A question about active pickups

[ndrly]

Say you had a Jazz bass, completely stock, minus the fact that it has a J-Retro preamp installed. Is it still prone to single-coil hum?

A while back I made a post about me saying that the Jazz bass is not for me. Well, then, I was trying out a Squier Jazz bass. It sounded rather nasally, and the hum that I got when I soloed one pickup with rather off-putting.

Perhaps I would be less put off by a Jazz bass if it was active. Less prone to single coil hum, innit? But are the Jazz basses with the J-Retro preamp really active? I mean, if you don't install active pickups...

I shouldn't worry if it turns out that any Jazz bass in any form doesn't appeal to me. I've also been considering other basses. P-bass, for example. The Music Man Stingray sounds good too. Perhaps even a G&L L-2000.

 

[Shoewreck]

Active electronics won't filter the hum out. You can get humcancelling pickups to get rid of it.
Nasal sound may be caused by the typical passive electronics behaviour - try connecting to the amp with a shorter cable - say, 1 meter or so. If tone gets better to your ear then installing active pre will help getting the sound you like.

 

[62bass]

Say you had a Jazz bass, completely stock, minus the fact that it has a J-Retro preamp installed. Is it still prone to single-coil hum?

I think the nasal quality could be the fact it was a Squire. Some of them, but not all years, sounded that way to me. A pickup change would have cured it.

As far as hum goes, I used a Fender USA jazz from the early 70s for a number of years. It had some hum when the pickups weren't set to equal volume but in most situations it wasn't objectionable. I never bothered upgrading the shielding and that might have helped.

But yes, any bass with high impedance circuitry and single coil pickups is prone to hum. There are some rooms where it can get very objectionable.

I wouldn't drop an expensive preamp into a bass unless I wanted it for tone shaping. I'd cure the hum first by going to hum canceling pickups.

But the new jazz basses with active electronics can sound quite good. Still, for some people only the sound of a passive jazz with single coil pickups will do. One of my basses is a Carvin Bolt 4 with Carvin J99 single coil pickups. Sounds great. I built it from a kit. There is some noise when I solo a pickup but it's not at all a problem in any live situation I've used it in so far. That bass is very well shielded in the contol cavity.

I prefer a P bass myself over a jazz. The G&L basses are very nice. I owned a 1990 Stingray for a number of years too. Nice playing bass but I didn't particularly care for the sound. But a lot of guys love them.