Is J pickup noise normal on PJ bass?

[skycruiser]

I picked up my first electric bass in 20 years a couple weeks ago - Yamaha BB434 (passive PJ). I noticed the J pickup has some high frequency noise. I think the noise level scales up with the level for that pickup. It can pretty much be removed by turning down the tone on the bass or the high freq EQ knobs on the amp (Acoustic B100). It's not overbearing noise and not a serious problem now since I'm just practicing for now. The P pickup has no noise.

Is this normal or could it indicate a problem with the bass?

 

[Lesfunk]

Many PJ sets use a humcancelling J,so if yours is a single coil, yes, you will have the hum you would normally have with a std J set

 

[skycruiser]

Many PJ sets use a humcancelling J,so if yours is a single coil, yes, you will have the hum you would normally have with a std J set

Thanks. I don't know much about this but I thought the hum that referred to was AC power (60Hz) hum. Is higher frequency noise another type of hum that is removed by hum-canceling pickups? The upper 2 EQ points on my amp are 2kHz and 10kHz. I'd have to go fiddle with my amp again to see which of the two (or both) cut back the noise.

But the main thing for me now is to confirm that this is normal behavior for a J pickup. Sounds like that may be the case. Looking at the guitar spec, it is a single coil pickup.

 

[garp]

Yeah, that's pretty much what you get with a plain single-coil J pickup. At the BB434's price point, Yamaha didn't bother trying to defeat the nature of the beast. I have a BB415 – two generations earlier than the BB434 – which utilizes a blade-style single-coil J pickup. For some reason, the noise isn't quite as bad as other multiple pole-piece J pickups I've used, but the hum is definitely still there. I've learned to live with it.