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Active/passive what's the difference.

#41
My understanding of the term active in relation to tone-shaping electronics is that it is capable of boosting as well as cutting signal frequencies. This means that unless you are running some very old school amp design at some point in your signal chain you will be putting the instrument signal through an active tone-shaping circuit. Whether that happens in the pickups, in the control cavity of the bass, in your floor stomp-boxes, in your rack mounted eq units or in the amp doesn't matter so long as the signal path has been properly designed from pickup to speaker. Where you're perceiving poor tone is usually because you're running too many stages of frequency gain and they're interacting with each other in a non-musical way. The true test of a traditional 'active' bass (one with a battery-driven pre-amp in the control cavity) against a traditional passive bass (one with volume and treble cut controls only) would be for to run both basses directly into the poweramp section of your amp only, that way the amplifier is only making the signal louder and not supplying any tone-shaping capabilities.
 
#43
BigRedX said:
My understanding of the term active in relation to tone-shaping electronics is that it is capable of boosting as well as cutting signal frequencies. This means that unless you are running some very old school amp design at some point in your signal chain you will be putting the instrument signal through an active tone-shaping circuit. Whether that happens in the pickups, in the control cavity of the bass, in your floor stomp-boxes, in your rack mounted eq units or in the amp doesn't matter so long as the signal path has been properly designed from pickup to speaker. Where you're perceiving poor tone is usually because you're running too many stages of frequency gain and they're interacting with each other in a non-musical way. The true test of a traditional 'active' bass (one with a battery-driven pre-amp in the control cavity) against a traditional passive bass (one with volume and treble cut controls only) would be for to run both basses directly into the poweramp section of your amp only, that way the amplifier is only making the signal louder and not supplying any tone-shaping capabilities.
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:)
 
#44
bongomania said:
ALL electric basses, passive or active, go through a preamp. Bar none, no exceptions. So if what you said was true, then nobody would ever hear any difference of the wood or pickups from one bass to the next. An "active bass" just has a preamp on one end of the cord, while a passive bass relies on the preamp on the other end of the cord.
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Your making my point... read my post, read your post, remove your emotion, and think...

BTW... intelligence is very much subjective and over-rated.
 
#45
Matt Fat Cat said:
bass/preamp-----preamp/poweramp-----cabinet
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How many amplification stages are there in your preamp? In your poweramp? Do you have any idea how much more modification that your cab is doing to the sound (frequency response and distortion) than most amplification sections?

I would follow your logic, once you show some.
 
#47
I decided to purchase that Toaster/Broomstick/Dental Floss Bass after all---as long as I put active electronics in it, it should sound just like my Modulus.

This new found info should revolutionize the bass industry and save us a bunch of money.

sarcasm, but no funny pics, sorry
 
#48
Re: running an active or passive bass directly into a power amp, that is not a reasonable test. One of the main purposes of a preamp built into an "amp" is to raise the very low voltage of the instrument output into a voltage range that is more commonly designed for input into a power amp. A power amp is designed to take that input voltage and increase the current, thereby creating higher wattage. If you plug a passive bass into a power amp, you will only hear a tiny weak sound as the input voltage will be far insufficient for the power amp to work with that signal.
 
#49
Matt Fat Cat said:
No reduction, sir... levity. You're not going to agree with me even if you were mistaken, so...

Signal path:

bass/preamp-----preamp/poweramp-----cabinet-----audience


... follow the logic. I rest. :p
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Ha! show me some logic there. Seriously, show me the logic.

Also, if you had any reading ability you'd have seen me earlier in this thread defer to someone whose logic made sense even though I was mistaken. If you can demonstrate any logic in your statements so far, I will publicly apologize to you right away.
 
#51
Matt Fat Cat said:
Yes... kinda... once an onboard preamp takes over the signal, wood tone equals squaduesh... you're hearing the preamp. Thats all i'm saying... :eyebrow:
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You're missing one important thing here: The preamp must have a signal to work with. A preamp cannot amplify a signal that isn't there. Nor is it possible to design a preamp to selectively cancel out the part of the tone contributed by the wood, and even if it was, the preamp would have to be designed individually for each instrument.

Sure, there is a small amount of distortion of the signal in every amplifier, but it's just that: small. 0.003% or so. It's not uncommon for a power amp to have THD figures of <1%, add to that the mechanical distortion of the loudspeaker and I have a hard time seeing how the preamp "taking over" the tone could be anything else than a psychological effect.
 
#52
Pierrot said:
You're missing one important thing here: The preamp must have a signal to work with. A preamp cannot amplify a signal that isn't there. Nor is it possible to design a preamp to selectively cancel out the part of the tone contributed by the wood, and even if it was, the preamp would have to be designed individually for each instrument.

Sure, there is a small amount of distortion of the signal in every amplifier, but it's just that: small. 0.003% or so. It's not uncommon for a power amp to have THD figures of <1%, add to that the mechanical distortion of the loudspeaker and I have a hard time seeing how the preamp "taking over" the tone could be anything else than a psychological effect.
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+1,000,000. Nice LOGIC!
 

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