Seymour Duncan Apollo Jazz Bass Pickup 5-string Set 67/70mm Reviews
Upgrade your J Bass with Seymour Duncan's Apollo Jazz Bass pickups. These pickups look like traditional single-coil J Bass pickups, but under the hood, they're hot-rodded to perfection. For starters, gigging bass players here at Sweetwater dig these Duncans, because although they look like single-coils, Apollo Jazz Bass pickups are linear humbuckers, so you can say goodbye to that pesky 60-cycle hum and other grounding noise. At the same time, they're absolutely loaded with fat, punchy tone, delivering the extra impact that's missing from many stock J Bass pickups.
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Highest Rated Reviews
WOW
I wasn't expecting this much life to come out of my 25 year old Fender Jazz V, but these pickups have transformed it into a different beast altogether. It now sounds like a Precision bass with some extra highs and these babies are completely noiseless. Love the scooped mods and tight definition. Seymour Duncan is officially my go-to pickup replacement brand.
And thanks to my salesperson Dan Robinson for getting this set out to me before the holidays. Dan is the best.
What a difference!
I just installed a set of these pickups in my Fender Jazz Bass V Deluxe Series. It is the original version of this bass with the pickups that have five magnet posts. I was never impressed with the sound or the string to string balance and rarely played it. In fact, I tried to sell it to a music store but they found that one of the pickups did not work so I brought it home and found that the problem was simply a bad solder connection. After repairing and playing it again I decided to try to upgrade it instead so I purchased these pickups and, after five minutes of playing it, I was so impressed with the change that I had to write a review. These pickups are nicely balanced string to string and will brighten-up the sound. The slaps and pops jump from the amp now. The low end is smooth and no "boominess". I highly recommend these pickups as an upgrade to the Fender Jazz V active bass. This will be my go to Smooth Jazz machine from now on!!!
Great JBass Tone Without Hum
I bought one of the new Fender Player Series 5-string Jazz Basses and while I loved the tone from it, I couldn't help but be annoyed by the typical single coil hum anytime both pickups weren't at full volume.
After lots of research to discover that not only are there not many noiseless options for 5-string Jazz Basses but also that most of them seem to change the tone too much to resemble that definitive tone I chose a Jazz Bass for.
These SD Apollo's are the closest I found. They sound phenomenal! All of the punch and definition of the originals with what I perceive as a little extra low midrange power, a little smoother top end, and much better string-to-string balance. Most importantly, they are dead quiet! I even added the series switching option to my bass when installing these and it just takes them to the next level.
I would definitely buy these again! Love the tone I'm getting with them so much that I'm now playing bass a lot more often than before (guitar is my main instrument).
Happy
The pickups is what i been looking for and more, may order a set for my 4string in the future
Brighter tone, no more hum
For reference, I installed these on my early-2000's MIM standard, running Elixir nickel roundwounds. Everything else in the soundpath on the bass was left stock as before.
With respect to the statements in Seymour Duncan's product video, I can't claim that the sound is "the same J bass tone, just no hum" - at least not with my J bass. (The hum is indeed completely gone, which is very good.) Primarily, these pickups are more sensitive and have a whole lot more high frequency response. The latter changes things dramatically: with the tone full open, you get every little clack, twang, pop, and squeak. (In my book, that's mostly good: I can always remove high end if I want, but can't add details if they're not there. However, creating the original tone would require much more EQ tweaking than I can get with just the tone knob.) Frankly, I now have to watch when I adjust the knobs with tone full-open, since I get a lot more microphonic behavior if they rattle or if I tap the plate. Overall, I can get a much livelier, grittier sound with these. Not necessarily bad, but pretty-dramatically different than what I had before with stock pickups.
There are only two things that I'm not 100% keen on, or at least will need to take a while to see if I get used to. First, my E string now sounds like it has a slight phase / chorus effect applied to it, mainly up to a second after the attack, particularly noticeable when played open. This seems to be limited to the neck pickup, not coming from the bridge. Second, the tone difference that one gets switching between bridge and neck is not nearly as pronounced as before: they're both fairly bright, with the bridge just being a bit brighter. (Adding both pickups full-on no longer gives a scooped tone either, but that is likely the nature of these beasts.)
I'll likely update this in a couple of months if my opinions change substantially with additional playing time - this will take a bit of getting used to. On balance, I'd say that the removal of hum definitely makes this bass more usable. However, the added coloration from these pickups IMO makes this bass a bit more "specific tone / specific purpose" than before.
