Active guitars

[Munurmunuh]

When I was 13, I bought a gently used Westone Thunder I-A guitar. Two humbuckers, a 3-way selector, three knobs and three switches. I'm going to have to look up what the switches did, but I'm pretty sure that the knobs were vol plus a 2-band EQ which in a bass would be totally unremarkable, but which on a guitar....I can't recall ever having seen another active guitar since.

So, simple question: just how short was the history of active guitars?

For what it's worth, the active EQ drove me nuts, so when I was 16 I attempted to rewire it bypassing the entire preamp.... Yeah, that went well. I still have the guitar. The previous owner had got the action so low, they had been able to grind down the frets. With 008 gauge strings on it, playing it was so so easy. 

[Cato]

Guitars with active electronics are still widely produced and are used extensively in various metal genres.

They generally don't have EQ these days but I'd bet that there's at least a couple of production  models out there that do.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Cato

[fretmeister]

Loads of EMG / Fishman Fluence / Seymour Duncan Actives loaded new guitars out there.

Just not many with more than a tone pot.

The benefit of the pickups is extremely low noise / hum, and low impedence to drive longer chains.

 

They really are everywhere.

[Munurmunuh]

I've looked up the specs for the knobs - I was wrong about them being like a standard 2 band EQ. I cant say I understand the terminology:

Switches: coil tap, phase, active circuit on/off

Knobs: master volume, passive tone, equalizer tone

[Munurmunuh]

1 minute ago, fretmeister said:

Loads of EMG / Fishman Fluence / Seymour Duncan Actives loaded new guitars out there.

Just not many with more than a tone pot.

The benefit of the pickups is extremely low noise / hum, and low impedence to drive longer chains.

 

They really are everywhere.

Feel free to spell this out for me - does this mean active pickups and no preamp?

I presume my Westone was the other way round

[Dood]

David Gilmour and Eric Clapton are just two names that spring to mind immediately when I think of guitarists who use some sort of preamplifier or active EQ shaping in their guitars. 

[pineweasel]

1 minute ago, Ricky Rioli said:

Knobs: master volume, passive tone, equalizer tone

Sounds like my Thunder 1A bass. Passive tone operates when the active circuit is off. "Equalizer tone" is the active tone control, treble boost one way, bass boost the other.

[Dad3353]

1 minute ago, Ricky Rioli said:

I've looked up the specs for the knobs - I was wrong about them being like a standard 2 band EQ. I cant say I understand the terminology:

Switches: coil tap, phase, active circuit on/off

Knobs: master volume, passive tone, equalizer tone

When in 'passive' mode, it's the passive tone that works. When switched to 'active', the equaliser tone takes over. What's the difference..? A passive tone can only cut frequencies; an active circuit can cut or boost.
'008' is very 'skinny' for most guitars; it may be more suitable to fit a '010' set of strings..? Just a thought... 

[Munurmunuh]

All I wanted was a bridge humbucker and a volume knob. And all the distortion.

 

[Dood]

2 minutes ago, Ricky Rioli said:

I've looked up the specs for the knobs - I was wrong about them being like a standard 2 band EQ. I cant say I understand the terminology:

Switches: coil tap, phase, active circuit on/off

Knobs: master volume, passive tone, equalizer tone

A coil tap switch divides the two "halves" of a humbucker so that just one half, or 'single coil' is outputted. 

A phase switch flips the pickup polarity, so that when it is combined with another pickup, the inherent cancellations and summing of frequencies creates a different sound. Brian May's Red Special guitar is certainly a great demonstration of a vast array of phase configurations.

Active on/off is essentially a bypass switch that takes any active electronics out of the signal path.

[Dood]

If anyone is interested, my columns in Bass Player Magazine over the last year have covered different pickup types and on-board electronics. 

[fretmeister]

2 minutes ago, Ricky Rioli said:

Feel free to spell this out for me - does this mean active pickups and no preamp?

I presume my Westone was the other way round

Yes and no!

Many active pickups have a preamp built into them. EMG coils for example actually produce a very low level sound and the internal preamp boosts it to a useful level. But that preamp is not really tone shapingl, it's just bringing the level up. There are no controls for the internal preamp.

Then you can add an external preamp / EQ system on top of that if you want.

 

EMG do have a couple of guitar active EQ systems and as said elsewhere - Dave Gilmore is quite a fan.

 

But then sometimes (usually on basses) a normal passive pickup is connected to a an active EQ / preamp. This can be done on guitars as well, it's just that the choices are fewer.

[fretmeister]

THE EMG FAQ is quite good - under General

 

https://www.emgpickups.com/emg-faq

 

 

[Munurmunuh]

Thank you, I'm beginning to build up a picture of its capabilities now.

