P Bass pickup cover

Seziertisch

What say the ye? Yay or nay to the hunk of chrome? 

Neilybob

Nay! 

Cream covers all the way! 

fretmeister

Nay. Looks ugly. Adds unnecessary weight. Gets in the way of moving the right hand for tone changes.

ICBM

It depends… I’ve got one on my Rickenbacker (it’s more part of the pickup and I don’t really like the look of it without), but not on my Aria fretless.

Simple difference - for playing with a pick, where you’re mostly muting with the left hand and can’t use the other strings to anchor your right fingers, the cover is an advantage as you can rest the edge of your hand on it. For fingerstyle, where you’re mostly anchoring and muting with the right-hand fingers, it’s unnecessary and in the way. So since I play the Rick with a pick and the Aria without, the answer is…

… whatever suits what you do with it.

guyinlyon

It was good enough for Jamerson, so it's good enough for me.

CarbonCopy

I chop and change between having the pickup cover on and off.

For quite a few years, I liked it on. I was playing in a blues band with drums, guitar and vocals and there were quite a lot of dynamics. With the cover on, I could anchor my thumb on it and really dig in playing fingerstyle. I'm not one to lightly tickle the strings, so it was quite useful for me and resting the thumb on the edge of the pickup wasn't enough of an anchor point for my playing (probably poor technique!). 

However, I played a rock gig at the weekend using a pick, so took it off as I didn't need it. 

I also think that when playing fingerstyle, some of the best balanced tones are when plucking over the pick up, which you can't do with the cover on. 

It's easy enough to take off and put back on, so I just do whichever I prefer at the time.