Active pickups passive, or passive pickups active????

[Lexii]

Sorry guys I'm sure the answer is on here, I've had a look but can't find exactly what I need.

I'm building a new pj bass and decided to go with active pickups but I'd like the option to switch to passive. But retain the same knobs ( basically like fender make them from factory)

Dining buy active pickups and switch them off to passive.

Or do I buy passive pickups of my choice then fit a preamp of some sort?

 

New to all this active fun so please bear with me.

Thanks 

 

 

[BassBunny]

I'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong but I don't think you can have Active pickups in a Passive mode. I had some active EMG's on a Jazz bass and they have an amplifier built into the pickups which needs a 9v supply to make them function. If you remove the 9v they don't work. My understanding is that this is how active pickups are built and function.

Passive pickups on the other hand are just that and rely on an onboard pre-amp to make the bass active. If it's a PJ you are building, an East P-Retro will do exactly what you are after. Active tone controls in the normal mode and when switched to passive mode it functions exactly like a set of passive controls. The P Retro is a single pickup beast as normal but i am pretty sure John makes twin pickup versions for Alan Crngean of ACG as his stuff is modular.

[itu]

I wrote about this few days ago but I try to give you another way of understanding the issue.

In your case I would use passive pickups for two reasons: you want active (preamp) and passive mode. This is not possible with true active pick ups like EMG.

So make a choice of your passive pickups, be it whatever (bartolini, Seymour Duncan, you name it). Then consider the preamp offering (from tone control, like Glockenklang to fully active front end like East). This has a lot to do with how the sound behaves. Let me clarify this.

1) "Active bass" may mean that your bass has a passive vol&pan or vol&vol (for a two pick up bass). On top of that you may have that "active" part that actually is just an active tone control. This way the active tone control can be bypassed with a simple switch and your "active" becomes passive. These passive controls (pots, that is) affect the sound by varying impedance load to the pickups. This changes especially the top end of the frequency response, so a volume acts like a tone, too.

2) Truly active bass has active buffers for both pick ups. This is the first step to a fully active front end, i.e. a mixer. This way the controls affect only that part of the setting that they are meant to be, so volume only affects volume. (My understanding is that this East has a passive mode, too.)

So to simplify this, you may buy an active mixer (and I think East is like one) or you can rely on simple switchable active tone control, depending on your need. This may also help you to understand the price difference on those two solutions: a fully functional Artec active tone control costs £20 and an East £200.

***

A food for thought: if you compare a tiny battery operated preamp to a studio console, you may get an idea of what is behind your sound. If you spare at the instrument end, you just can not fix it in the bass amp or studio mixer. A cheapo tone control (and EVERY SINGLE carbon track pot) can be left out if your usage is in the studio and the first thing you connect your instrument is a £200 000 mixer. Believe me or not - you can check the Anthony Jackson's Fodera that has a mic and the Neutrik. That's it.

[Manton Customs]

You can use EMGs/active pickups without an onboard preamp, so you could keep the standard vol/vol/tone controls of a PJ setup. But you can’t use the pickups without a battery as this powers the pickups themselves (which have an internal preamp). So you wouldn’t be able to do the active/passive thing.

The majority of ‘active basses’ have an active preamp with passive pickups.

[BigRedX]

Apart from optical systems such as those by Lightwave there are no true active pickups.

However some conventional magnetic pickups are specifically designed to have a low output (for supposed tonal or low noise performance) and must be used in conjunction with additional active circuitry, which for the sake of convenience is built-in the the pickup housing. These are sold as "active" pickups although there is nothing active about the pickup mechanism - just the additional pre-amp used to match the signal and impedance to standard instrument level.

So to answer the OP if you want to facility to be able to use your bass without any active circuitry you will need normal passive pickups and a separate active pre-amp that can be by-passed.

[itu]

EMGs have built in buffers in the low impedance pick ups, so I would consider them as active. High impedance passives are a different animal. But this is semantics.

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, itu said:

EMGs have built in buffers in the low impedance pick ups, so I would consider them as active. High impedance passives are a different animal. But this is semantics.

But the pickup mechanism itself isn't active - that's still wire wrapped around a magnet. It just needs an active butter to match the impedance to make them work better with the impedance of the amplifier input.

[itu]

As they are tied together in the resin, I just happen to consider them as a complete system, not separable parts. My understanding is that EMG's (passive) coil has very few rounds of copper round it compared to a passive pick up.

Actually the lo-Z coil might work well with the amp but the buffer amplifies the low level signal quite a lot. A low impedance output is really easy to match with any input. Here the level is the main issue.

I have built an accelerator based bass pick up some 20 years ago. I would consider it active, too. Its frequency response starts from DC so far too low. I had to design an adjustable HPF to it to make it useful.

Edited February 4, 2019 by itu

[Guest Marcoelwray]

Use passive, and put a preamp.

Active pickups need a battery to work, which implies that if you have no more power, you have no more sound. @Manton Customs said the same.

I'm not quite conviced by that but on the Warwickforum, some people are totally fans of active pickups because they sound different. Maybe they are right, I don't really know.