PUPS and Amp help

[skhatru]

Hi,

Found myself a new band that gigs and records after many years of recording. Loving it, but, couple of minor issues, and thought I would seek some advice before delving into anything.

Own 2 Bass PODS. An original "bean"/"kidney" POD and an XT Live Pro. Basses I have are a Yamaha BB605 and a Spector Q5 Pro. Used the Yam and the bean POD for years and overall very happy, as I have a sound I like. Cn't quite re-create it with the XT Live, but none the less close. Spector is relatively new to me, so, not mucked around enough to form an opinion. So, the questions.

1. I was toying with the idea of replacing the stock pickups on the Yamaha. They "appear" on teh face of it to be standard J type pickups, and the controls are Volume, Pickup Balance, Bass, Treble, and switch on to get an active Mid-Sweep. Will it a)be possible to just replace these pickups with new ones not Yamaha, and if so, which ones???? EMG? DiMarzio, Seymour Duncans?? I want a beefy powerful yet not overly bassy sound, but, I am an aggressive finger player, and too much treble or mid tends to accuntuate the clicking sound of string on finger. Personally I don't like too much of that, and hate using a pick, so any advice here would be most welcome.

2. Normally, I would just DI right into the house sound system, but, now need a monitoring system. Was thinking of a slave amp and a REALLY compact cab with a 15" and a tweeter capable of handling 250W say. Any ideas? I lie the Gallien Kreuger amp model sound I have, and don't want to colour it, hence slave amp, but, all slaves I see nowadays are stereo and rack mountable. Could always get th 500W that would give me 250W through one speaker, and it is really for monitoring purposes only. Do not want to be lugging around ampeg or peavey or gallien kreuger rigs, hence the PODs.

Any help/advice here is really really welcome

Thanks folks

Dougie