Mixing pickup brands

Gear
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I’m thinking about swapping out the pickups on my Fender PJ. I’d kind of like to put a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder in the neck position but I’d like to put a humbucker in the neck position and I’m not that fond of their Apollo Jazz bass pup. Do any of you have experience mixing pickup brands? I’m thinking either an Aguilar or a Nordstrand for the neck but I’d like for the output to at least be close to the QP.
Thanks in advance for you insights.

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oooooh yes, a pretty wide experience with this ! my main guitar has a Seymour Duncan (bridge) and a Custom 77 (neck) , my Les Paul Special has a DiMarzio (bridge) and a Custom 77 (neck), my old Strat has a DiMarzio (bridge) and a Fender (middle) and a Rio Grande (neck) … and I’ve done this kind of mix a million times. at least.

you can mix as you want ! sometimes it will work better, it’s a trial and error process.

that said it’s better to use pickups with coherent output levels. also you should not mix passive and active pickups, unless you really know exactly what you’re doing.

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Thanks @terb! Great advice!
I already made sure the pickups I’m looking at are passive since they’ll be going in a passive bass. I would never have even thought of mixing the two. I bet that would be complicated.
Do you know of a way to find out if the output levels are close without trying them? The companies websites are pretty hit and miss on that kind of info. I’m guessing that part will come down to trial and error.

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sure it is. possible but complicated and that’s some kind of bastard setup, I’d advice to avoid this kind of thing.

about the output level, don’t worry too much, it’s not meant to be an exact match. the idea is more that, if you have a very vintage-style low output pickup, the other one should not be an ultra-hot overwound high output one. I’d say there could be 3 output level ranges (talking about passive pickups) : low (often what you’ll find on vintage replica pickups) , medium/average (often what you’ll find on modern all-around basses) , high (for a heavy rock/metal instrument). if you match those ranges, it’s enough.

You’ll always have the pickup height setting to adjust perfectly the levels.

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Thanks again @terb. I appreciate the advice. Now if I could just decide which ones to try first. :thinking:

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