I guess technically it's not a bad pickup, but yes, it's a different sound. For those who don't know, it's a dual-coil humbucker with four leads. I tried different wirings with an on/on/on toggle switch (no pickguards were harmed during these proceedings!): series/split/parallel. Series mode sounded pretty fat, but it lost a bit of clarity (as is to be expected.) Parallel was pretty bright and scooped (almost like a Music Man Stingray), but it was hard to make it sit in the mixes of my songs without extensive EQing (with stock RIC pickups I seldom had to use much EQ, the sound just magically sat in the mix.) Split was very clear, but pretty thin sounding, like an underwound stock pickup (indeed, each coil in the pickup measures about 4k ohms.)
Overall though, most of the Rick-ness of the tone remained (further reinforcing my belief that the woods and construction of an instrument affect tone more than pickups. Woods are the language and words, pickups are the accent.) but the stock bridge pickup has a lot more of the character and attitude I personally like.
But that's not all! Since the SD is a dual coil, basically two Strat-sized pickups bound together, I did a Jeff Rath and took one coil and wired it into the mute compartment. It fit perfectly, and I used the mute pad plate to hold it in place. The result? Definitely adds a different character. On its own it's too thin and twangy for my taste (maybe if it had more output it would be a little better), and mixed in with the stock bridge pickup, the overall tone voicing lost lower mids and gained upper mids and highs, pretty much what I expected running them in parallel. Still a little too thin though (again, maybe higher output would help), and not especially useful, so I took it out.
Bottom line: after recording and A-B-ing several different tracks comprising of different pickup combinations and settings in a couple of my songs to see how it all came together, I prefer the stock pickups.
Someday, I'd love to try out all the different pickups available for Rick basses (RIC's own plus the Bartolinis (the mute compartment pickup from Bartolini is still available by the way, bestbassgear.com can special order it) and share my findings. No Rick pickup shootout would be complete without a horseshoe though, and those seem to be rather hard to come by these days!(well, without buying a C64 bass that is)
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info out there on RIC replacement pickups, indeed, not many replacement pickups period, but I kinda think I know why: the stock ones sound so good already!
