It is a nice bass, but I just changed the pickups to FD-3's (neodymium) with a P-Tone in the neck position. If I am not mistaken, the pickups that came with them at the time were alnico. The stock pickups sound good, but are low output (even with the preamp) and are more traditional sounding, whereas the neo pickups have more bite, especially with the P-Tone.