fingerz

Aha, I thought the idea might have been to taper the neck top to bottom where it meets the body to keep the pocket the same, I misunderstood and thought it seemed a bit of a challenge!

Has anyone mentioned the bridge?! You will probably need to fit a narrower spaced bridge to stop your strings disappearing off the side of your fingerboard of your narrowed neck. You may wish to cut a new nut too to keep a familiar tapered feel, this might also be essential if you are shaving the neck all the way up to the headstock (assume you'd have to?).

It's worth noting different strings have different tension. You might want to try experimenting with something that has higher tension so you don't choke them out so easily.

It's a shame the truss rod is tricky to get to. I had a student with a Geddy jazz, neck profile felt identical to my trusty Mij 75 reissue. My neck is stable but the odd tweak is really easy as it has a bullet truss rod. Being able to tweak tension is important if you set up 'close to the edge' (!).

As far as I'm aware EMG are one of the only active pickups widely used on basses. Think of 'Active' as meaning 'powered'. EMG Pickups actually use power from a battery source to operate. They are very very quiet, and have their own sound.. The advantage of them is how quiet they are, and are favoured by players in high intensity environments where noise can cause a problem. Lots of the time people call a pickup 'Active' but it's not. It's usually a form of humbucker, which operates like a normal magnetic pickup, but due to the deign and resistance of the magnets, can have a lower output. Used passive they can be too quiet, and don't have that 'Traditional' tone expected from a passive bass. So they are usually married to a Preamp which is 'Active' so it will, A)Increase output and B)Give better tone shaping. It's about noise rejection, and tone shaping. It's rare to find Active pickups, but especially on bass, they will also have an active preamp, and take their power from that power source. More commonly its 'insert pick up type here' (not active), married to a pre amp onboard. My favourite sound though is always a really good sounding passive bass with a pair of single coils.. Hope that helps (sorry if it's clear as mud!)

Yeh sounds like your strings are 'choking' when you dig in. Check your neck relief too, if your neck is straight letting a touch of tension off the truss rod might make the world of difference. No major issue here at all, just set up.