emg or bartolini p'ups

[wrinkleygit]

Hello,my old sei headless still has it's origional bartolini pre amp, but at some point the orig bart "jazz" style pickups have been swapped for emg's, often wondered what the bass sounded like with the origional preamp & pickup combination, anyone out there swapped barts & emg's like to make any comments, thanks, mike b.

(emg's are unpowered/passive type )

[Dood]

It's very hard to describe tone! But i've had plenty of basses with EMGs and a couple with Barts in as well. Really it's going to be impossible to answer for sure in your case.

I know of one Sei owner who did the same as your situation. He (and his guitarist) both said that for recording the Bart J's sounded awesome but for live the replacement EMG DC pickups just had so much more presence in the mix. I have to say that my own experience was the same and have been using the DCs in my basses for a long while. i guess it depends on the kind of music you are playing and tonal set up. This is by no means belittling Bart' pickups.

[JTUK]

A silly or useless generalisation from me would be that I'd expect the Barts to more subtle and a sound you'd grow to really appreciate in certains sitautions..recording, being an obvious one, and the EMG's being more immediately in your face and aggressive and having their uses live.

Barts would be up there for me... but I don't think therre can be an defintive answer for your style until YOU power them up.

Typically..I never get why people want really pokey pickups at the expense of say, character in the sound.
If you want more poke, use the amp. Simplistic, admittedly, but a more powerful pickup isn't obviously a better sounding one, far from it, IME

[charic]

The pickups will possibly have even more effect on your tone than the amp though. They are effectively the sound source afterall.

I've been tempted to drop some emgs in the ACG but I'm unsure if I could get any to fit (and I'm not modding in any other way

[JTUK]

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1329296372' post='1540068']
The pickups will possibly have even more effect on your tone than the amp though. They are effectively the sound source afterall.
[/quote]

I agree they would... and I would rather have the character from the pickup and then turn up more..than have a more powerful pickup which, IME, can
blat the sound. More akin to turning up the bass boost on a pre...when you can have so much bass it is un-useable.
For this reason I like single coils.

Too hot a pickup does not equate to better sound..more often than not, just louder..!! and bassier..IMO.

[charic]

Strange, more powerful pickups in my experience tend to have a more defined edge. Maybe I've just been lucky?

[wrinkleygit]

Thank for the replies, had comments from people at the back of a room telling me how clear/well defined the sound of my bass comes accross, wouldn't describe the emg's as aggressive sounding although I did turn down the preamp gain a touch when I first got hold of the bass, Certainly I am happy with the pickup/preamp combination that I have but I suppose its only human nature to wonder how the origional setup sounded, perhaps one day a pair of bart 5 string jazzers will apear for sale & I may be tempted to give 'em a go. mike b.

Edited February 16, 2012 by wrinkleygit

[Conan]

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1329204339' post='1538593']Typically..I never get why people want really pokey pickups at the expense of say, character in the sound.
If you want more poke, use the amp. Simplistic, admittedly, but a more powerful pickup isn't obviously a better sounding one, far from it, IME
[/quote]

Wise words! Sometimes though, character and power come together...