It's no secret that I have little love or use for a bridge pickup to begin with, but a J in bridge is the least useful thing to me. I don't mind a P - some good sounds there if not anything very unique.
The problem I have is when somebody (re)designs a new model, and just cops out of the thinking process after figuring the body shape and drops P/J in there instead of exploring the numerous other options. Agree about the Jag bass with Chris; just a damn shame, nice affordable bass, sounds OK I guess but looks so wrong.
I get it, they think it will increase sales because it's what people know (and like a Honda Civic, there's the most alt drop in replacement options of any other bass pup). And with a certain segment of the market, this is true, not sure on the numbers there, but even from the (not entirely unrandom) sample here, it is apparent that people do want some diversity - especially those that already have a few basses, including a few P/Js.
I am actually surprised that more makers don't offer various pup options like stock P/J for the vanilla/no weird shit types, and whatever else they find to really compliment the bass as another. I get that they assume it means different tooling for different routing patterns, but it's not too hard to imagine a scheme where a single routing pattern would work - e.g. if you square out a P route, there ain't a bass pup available short of a mudbucker that won't fit in there. That slight loss of extra wood won't really affect anything, and it's all under the pickguard. It would really be the Honda Civic of basses; people love 'mod platforms' - if you price it right (top end of affordable ish). There's a number of places that this sort of idea could be extrapolated to but become a bit more risky propositions in terms of major makers worrying about their brand integrity as offering more bare bones models means there's no consistency in result because you don't know what a dude will do with it. I do think that there is a place in the market for some up-market (higher quality, and accordingly price) competition with those cheap Chinese DIY kits (something partially complete, like finished but pup/hardware-less bass that can be priced more affordably than their turn key equivalent), but that ain't likely.
