(slap), yea i meant the rosewood not ashwood and scratch the thumbbolt guitar in general, (i still need to pick up one to get the idea) , but i was mainly refering to the pickups on the thumbbolt (my bad), for some reason i though they were simular to that of the the atk 1200, but in any case, you can see ibanez has taken an interest in merging up another style of pickups next to the d-humbucker pickups then slapping the name prestige to it and from what i can tell yea, it works.
ill try to explain why in theory it would brings a brighter/wider sound to my orange pgb1 and possibly that of the atk300.
Now what the atk pickup is customise to do (but dont take my word on it, just a hunch), is eliminate the (peck peck) sounds you would make from "attacking" the strings with your fingers, but in order to do that, it makes the pickup alot less sensitive to tone therefore sacrificing a wider tone , as to that of my warwick $$ buck, i had to attack the strings on the lower end because they were not customed to finger contact .
So having this pickup next door while the humbucker takes the beating and it works to my advantage (it's like adding a sonic maximizer to a peavy 5150, you just can tell the difference), plus sounds stands out much better when i go into slap/pop/pick rythm, the j-pickup doesnt get in the way like the humbucker would .
However in overdrive effect, it's not so welcoming, so i would keep the switch feature more direct toward the atk pickup if im in that mode.
just my style of play and the reason why its my prime, it's because this bass has more of a standout in sound vs the other 2 so hell yea, i would consider additions to the other 2, possibly a different pick-up of there own in time, but probably study further on different pickups 1st because your right about it making the black pgb1 more dense and warm, (and for me it's thats now a bad thing but to make any changes to your bass, you have a right to question and be careful on that decision) .
, idk if it would work for you, but if you own an atk already, and love it, im sure you wont be dissapointed.
Jeroen wrote:
Would adding a J pickup to your PGB add so much to the wide palette of tones you already get from your orange PGB and the ATK300? All three of them are made of ash, the only real difference I can think of is the rosewood fingerboard on the black PGB. So it might sound slightly more dense and warmer, but I don't see it come close to a Warwick Thumb-like tone. Don't forget that a major component to the Thumb's tone is that it doesn't so much have a neck pickup, but more like two bridge pickups.