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Active tone vs. passive tone

crust_cheese

crust_cheese

Guest
May 13, 2014
163
105
31
Aargau, Switzerland
#1
Hi guys

So, I've always been under the impression that passive basses are tonally speaking similar to active basses, except that an active bass will allow for more versatility due to the fact that it is able of both cutting and boosting frequencies.

Now, though, I'm not so sure anymore. I've seen people recommend an explicitly passive this and that bass for this and that sound, and I found out some pedals for instance don't actually play all that nice with active basses (might be the reason why my Bass Big Muff sounds meh).

While I do get that some pedals will misbehave due to electronic magic stuff happening, I'm still confused about the tone. Is there a signature active bass tone? Is it impossible to truly capture the "passive tone" with an active bass? Are there some passive things where an active will simply not work and vice versa?

Now I do understand that there's probably a whole lot of "it depends'" involved, so we might as well assume we're talking of i.e. two otherwise identical jazz basses, one being active, the other passive.

Thanks!
 
#2
Depends on how the active circuits are designed. Some basses with an active/passive switch will sound the same with the controls set flat and others won't. Same thing with pedals. Some may work well with a higher voltage signal (although we're talking milliamps) and some won't sound right.

There is no signature active bass tone. Every preamp design has a different response curve even with the controls set flat.

The best example I have heard of a transparent preamp has been the Lane Poor. I can switch my Modulus from passive to active with the controls flat and the sound just gets louder with no tone change at all.

Rick B.
 
#3
I have a bass that has a switch that turns on/off the active preamp. (the bass is nice in that if the battery dies or missing, it's not dead in the water, it just reverts to passive mode).
I switch back and forth between the two depending on the music. I find in passive mode, I'm able to better control the tone and able to get some in-between sounds that I normally can't get in active mode. Subtle changes are easier without adjusting the eq on the amp.
Not a huge difference other than the big boost in volume and output. I like both for different reasons.
Same bass, same pickups so I guess that might be a better test than two separate identical jazz basses.
 
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#4
One difference is that most 9V active systems have a more compressed output than passive systems. Or, put the other way around, passive systems often have more dynamic range than active ones.

18 volt preamps are supposed to have less of that inherent compression.

This isn't "tone" per-se, but it is a difference in how the instruments sound.
 
#5
As for the buffering effect that an active circuit has, it's no better or worse than putting a Boss tuner at the front of your pedalboard. I doubt that's the reason for your Big Muff sounding bad. Most people probably have a buffered bypass pedal on their pedalboard, but such buffers are usually transparent enough to not matter.

Anyway, I don't think active is better or worse than passive. The two are just different. Passive tone controls are cut only, sure, but that cut responds differently to the cut controls on an active. And contrary to belief, you aren't just limited to treble roll-off in passive basses. I've built many passive circuits with bass cut as well. There are midrange controls, too. The main thing with passive tone controls is that to me, they always have a secondary feature that brings out other frequencies rather than simply cut one. Active tone controls are a lot more pinpoint. And sometimes one's not necessarily better than the other. Active controls are great, but I have every tone I need with a single P pickup hooked up to a volume pot. I also have an amp, so why do I need the bass to do all the lifting?

It also depends on what kind of player you are. Are you a session guy? Do you plug into DI? Do you play in a rock band and mic your cabs? Things like that. Passive might work great if you're a rock guy plugging into a tube amp, but if you have to play in a church, no amps, and you need to go from one sound to another in a pinch, it might not be so great. Or it might be. Active tone controls are really nothing more than an EQ pedal. They're neither good nor bad. They just give you an option you might like or dislike.

You can also build passive tone controls that go in front of your active tone controls. You can also have passive tone controls on an active pickup, like if you wire an active EMG bass pickup with its stock 25k pots but don't bother with an active EQ. Such controls would act more like a passive control that a passive player would be more used to.

Confused yet?
 
