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Active or Passive pickups: How to tell?

B

bachfantasia

Jan 10, 2014
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0
#1
Active or Passive pickups: How to tell?

Active or Passive pickups: How to tell?

I've been searching various websites and looking at basses and it's not always clear if the pickups are active or passive. Sometimes they describe the bass as having active electronics or an active eq, does this always mean the pickups are also active?

Unless the description says passive or active pickups, can it be safe to say that the pickups are passive? If not, is there a surefire way to determine if the pickups are active or passive?

Thanks.
 
#3
As Mohawk said, the vast majority of basses have passive pickups. The ones that have active pickups are usually advertised as such. There are a small handful of companies that are known for active pickups, such as EMG and MEC, so if you see these pickups on a bass, they are usually active. Otherwise you're only talking about a handful of unidentifiable actives.

What is your reason for asking, though? If you are buying a bass, rather than modding, then it really makes no difference whether the pickups are active or passive, as long as you are aware of whether or not you will need batteries, and whether or not you will have a buffered signal.
 
#5
Nate85x said:
One good sign is does it run off a 9 volt battery if so it should be an active bass. My Ibanez SR 505 has bartalloni mk 2 pickups and it runs of a 9v its an active bass.
Click to expand...

That doesn't tell you if you have active pickups.

Most active basses will use passive pickups and a preamp, only the preamp requires the 9v or 18v supply.

There are some active pickups but they are a small minority of the active bass market.
 
#13
Best way to tell...

Open the control cavity and look for where the pickup leads are coming in. If you can see a red wire going next to that or any wires coming from there are connected to the battery wire, you have active pickups.

There are very few active pickups on the market by comparison to passive ones. Chances are likely that if you have a bass with pickups and a preamp, it's using passive pickups.

If your EMG pickups don't say "HZ", they are active.
 
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#15
Ibanez and Conklin have made active pickups,
and some basses have been advertised as having active pickups, when in fact the pickups were passive, run thru an active preamp.
If no battery hot leads go to pickups, then they're passive.
Active pickups usually read very low with an ohm meter, and sometimes it won't stabilize.
 
#16
I just found the perfect example of a good website clearly distinguishing and specifying that the pickups are passive but that it is the eq that is active.

The [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] clearly states "Electronics Passive P.U. w/ Active EQ".

In my opinion, this should be the standard of all bass listings. :)
 
#17
Then there is the Invalid Link Removed, which describes how the knobs switch back and forth from active to passive. Little confused, but it sounds like you can choose if you want the pick ups to be passive or active IN ADDITION to the bass having an active eq? I'm I getting that right?
 
#18
bachfantasia said:
Then there is the Invalid Link Removed, which describes how the knobs switch back and forth from active to passive. Little confused, but it sounds like you can choose if you want the pick ups to be passive or active IN ADDITION to the bass having an active eq? I'm I getting that right?
Click to expand...

No it's just basically a preamp bypass switch as found on most active basses that don't use EMG pickups. It's just a little fancier than most since you can bypass the preamp on each pickup separately. Pickups cannot be both active and passive.
 
#19
mmbongo said:
No it's just basically a preamp bypass switch as found on most active basses that don't use EMG pickups. It's just a little fancier than most since you can bypass the preamp on each pickup separately. Pickups cannot be both active and passive.
Click to expand...

I see. So they are still passive pickups, you can just choose to use the active eq or not?

In the description it does say "If this knob is up and Knob 2 is down only the neck pickup (passive) is heard" and "If both knob 1 and knob 2 are in the up position, both pickups (passive) are heard."

It looks like they are indeed specifying that the pickups are still passive.
 
#20
If bass runs on battery but no onboard EQ (just vol/tone controls), pickups are 100% active. otherwise, by pot value, active pups usually have max 100K volume/blend pots, while passive pickup requires 250/500K main pots.
 

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