So I found a set of Alembic Activator pickups, but they were P-J. I've never actually owned a bass with that pickup combo, so I decided to go for it. As much as I love the growl of the P pickup by itself, I also like the depth and roundness of two pickups run together. I took the bass to
SF Guitarworks in San Francisco, just got it back yesterday:
I've only tried it out through my Cafe Walter headphone amp - I was freaking out at first, I thought there was something wrong with the controls - couldn't get zero volume! Couldn't figure out which was volume and which was blend. Finally realized - this is an older set when they still did volume/volume/filter. Whew! Sounds great now that I know what I'm doing. I'll try to do some recording at some point.
When I took it in for the work, the guy at the shop pointed out that there is something unusual about the string spacing:
The nut width on these is comparable to a "regular" P-Bass (i.e., wider than a Jazz), but the strings are way in from the edges of the neck. I visually compared it with other P-Basses and Jazz Basses, everything I looked at (on the Sweetwater website) looked more like I expect, with the strings closer to the edge of the neck. I like mine though - it's almost like a P neck with Jazz string spacing or something!