Pads and Passive and Active Inputs: Ever Use Them?

[LiquidMidnight]

A lot of heads, combos, and preamps either have a pad button or separate inputs for active and passive basses. I play active basses 95% of the time, and I almost always use the passive inputs or have the pads turned off. I figure that if I have a bass with high output, then I might as take advantage of it.

Personally I've never had an issue with clipping at the input stage of an amp because I'm playing an active bass, even with my basses that have 18v preamps and active EMGs. I'm not saying that it's not possible to clip the input easier with an active bass; I'm just saying that I've never had a problem with it that necessitated using an active input or pad.

Does anyone use the active input or pad of their amp with their active basses? How about when using outboard preamps or effects that add to the gain structure, such as a SansAmp or an Agro?

[KJung]

You are right in doing what you are doing.

The 'active/passive' labels are unfortunate, since mostly these represent a 'normal' input and a padded down input (active). The correlation between active versus passive and signal output is probably pretty much zero. Many preamps are voiced to be 'volume neutral' with the passive bypass output of basses, and many preamps have internal volume pots to adjust the output level.

The only time I've ever had to use the 'active' input on an amp was with an passive Reverend bass.... the hottest output I've ever experienced!

Of course, if you are one who cranks the bass control on your on-board pre, and digs in like crazy but still wants a clean tone, the 'active' input (or the input pad switch) might be useful.

A few amps have different input impedance for the active/passive inputs, but this too is kind of useless, since the passive bass is impedance sensitive (and hence would go in the higher impedance passive input) and an active bass 'doesn't care' about input impedance.

So, you are good to go IMO!

[Sartori]

Used to have an amp with a pad. I used it as a "Make the amp quiet enough to switch basses without obnoxious noise" button. Never actually played with it on.

The only time I've ever actually played with one of those on was when using my friend's music recording software, my bass (a passive, actually) was clipping the input like crazy, so I had to use the active pad.

[s_mcsleazy]

dont use active basses and have none on my amp so kinda useless as a whole

[RickenBoogie]

I have one amp with an active/passive switch, but it stays on passive no matter the bass plugged in.