Passive and active pickup in the same guitar

Discussion in 'Guitar Gear Talk Forum' started by Alfons, Aug 31, 2005.

  1. Alfons

    Alfons C.F.H

    is it possible 2 but an passive and active pickup in da same guitar ???
    and watz so special bout an active 1 !
    an EVO's passive !
     
  2. ssslayer

    ssslayer Banned

    shit

    i thought this thread was about picking-up girls ...

    *scoots out, whistling, hands in pocket*
     
  3. ronnieanand

    ronnieanand n00bier th@n th0u

    An active pickup is nothing but a passive pickup with a small preamp built in. There are some advantages of active pickup. It can get very responsive to tone knob unlike several other pickups which aren't that responsive. Since more output is generated, there is generally more drive. This results in more crunch and also more sustain. The fallback could be noise level and also a possible thinner or compressed sound.
    An EVO generates about 400mv where as this EMG85 generates about 1Volt. As far as tone is concerned it's only individuals preference.
    Generally high output pickups are compressed sounding, drives your Distortion pedal harder, more sustain. Since it's pretty much compressed, it wont be very responsive to picking as opposed to lower output pickups. This again depends on what style you play. If you look at Satriani's rig, he uses medium output pickup but his sound is heavily compressed. There's hardly much of picking dynamics that could be heard when he plays with his full gain settings. For most of his playing dynamics, he uses a Clean / Semi-Clean which cuts out a lot of compression and can reflect his dynamics. Medium output pickups suits this kind of requirement.
     
  4. ronnieanand

    ronnieanand n00bier th@n th0u

    By the way, you can have an Active and Passive Pickups in the same guitar.
     
  5. abhijitnath

    abhijitnath Fighting GAS frantically

    Just an addendum....active pickups such as EMG are very low impedance....if you use them without the preamp they wont be high output at all..the idea is that you retain the clarity of low impedance (i.e. the problems that very 'hot' pickups have of dampening the strings and not allowing the natural sound of the guitar to go through) while increasing the output level through the battery-powered preamp. Also as far as I understand it, the more responsive tone control is not a feature of the active pickup itself but of the preamp...which is why EMG makes a number of active preamp tone controls for 'Woman tone', 'Brown sound' et al. A normal passive tone control is only a treble cut; with active you can have active bass, treble (like on Carvins) or drive controls.
     
  6. Alfons

    Alfons C.F.H

    @ronnieanand
    there's some shop in mumbai known as SB musicals............
    the've got Evo's and EMG's and all
    they also say dat they regularly import international brands !!( maybe they'll import ur fender showmaster)

    anywayz i asked him how much wud it cost if u got an EVO and EmG81 in da same guitar
    he said itz technically impossible !!
     
  7. shak

    shak Harrr!

    another update ... emg actives are all vacum sealed and give out very low hum ... (meaning goood hum canceling)

    and yeah you can haev both active and passive pickups at the same time but i wouldnt do so especially if you are using the gibson lp type wiring cuz active and passive dont mix together very well ... the impedance and the output of active dominates over the passive pickup when both are selected ..that means you cant mix and match active and passive ... but other wise just make sure that you can accomodate a battery in yur axe and go for it.
     
  8. ronnieanand

    ronnieanand n00bier th@n th0u

    Ask that guy to continue his dropped out school. He must be a retard to make a comment like that. It's as simple that even I can do the wiring.

    @Alfons. I have guys to get me Fender Showmaster. The problem is not about the import. It's about $e$$terittie$. Already in a huge debt after bought a huge number of pedals and also plenty of components to make my own pedals.
     
  9. ronnieanand

    ronnieanand n00bier th@n th0u

    Abhijit, that's spot on. When I meant active pickups, I meant the whole package with the inbuilt preamp.
     
  10. h4f0n

    h4f0n New Member

    Also its worth to mention that active pickups are voiced 'flat' ie. every frequency is at the same volume level. This way its easier to create your own 'sound' using EQs, but also its easy to sound really 'boring'.
     

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