Loudness, feedback, and a balanced sound: Part 2

I have been meaning to post an update to the original article for a while.  The constant buzz of a humbucking pickup, coupled with dirty power at bar after bar led me to rethink my amplification setup.  That, and when playing the upright slap style I had a tendency to hit the exposed poles on the pickup–not a good way to make friends with the sound engineer (spiking the input on the board to +12db, that is.)

So it was back to finding a pickup that worked.  I settled on the K&K BassMax pickup, it offers decent sound–not nearly as warm as the Realist–and sounds reasonably well Arco.  For low volume venues I will definitely be sticking with the Realist.  But when cranking the volume, the K&K BassMax was hard to beat.