Not to me it doesn’t sound similar. I find the lifeline to be more or less completely truncated above a certain frequency. The full circle is much clearer and more balanced on my bass.
I’ve now experimented with Underwood, realist copperhead, lifeline, and full circle. I’m very interested in the Yamahiko but I’ll wait until I’m no longer happy with the full circle, or it frizzes out.
Here’s my bumper sticker reactions:
Underwood- very forward upper mids, good for cutting through a dense mix but it doesn’t really sound like a double bass. A 10meg ohm input impedance is almost mandatory.
Lifeline: Nice dark sound with some smoothness on the G string. Very boomy bass and not good clarity for cutting through a mix. It’s easy to like the sound of this pick up when you put it on and play by yourself in a room, but with a drummer, at some volume…. Not for me. It took me many gigs to accept this.
Realist: In some ways even boomier and more problematic than the lifeline, but also a better attack. I needed lots of eq to make this pick up work at anything other than very low volumes.
Full circle: For me the best compromise between clarity and mid-range annoyance. For now I really like the sound of this pickup. Another plus IMO is that the acoustic sound of my bass is least affected by this pickup of the four I’ve used, as long as I don’t use that foam plug to keep the wire in place. If I remember, I slip it on for a gig where it doesn’t matter because I’m playing amplified, but for practicing with a bow, I leave it off. I haven’t had a problem with the wire rattling.
Of course, everyone’s bass is different, strings are different, tastes and priorities in sound are different!
