please help me pick PJ pickups for active bass

"classic bass" bartolinis are good for the vintage tones with a little treble roll off, and good for slap tones with no treble cut. i have them in my bass, and also favor the more vintage tones. i think they're a nice balance between vintagey and new-school-enough. the treble knob on my bass (i have a bart 3-band NTMB preamp) is basically the vintage / new-school knob. i don't have a lot of experience with different preamps so will leave that to someone else.

 

EMG

 

Provided there are no issues size-wise with your new pickups fitting the existing routs, the easy answer would be an EMG PJ set, and use the appropriate BTC (three knob setup with volume, balancer, and stacked treble/bass) or BTS (four knob setup with separate bass and treble pots) preamp. Plug and play.

Past that, there are literally dozens of choices out there in pickups and preamps, it's up to you.

 

Just to add, don't feel obliged to go with the same brand or range of pickup. This is a Seymour Duncan QP with a 1980's German OBL (Bill Laurence - now Wilde) P601. They play very nicely together...

 

The SPB1 &SJB1 is a great set for active electronics. It is really vintage sounding, and with a preamp, can sound very modern with the EQ set right. As far as what preamp, you have to decide how many bands of EQ you want, and if the preamp you might like would fir inside the cavity.

 

If we're talking about the same bass, I could get every tone imaginable out of mine. The J was always a little noisy when favored/ soloed, but still. If you're unhappy with the sound, I'd try different strings first. I'm not trying to be "that guy" (I actually hate "that guy") but I would think long and hard before sinking cash into a cheap (but well made, sweet sounding, gig-worthy, and versatile) instrument.

Anyhoo, you came for pickup recs and I didn't give you any. Sorry.

 

SPB-1 is a classic. Don't know if I'd want to pair it with a single coil J pickup like the SJB-1, though. I am not a fan of single coil noise. An SJB-1 set on a Jazz is fine because you can wire them to be humbucking when both pickups are on full, but you can't do that with a split coil P pickup since they're humbuckers already.

Might want to also take a look at the EMG Geezer Butler PJ set. The P sounds very close to the SPB-1 but has this gentle little kick in the mids that I love, and the J is a humbucker and sounds pretty superb as well.

As for preamps, I know EMG makes a couple preamps for passive basses but I don't have much experience with them. Plenty of experience with their active preamps, though, and they kick ass, so you might want to check out their pres for passives since they'll wire up with EMG's quick connectors instead of soldering. But you can solder the Geezers onto any preamp that works with passive pickups, though you'll have to strip the ends off the quick connector cables to do it. Honestly, I don't think they need it, but I know some folks really like their preamps with passive pickups, so I won't tell you not to do it

 

A. Seymour Duncan SPB-1 and Seymour Duncan Apollo Jazz.
B. Dimarzio Area PJ set DP251.

Both sets have hum cancelling split J pickups.

I never used the Geezer Butler PJ set, but would consider them based on positive review here.