Since the neck is such a dream* I would love to get this in the hands of a someone who would actually play it, and am trying to decide if restoring the electronics would be worthwhile. I'm hoping the circuit board is still in it. Though given the stupid ideas I had in my midteens, heaven knows. iirc I had a plan for replacing the preamp with a distortion unit.....

*despite its many many years of sitting in its box, playing it now feels exactly as it did back then

Edited May 12, 2021 by Ricky Rioli

[Munurmunuh]

11 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

008' is very 'skinny' for most guitars

When I was 13-15, very skinny, easy to bend strings were exactly what I wanted, they were right then.

Now I'm wondering if the coil taps and phase switch would benefit from having a richer tone coming from the strings.

[Dad3353]

1 minute ago, Ricky Rioli said:

When I was 13-15, very skinny, easy to bend strings were exactly what I wanted, they were right then.

Now I'm wondering if the coil taps and phase switch would benefit from having a richer tone coming from the strings.

I, too, was young, once (hard to believe now, of course  ...). I had a Burns Bison, and fitted it with 007 strings. These are like cobwebs, and the thing was basically unplayable. I saw the light, though, and switched to drums..! 
All my guitars (I now have several; some people never learn...) are now strung with 010. I used to use Fender Bullets, but they rust too quickly under my fingers, and I now use Elixir coated strings, which suit me just fine.  The tone will change, but it's more about playability, staying in tune, and breaking less often. Bending won't be a problem; your fingers will quickly adjust to 010's, I'm sure.

[PaulThePlug]

9 - 42... and a wound 16 / 3rd. Bit more meat n feel n full sounding... 

Plain 16 always felt to thick for a single wire... and thin sounding.

Something i read in Guitarist Magazine in thexearly years, By Huw Lloyd Langton... Langton's Lead Lines...

For a quid or so give it a go... specially for distortion and sustain...

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 14, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Dad3353]

These, from Elixir ...

[itu]

You want to understand the circuitry, it is easiest to start from the signal chain:

pickup(s) - blend (or vol) - vol - tone - output

Any part before the output can be battery powered (low impedance, lo-Z, active) or not (high impedance, hi-Z, passive). If any of the parts is battery powered, the output will be lo-Z.

Low impedance output is interfering less with the following cable from the instrument to the amp input.

If you buy an instrument with battery (or in some rare cases, PSU) powered electronics, the output is different from the no battery alternative. Likewise, if you can bypass battery powered parts, the output becomes high impedance.

It is important to understand, that most pickups are hi-Z. There are exceptions, but practically any pickup can drive electronics, which include blend, volume, or tone circuitry. It is very common, that the only lo-Z part is the tone tweaking circuitry. This equals, that vol and blend affect pickups, because they load the pickup outputs.

There are few companies producing fully active signal chain from the pickups (John East, Audere...) and at least one that produces the buffered pickups, too (EMG). There are obviously others, but these I know for sure.

If your system is hi-Z, you only need some pots and a capacitor for volume and tone tweaking, but all of these parts affect the pickup response. This has not been a big issue, since similar basses have been produced since 1951, but if you want to try, lo-Z electronics have been available at least since 1963 by Burns.

Some other early trials:

1964 Bob Murrell and Guitorgan, with split fret -neck

1966 Vox V251 (Guitar Organ)

at the end of 1960's Ovation develops a piezomic

1969 Ron Hoag @ NAMM - optical infrared microphone

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, Ricky Rioli said:

Feel free to spell this out for me - does this mean active pickups and no preamp?

I presume my Westone was the other way round

Apart from instruments using the Lightwave optical pickups and similar systems, "active" pickups are simply low impedance/output coils and magnets pickups with a level/impedance matching pre-amp fitted into the same casing. The method by which the string vibrations are sensed is exactly the same as standard "passive" pickups.

[Hellzero]

This 1977 Ibanez Artist 2622 is already an active guitar with a 3 bands EQ and was cleverly designed. And Ibanez has been doing loads of variants of this Artist model. These guitars are really excellent instruments.

[Munurmunuh]

5 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

This 1977 Ibanez Artist 2622 is already an active guitar with a 3 bands EQ and was cleverly designed. And Ibanez has been doing loads of variants of this Artist model. These guitars are really excellent instruments.

Now this bit would have been of interest to me back then:

[Hellzero]

Yes, as I wrote it's a clever design. 😉

[Manwithvan]

About strings, Rick Beato has published a few YouTube videos saying why he thinks the lightest produce the best overdriven tone. He prefers 8s over 9s. More mids, I think.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Manwithvan
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