Mick The Hat

The very first brand new bass I ever bought was a sunburst shortscale 'Top Twenty' from Woolworths for £27.00! The single pup was (unsurprisingly) so rubbish that I ripped it out and replaced it with a cheap six-string guitar pup I had lying around. Believe it or not, I actually gigged with this bass for over a year with no adverse comment! My actual first bass was custom-built (by me) Brian May-style from a rectangular lump of old mahogany fire surround, to which I attached the neck purloined from a neighbour's Spanish guitar. The m/heads were 4 substantial nails, to which I attached my own branded hybrid flatwound/roundwound strings - i.e 4 lengths of bright green heavy gauge wool nicked from Mum's knitting basket! Needless to say, the action was a bit high and flabby, and the overall sound was not as similar to a Ricky as I would have hoped. But it was a start!

[quote name='thebassist' timestamp='1416822000' post='2613800'] I'm after some of these - AG 6J-HC - Apparently superb - expensive though [url="http://www.aguilaramp.com/products_pickups_AGJHC.htm"]http://www.aguilaram...ckups_AGJHC.htm[/url] [/quote] Hmmmmm. Approaching £200 smackers for replacement Jazz pups? Have just bought the Entwistle Jazzers for £40.00 plus postage, so I would be VERY interested indeed to find out from anyone here if the Aguilars are really 5 times better-sounding than the Entwistles, to justify the price differential.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1416780808' post='2613592'] This may interest you if you haven't seen it already... [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/235314-entwistle-bass-pickups/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/235314-entwistle-bass-pickups/[/url] [/quote] Thanks, Discreet. Really useful link. Have contacted Entwistle and may well give their pups a go.

I've got a '76 Reissue Jazz made in Japan in 1986. Other than a Gotoh bridge and the addition of an Audere active system, everything else is standard Fender for that model including, I believe, the pups. I've just acquired a set of Seymour Duncan Antiquity I pups, and I'm wondering if these would provide enough of an improvement over the originals to justify the change. I'm looking for a bit more 'twang' and 'growl', so any suggestions for a reasonably-priced upgrade would be welcome. Cheers!