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  #1  
Old 12-20-2012, 02:57 PM
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Active Pickups With Envelope Filter

I've got a Fender Deluxe Active Jazz and I'm thinking of buying an Electro-Harmonix Q-tron Plus.

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I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to electronics and was hoping someone has some experience with a similar rig. Thoughts/Comments?
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Old 12-20-2012, 03:01 PM
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So what's the question?

I use 2 different Env filters with active/passive basses. An EBS Bass IQ and the MXR Bass Env. with Sadowsky basses. Never had a problem.

It's all how you set it up since they are input sensitive.
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Old 12-20-2012, 03:38 PM
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As Got2SadowdkyNYC says, there's no reason for active electronics to have any impact on an envelope filter. Ignore the people who say that active basses are louder than passive ones as that's false. SOME are, but unless you're cranking all the EQ bands all the way, most active basses don't have as much output as an early '80s passive G&L with the MFD pickups.

With ANY bass you'll have to spend a bit of time tweaking how the envelope filter responds to how YOU set up the bass and how YOU adjust the EQ, how YOU attack the strings, and how YOU want it to sound. I went through an envelope filter journey about 10 years ago. I had and gigged with an old MXR, a DOD FX-25(?), an EH Q-Tron, a Boss AutoWha, and then got an EBS Bass-IQ. That's where my search ended.

Now, my experience was that the Q-Tron was cool sounding, but really tweaky. The settings would vary a lot from night-to-night, it had an 18V power supply so I couldn't use it with the rest of my board's power supply, and it was almost impossible to find the right place where the envelope opened where I wanted it to and it still had the right volume for the band. Plus it was noisy. But that's just the old EH Q-Tron, it had nothing to do with whether I was playing my VS '62 Precision, my Hamer Cruise Bass, my pre-EB StingRay, or my Laklands.

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Old 12-20-2012, 03:43 PM
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My 4 string passive PJ that has a 1/4 lb P with an all controls bypass switch has MORE output than my 18volt Curbow IEP and my 9volt Sadowskys . My lowest output bass is an old Ibanez SR1306PM with a 9volt pre.
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Old 12-20-2012, 03:49 PM
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No problem re: active/passive, but reconsider the QTron +, I found it difficult to use live as per what JTE mentioned in his post. Although when it worked it copped sounds I can get out of no other filters, it was often frustrating on a gig, especially if the band was cooking and I ended up hitting the strings harder than anticipated during sound check or when tweaking the filter at home. Plus it can have some crazy volume boosting when stacked after other effects (by itself the volume boost can actually sometimes be helpful... but when stacked it quickly gets to be too much.)
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Old 12-20-2012, 04:30 PM
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Thanks for the replies, very helpful. On to the Effects Forum!
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Old 12-20-2012, 09:06 PM
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Are those actually active pickups, or passive pickups with an active preamp? Big difference.
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