Suitable Pickups for Fender Jazz Deluxe MIM (2006)

[rainforest]

Hello guys,
looking for help in finding replacement pickups suitable for my Fender Jazz Deluxe MIM (2006).
I don't like very much the stock Noiseless pickups inside it, but since I like very much the bass itself (a great piece of wood in my opinion) and I've got a great feeling with it (one of my first basses), I would like to change pickups to give it a best sound, closer to the passive jazz basses sound.

I've made many researches but never found which kind of pickups I can put inside it, hopefully without changing the preamp too.
I only know (and I also can be wrong about it ) that the current Noiseless are passive, so can I change them with other passive pickups?
Would the custom shop 60s would be a good choice?

Many thanks in advance for all your help.

 

[Nedmundo]

If you want a classic passive J-bass sound, you might also want to add a passive mode to the bass, ideally with a passive tone control. I think the new Deluxe Jazz has this, as do many other more recent active J-basses.

Those Custom Shop pickups will definitely deliver classic J-bass tone, but they will have single coil hum when their volumes aren't equal. If you want to stay noiseless and keep costs low, I'd recommend DiMarzio's Area J. They sound very close to traditional single coils, but are hum-canceling. If you don't mind spending more, there are several other options, like the spectacular Lindy Fralin Split-Jazz I've had in my Fender since 2005.

 

[dwizum]

I clicked into the thread to basically say that same exact thing. If you want it to sound like a passive Jazz bass, install a bypass so you can run it passive. Or, just remove the preamp. If it's still not exactly what you want, then you can go find replacement pickups to spend money on. But, a bypass can be very cheap and will give you a direct path to what you want, so it makes sense to start there rather than swapping pickups first.

And to answer your other question - you can use any pickups of the correct size in that bass, you don't need to get hung up on if the pickups themselves are active or passive. There aren't that many active J pickups out there anyways.

 

[rainforest]

Hello guys, firstly many thanks for the help!
Infact, the bypass itself should be a good solution to test how the bass sounds in passive and hear how's the sound, so I will give it a think.

So, about the pickups, can I put every kind of passive pickups inside it (of the correct size obviously) without thinking about impedance or other similar factors?

Do you think that, leaving the current preamp, the change of the pickups wouldn't do much difference?
Would the preamp address the sound to the same current sound?
I know it's a hard question that can be answered only with lots of testing, but what I mean is: would the preamp overcome any pickups I put in there or can I hope to make a big change in sound just by changing the pickups?

 

[dwizum]

You can certainly make a big change by changing just the pickups. You don't need to worry about matching any certain specs or characteristics, any Jazz pickups of the correct sizes will work fine with that preamp. And changing the pickups can make a big difference in tone, for sure.

But it all boils down to knowing what you want, and then figuring out the best way to get there. If you REALLY REALLY want a classic passive Jazz bass tone, then the most important change is going to be the passive bypass switch. Active basses just sound different, plain and simple - it's pretty hard to get a legitimate passive tone out of an active bass, no matter what you do with pickups or preamp.

 

[Nedmundo]

I agree with @dwizum, and will add that your current stacked noiseless pickups might have fairly low output when run passive. I suspect the preamp helps with that. Most pure single coils and split-coils like the DiMarzio Area J will probably have higher output than the stacks. That doesn't mean the stacks sound bad, but you might need to adjust your signal chain to compensate so you can assess their tone more accurately.