My local guitar shop has an old Yamaha bass with Alembic active P-bass pups in it. Anyone know anything about those pups?
IIRC Hieronymous does, and maybe Hornisse.
Those are probably the Alembic Activators - they made/make them in various form factors (p, j, ric, soapies) for retrofit into other manufacturer's basses. The electronics that come with them have the preamp and low-pass filter similar to the Alembic basses (minus their "q"/resonance control, IIRC, which is used to accentuate midrange frequencies).
Yeah, what he said! ;)
what they both said.... I have those pups in a few basses. very bright sounding but pulling back on the tone can get you sound decent thump. Tone circuit will actually giv you a wah effect as you pan down. Not sure if you will like them or hate them. I personally think they are great aftermarket pups. very expensive. a new set will go for about 600...
i assume they look like these but just the p ...
Yes, that's them (minus the gold fill in the lettering). Harry's wants $199 for the bass... I'm considering taking the risk and pulling the Alembics out and selling them.
There was some discussion here about used pricing on Activators: http://bassoutpost.com/index.php?topic=3655.0. Looks like ~275-300 is maybe what you could expect to scrape off of that setup. Maybe more. What model Yamaha is it? That could be a sweet deal if the bass is worth the effort...
Also, I noticed on their site that the "q"/filter-resonance feature is optional on the Activators - so you might find them with that feature.