Too hot to handle?

[Kwesi]

My Spector Euro 6LX has both an active pre and active pickups. needless to say this this is hot, lol. But i just tried it out with Q-tron+ and the effect acted very little on the sound of my bass. At first I thought that i had broken it but then i plugged my Spector ReBop, which has and active pre but passive pups, into it and it was fine; everything mwah-ed like it should have.

Now, i know 2 things about pickups:

*Different pickups sound different
*There are active and passive pickups

That's all, lol. But i think that the Euro 6LX has such a high output that the Q-Tron+ peaks before the filter can act... does that make any sense? If not could someone tell me why i'm not getting that super-funky sound out of my Q-tron+ with this bass?

[OhThePeacock]

Try turning the sensitivity down when using a bass with a hotter output.

[niftydog]

It's easy to work out if the signal is too hot - turn down your bass's volume and try again. For a longer term fix wind your pickups down.

[bongomania]

Also, just for point of reference, not all preamps (or active pickups) have higher output than passives. Some preamps are "unity gain", meaning zero increase of the signal level, and I've even encountered a couple where the active level was a bit lower than the passive. I don't know if that's the case with the Spector; just saying not to assume that active (even two active devices in series) is necessarily a higher output.