cytania Posted September 12, 2011 Share Posted September 12, 2011 On most active basses when the battery goes that's it, nada, nowt, no signal. My Spear S2 has a life saving grace, a passive/active switch that means when the battery dies I can keep on playing. At the weekend I had the two 9v batteries die at soundcheck and replaced them with my spare set (brand new but they had been in the gig bag a few months). Second song of the set and the spare set fade. I switch up the gain and play on (thank god). Obviously the answer is to put fresh out the packet batteries in pre-gig but now I'm back home I notice how weedy the sound is with the practice amp. I guess I was lucky the SWR only needed a small gain tweak (my Spear is 18v). So do they use weaker pickups with active basses? Or is that the level I'd get with a passive P or J? Anyone experimented? Can you just make a passive pickup bass active by just adding a preamp? The other nagging doubt is the neutrik silent jack cable started interacting with the low batteries at soundcheck and I had to keep pushing it hard to keep things from cutting out. Anyone else had silent jack shenanigans that weren't the collar sticking leaving it on? Off to order an OBBM cable that I will treat nice and only bring out for gigs (no practice maltreatment for this one). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted September 12, 2011 Share Posted September 12, 2011 No difference between active or passive basses mate (you can get active pickups but thats another story) lob a pre amp in and its active Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cytania Posted September 12, 2011 Author Share Posted September 12, 2011 So, must be a quirk of the circuit then, I can't see spear spending money developing special weedy pickups for no reason, particularly as alot of the hardware is standard stock stuff, hmm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Jack Posted September 13, 2011 Share Posted September 13, 2011 If I come back to Basschat in another life, can I please be [b][i][color="#8B0000"]Silent Jack Weirdness[/color][/i][/b]? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Norris Posted September 15, 2011 Share Posted September 15, 2011 I have an old Aria which is active. It has an active/passive switch, but you still don't get any sound out of it once the batteries have died. Even if you bypass the active circuitry, the output is very thin and weedy. Nowadays, it's passive all the way for me... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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