Which fully Active P pickup sounds most "traditional"?

The better option would be to use a passive pickup and a transparent buffer. There aren't many active pickups on the market, and most are not voiced to sound traditional.

 

MEC are excellent at this game.

 

that would be the duncan lightnin' rods; they even have the exposed alnico magnets.

they sounded so "traditional" that it was a hard sell for my customers; "so it sounds just like a vintage-style passive pickup, but it costs more and i have to use a battery? why do i want that again?"

 

Do you educate them on the joys of low impedance outputs and constant input impedances on coils?

 

In that case, you might want to stick with EMG for the P pickup, too. Different brand active pickups might have different output impedances (one might be "more active" than another in a manner of speaking) and thus might not blend evenly.

EMG has an alnico-magnet P pickup that might be more like the classic passive.

 

At that point you are basically using the Victor Wooten setup. That is a PAX P pickup, and a JVX Bridge pickup with a Mike Pope Flexcore 4 band Preamp.

That is clip worthy: