Replacing Active Pickups with Passive ones

[paddy mcbride]

Hi

I made the silly assumption that when I selected passive bypass on my Streamer LX that it was a passive mode. However, after chewing through a couple of batteries over the course of a year or so and looking at a wiring schematic I now realise that the MEC pickups are active and that only the EQ is being bypassed.

When playing live I prefer to use my amp's EQ with only the volume being used on the bass so I would prefer passive pickups with an active EQ (for when I do need it)

Can someone please point me in the right direction for a good replacement to the active MECs? Is it worth looking at Barts? and could this be done with the existing EQ?

Thanks for your help.

Paddy

[mart]

If your MECs say "Dynamic Correction" on them, then they are passive - otherwise they are active.

You can swap them with any passives of the right size (I've just replaced the MECs on my Corvette with Wizard 64s), but you should change the preamp - passive pickups like to see a different impedance compared to active pickups. I guess you could wire passive pickups in without changing anything else, but the sound probably won't be as good as it could be.

[quote name='paddy mcbride' post='1032921' date='Nov 22 2010, 05:20 PM']Hi

I made the silly assumption that when I selected passive bypass on my Streamer LX that it was a passive mode. However, after chewing through a couple of batteries over the course of a year or so and looking at a wiring schematic I now realise that the MEC pickups are active and that only the EQ is being bypassed.

When playing live I prefer to use my amp's EQ with only the volume being used on the bass so I would prefer passive pickups with an active EQ (for when I do need it)

Can someone please point me in the right direction for a good replacement to the active MECs? Is it worth looking at Barts? and could this be done with the existing EQ?

Thanks for your help.

Paddy[/quote]

[icastle]

[quote name='paddy mcbride' post='1032921' date='Nov 22 2010, 05:20 PM']Hi

I made the silly assumption that when I selected passive bypass on my Streamer LX that it was a passive mode. However, after chewing through a couple of batteries over the course of a year or so and looking at a wiring schematic I now realise that the MEC pickups are active and that only the EQ is being bypassed.

When playing live I prefer to use my amp's EQ with only the volume being used on the bass so I would prefer passive pickups with an active EQ (for when I do need it)

Can someone please point me in the right direction for a good replacement to the active MECs? Is it worth looking at Barts? and could this be done with the existing EQ?

Thanks for your help.

Paddy[/quote]

I think I'd just leave the tone controls on the bass set to a flat response (so neither cutting or boosting the frequency range they control) if I wanted to do all the tone control on the amp.
As far as batteries are concerned, two batteries a year for a heavy user is probably just about right - I'm getting about 9 months use per battery.
Not wishing to teach you how to suck eggs, but as soon as you push a plug into the bass you start using batteries - so make sure you don't leave it plugged in for days.