What pickups for these sounds?

[Angel]

I'm well on the way to finishing guitar build no 5, and I fancy tackling a bass next. I'me just wondering if anyone can help in terms of pickups as I don't actually know much about basses other than playing a few over the years. There are two kinds of sound that I like and I'm wondering what I would need to get them:

1) The Rickenbacker sound that Geddy Lee or Chris Squire used to get around the early days of Rush/Yes

2) an active type sound - like Mark King I guess.

Any suggestions for the kind of pickups/electronics would get me in the right ballpark?

 

 

[itu]

You want an active sound, you need an active preamp. Most of the preamps can be bypassed for no battery use. If you need a very versatile and functional unit, John East is a bit pricey (around £200) but studio quality. Of course you may just use an active tone shaping unit. Prices vary a lot, like £20 - £300.

You can mix lo-Z (or "active") or hi-Z (or "passive") pickups with preamps / tone capsules.

Pickups, there are lots of option but some basics:

- active pickups are made by MEC and EMG and they need batteries as the buffers are built in to the pickup cases

- single coil (so called Jazz) is bright and a bit thin

- humbucker (dual coil) has darker and a bit more powerful sound - a Precision and a Music Man pickup is similar

Depending on the pickup position (neck darker, bridge brighter) you can adjust the sound. If you use humbuckers with coil taps, you can have very many options from J-type single coil sounds to MM and P sounds. I have a bass that has two bartolini humbuckers with coil taps. Practical options are normal humbuckers and single coils. So called parallel humbucker has not so useful sound.