Alembic pickup question

[Denis]

My local guitar shop has an old Yamaha bass with Alembic active P-bass pups in it. Anyone know anything about those pups?

[Dave W]

IIRC Hieronymous does, and maybe Hornisse.

[chromium]

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).

[Hornisse]

Yeah, what he said!    

[jumbodbassman]

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 ...

[Denis]

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.

[chromium]

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.