickup so that you won't get the single coil "hum" when you use it. The idea of getting a hotter pickup is to try and find something that will better match the power of the P pickup, though again it's almost impossible to do.

I'm trying to get a matching Seymour Duncan J pickup, but who knows. I'll let you know if I figure anything out.

 

I'm sure that would work great, if you can find a bridge pickup. I've read mostly good reviews about the Fender Noiseless models.