If you have hum, you might look into the PJ or PJX which are active pickups, and with EMG that’s hum cancelling. GZR are passive and I don’t know about them and hum. I know EMG does a good job on their active stuff
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For a guy with 40 basses, that’s probably true! 
For a guy with 1 or 2, maybe versatility isn’t so bad?
Speaking of versatility, do you still have the Squier with the Simms pickups? I always thought they were so cool!
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They are also hum free. Had them too. They sound great, but the PX sounds better, like in: “fuller”…
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No hum on these
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It’s a Sterling MM. But yes.
By far the most versatile bass I own - and rarely use it. Lol
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Can you explain what you mean by “versatility” and “pure” sound?
For me, versatility means: as linear as possible with as much headroom, both for lower as for higher frequencies as possible.
In my opinion, with this definition, it’s better suitable for pedals and plugins, as you don’t have to EQ away its character, but you can EQ the tone easily to almost anything.
Also, it’s easy to increase/decrease frequencies, but you cannot really add them.
This is also the reason I like linear PA amps: with amp sims you can make the sound like anything.
To me that is not what I would consider versatility, that’s more genericity or (in extremis) blandness.
Versatility to me means to be able to produce many different tonal variations, but definitely does not imply linearity or flat response. There should still be character.
Very true. Or rather you can but it’s generally by distortion, which is not always what you want.
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But if something is a one trick pony (“Character”), it is per definition not flexible, right?
It might be a language thing…
Something can have character without being a one trick pony.
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But I can add distortion, not remove it! So, less distortion is more flexible, in my opinion.
Right!
But what I mean: if I have a pickup which is linear, has a wide frequencies range and lacks distortion, it’s flexible, as I can adapt it to almost anything (using pedals or plugins). That is what I would call “versatile”…
Maybe I’m confused, as I use this definition of “versatile”:
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Capable of doing many things competently.
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Having varied uses or serving many functions.
versatility - lots of pickups and knobs and switches of all kinds giving you many options of tonal qualities
pure tone - the heart of the tone of a bass
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This is actually a misconception as well. EQ is not the only characteristic of a sound. For example, you cannot add or remove saturation or distortion with EQ - those are characteristics of the fundamental waveform.
And you can’t have a bass that generates a perfectly flat frequency output anyway; the term for that is not “bass”, it’s “white noise” 
What you are actually looking at with the frequency spectrum of a plucked bass string is a fundamental tone centered on the frequency for the plucked note, which is then distorted and smeared across the frequency spectrum by many characteristics of the instrument - pickup, string, electronics, construction, woods, etc. That impurity and distortion is what gives a bass its tonal character.
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Now that’s a good explanation!
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I bought that $200 Squire PBass on sale last week. Not being the guy that could leave anything stock for long, I ordered Quarter Pounders the next day. Got them yesterday and installed. The Squire pickups just have magnets glued to the underside. Big difference in sound!
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Marketplace strikes again. Couldn’t pass up a 15" speaker for 75 bucks. I was expecting something similar in size to a Rumble 100. I was wrong. It’s tall, and I don’t understand how they made it this heavy.
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Good old 70s plywood and construction. Plus the manual indicates a “massive aluminum heatsink”, combined with a 15” sub, which are heavy themselves. I don’t think that “Source” one showing through is the factory sub, so who knows. I couldn’t really find anything on a very quick search. That amp seems to get good reviews, though, so you should have a fun time with it! Kinda jelly for $75.
From back then it’s also gonna be a class A/B amp with a nice big power transformer and caps.
But yeah probably mostly the plywood.
Supposed to have the Black Widow speaker that seems to be sought after. No experience with these myself and I don’t know how much the Source speaker changes the tone of this thing, but I’m honestly a little disappointed. Believe it or not, it lacks bottom end compared to my Rumble 40!
Found a manual online to help me make sense of the knobs. I’ll play it a little more in the coming weeks but I’ll probably end up unloading it pretty quickly. It sounds super clear and crisp, it’s just mid heavy. I hoped the big speaker would do some bass magic, but I gotta give Fender props on their little Rumble 40 with the “vintage” button. Little dude growls.
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