The serious bass players worry about their fingers, not about what batteries are powering their EMGs. Put a decent bass player on any bass and he'll find his own tone, but drummers seem much much worse at gear arguments than others. Bass players argue about strings the most, but that's understandable seeing as their hands are directly on their centre of sound generation.
Incidentally, you can probably guess which side of the fence I'm on with bass preference. With that said, there's a lot of charm in active electronics AND I'm a modder. But you don't see bass players arguing over which strap acoustically enhances their sound - that's the sort of equivalent I'm talking about when it comes to this 'choking the head' nonsense.