The horror stories come from seasoned players with very particular tastes. Remember that the community here leans greatly toward the finicky, jaded, and highly critical side of everything. For every person who says they hate EMG's there will be another who says they absolutely LOVE them. It's that way with about everything here. Use talkbass as a resource and a guideline, but it's not always wise to use the comments and often rants of TB members as gospel.
The EMG HZ are FINE for anything you need to do with them... yes, there's always different or better. But the stock passive pickups can a lot sound wise.
The main thing is what you think of how each of the basses play.
(And this is from a guy who's main bass is a Schecter Studio 5. I played it for years as stock and later decided to gut it and put custom pickups, preamp, etc in it. Not because I had to, but because I could afford to and had spent enough time with the bass that I knew what I specifically wanted to achieve. I've owned many other basses and keep coming back to the Schecter simply because I love how it plays.)
changed pickup to DiMarzio and i got a very nice warm tone.
