Pickup upgrade for Spector Legend 4

[grunge666]

I'm looking at alternative pickups and pre's that would give my my Legend 4 something towards the growl of say a EuroLX.

It currently has EMG HZ's and the TonePump Jr in it.

The general consensus seems to be EMG 35DC's with a BQS preamp (maybe with the 18v mod?) but, getting hold of that setup here in the UK is proving difficult or very VERY expensive!
If anyone has pointers, please let me know.

Has anyone got or tried Aguilar DCB 4's? Maybe pair those up with OBP 1,2 or 3? Any opinions on which?

Any help, suggestions or pointers gratefully received.

Cheers.

Edited June 14, 2016 by grunge666

[iiipopes]

EMG active soapbars are a direct drop in; all you need is to find a place to put the battery. Instead of a full-blown EQ setup, I have found it most versatile to have a master volume, active balance, EMG-EXB variable scoop, and an active tone knob. You can get them in a variety of tonalities:
[url="http://www.emgpickups.com/bass/extended-series.html"]http://www.emgpickup...ded-series.html[/url]

The DC was made to emulate a MusicMan pickup. In the MusicMan position, it does alright. To me, with its upper mid/low treble emphasis, it is hollow in the neck (P-bass) position, and too brittle from being too close to the bridge in the J-bridge position, which are roughly the positions the pickups are in on the Spectre Legend.

On my party bass, which has a similar setup, and which I was also going to use on a Legend I used to own briefly (until I got an offer I couldn't refuse), I have a CS in the neck position to get a really round, meaty tone, and a JX in the bridge position to get all the wonderful things that a J-bridge pickup does, in the extended version to get more highs to contrast the regular CS, hooked up to controls as described above.

If you do go the J or JX version of the soapbar in the bridge, make sure it is rotated correctly to get the active element in the proper J-bridge position. On my party bass, the routing was too close to the bridge, and I had to flip the pickup around to get the active coil just far enough from the bridge that it more emulated the placement of a J-bridge pickup, and the character of tone came back after being too thin beforehand.

Edited June 14, 2016 by iiipopes

[grunge666]

Thanks for replying, Will look into those options.
Much appreciated.

[ead]

Interesting thread. I'm thinking about upgrading the electronics in my NS-94 and was contemplating a 35PX and 35JX setup and a separate volume and tone for each pickup with the outputs being connected together at the jack socket.

Would this work as a set up or would I be best using the V/V/T arrangement and fitting a talent control in the empty hole?