Passive Jazz controls and pickup loading on musicman

[dub]

I bought a second hand Squier Jazz bass with passive electronics and I have settled on setting the controls with the neck pickup at max, the bridge pickup down a quarter turn, and the tone down a quarter turn (or a bit more if I want a really mellow tone).

What was interesting about this was that backing off the bridge pickup even a tiny bit really boosted the low end. I have been reading a bit about pickup impedance loading so I think I have an idea of what is going on, but this important bit is that I really like the overall tone with this setting.

My other bass is a musicman 5 string with a nordstrand MM5.4 quad coil and a John East MMSR pre. It got me wondering what would happen if I added a small resistor to the bridge side of the musicman pickup, would a similar low end boost be achieved?

[gjones]

In my experience, once you reduce the volume on the bridge pickup, even by a little bit, it then has no further impact on the overall tone. What you're then hearing is just the neck pickup soloed, which is naturally a bassier sound. The front pickup is usually a lot louder than the rear pickup, as well. This may be due to it's placement on the body.