Too MP3 or not too MP3... (Keep it off my wav...)

This weeks freaky pickup is a set of Neo Jazz single coils made in the EMG size with European maple/Gabon ebony cap on top. These freaky hippie sandwich pickups are going into the MIMF bass project. This is a bass was designed by legendary arch top guitar maker Bill Moll. The project is being headed by master luthier Mark Swanson and being built by the members and staff of the Musical Instrument Makers Forum. When it's done it will be auctioned off to help pay the operating costs of the MIMF which has the reputation as the greatest and most important luthiers forum in the whole wide world.

Here you see one of them fitted into one of my test basses. I have had this bass since I was 13 and it has been through hell as you can see. I record a lot of my test MP3s on it these days. I resisted making MP3 demos of my pickups for a long time because it just didn't make sense to me. I mean, can you really get a good idea of what the pickup in this picture would sound like in your bass by listening to an MP3 of me playing it through my little Nemesis amp on my old test bass? What is I use on 1961 Premier tube bass amp? What about the compression rate of the MP3? What about the limits of those crappy speakers on your computer to reproduce the sound? Should I use my SansAmp? I just don't believe that the an MP3 or a pickup on a web site is a fare way of judging it's honest sound. But people have demanded I post some samples so I have. One guy wanted to know what the Neo Jazz would sound like in an extreme neck position like a Gibson EB so I recorded one. Never heard from him again. Did the MP3 scary him away? Should I have EQed in more high end?... more mids? I have also seem guys complaining at TalkBass.com that all the MP3 file you see on the web sites are all jazz and R&B stuff so I recorded a few rock lines being played with a pick through a Boss DS-1 to show that the NeoJazz pickups can grind with the best of them.

In the end I just put up a page of MP3 files and stared posting what ever sounds I felt like or were requested.