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#6
A passive bass is always followed by some kind of active device. It could be a pedal, it could be a stage amp, sometimes there is a DI box (active or passive) between the bass and the stage amp. The only real difference between an active and a passive bass is in the details since both have to use active electronics to be heard over the din the guitard is making! Most external devices will have a 1 meg Ohm input impedance so that they can interface with passive basses with the expected results. The preamp in an active bass may not have an impedance that high, the preamp input impedance of my Fender MIM basses is 100k Ohm or ten times smaller. The total load on the pickups in my active Fenders is about half what it would be in a passive bass and that colors the tone differently than a typical passive bass. Plus, unless you put in a passive tone control (which some active basses have but many lack) the only passive tone you can get from an active bass is the wide open tone. However, it is of course possible, easy even, to design an active bass that sounds just like a passive bass. It just is not commonly done. What is done somewhat commonly is to include an active/passive switch and a passive tone control that gives you a true passive mode. The Fender American Deluxe models built in the last couple of years have that feature and there are probably some others.

Personally I like both kinds of bass just fine and I play both kinds. The tone of an an active bass may not match the tone of a passive bass exactly no matter how you fiddle with the tone controls but the total tonal flexibility you get at your fingertips from a 3 band EQ in the bass is far greater than what you can get from a passive tone control. And that is what an active bass is all about. You can have massive amounts of tonal control from pedals and the stage sound system with either kind of bass. It is what you have instantly at your fingertips that sets an active bass apart from a passive bass.
 
#7
lz4005 said:
One difference is that most 9V active systems have a more compressed output than passive systems. Or, put the other way around, passive systems often have more dynamic range than active ones.

18 volt preamps are supposed to have less of that inherent compression.

This isn't "tone" per-se, but it is a difference in how the instruments sound.
Click to expand...

This is precisely what I mean when I refer to an active tone.
 
#9
crust_cheese said:
Hi guys

So, I've always been under the impression that passive basses are tonally speaking similar to active basses, except that an active bass will allow for more versatility due to the fact that it is able of both cutting and boosting frequencies.

Now, though, I'm not so sure anymore. I've seen people recommend an explicitly passive this and that bass for this and that sound, and I found out some pedals for instance don't actually play all that nice with active basses (might be the reason why my Bass Big Muff sounds meh).

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Well, most active and passive basses when you don't use EQ are very similar. After all, the front end of your head is basically an active preamp! An active bass merely moves part of that EQ circuit into the bass where it more convenient to adjust while you are playing. The main two differences between active and passive basses
is that all electronic preamps create noise. Passive circuits do too but their noise is only due to temperature and is SO much lower as to me non-existent as far as a bass player goes. The other thing which is already mentioned is compression (or clipping) of the sound. This may or may not be good. It also may not exist! Does the active circuit in your bass amp clip the sound? It may...that's one reason amps sometimes have two inputs: active and passive. Or it may not. But there is a catch here. Amps can feed all the power a preamp needs. In an active bass the electronics must run off a battery. This means that active bass circuits MAY be noisier and more prone to clip than amps (or outboard preamps). So that is part of the "active" vs. Passive sound.

Another feature of active basses is they have a cable driver. This drives your bass cord with low ohms. This means that you won't have problems with cable sucking your tone or worse microphonics from moving or stepping on the cable. Generally this is good with an active or passive bass and there are basses that are basically passive except for a cable driver. But dig. A passive bass will have the tone VERY MUCH affected by what load you put on it. And that includes the ohms of the volume control and the ohms of your amp. An Active cable driver will tend to ignore all these things. These reasons tell you why certain pedals will respond well to either a passive or active bass and not the other.

And lastly (I'm rolling now!) There is EQ. All a passive bass has is what I call a "toy" tone control. It's just a pot and capacitor that rolls off highs. It has a certain sound that most of us are used to and understand. Generally active basses have controls similar to those on your amp, at minimum a "bass" control and a "treble" control. These can have rates of boost or roll off that are quite different from a passive roll-off. Furthermore the frequency at which they begin to roll off or boost can be quite different even from active bass to active bass. And THAT is important. I learned this when I was using a modded guitar amp for bass for a time. It was just an old 100 watt crate that had plenty of power for a combo, but the problem was the frequencies at which the tone controls started to work were all wrong for bass! That was more extreme than what you find from one active bass to the next, but the idea is right. And in fact you can buy active bass preamps (Audere) with active AND a passive control which means if you set all the active controls "flat" the passive control will act and sound pretty much like a passive bass (except for issues outlined above). And even better some basses have a switch that lets you change from passive to active. I prefer a bass like that because it gives you backup if a battery or preamp dies in the middle of a gig.

So just try 'em all and pick what you like. My G&L L2500 basses have active and passive and I sort go 50-50 with that. Sometimes I really do like the clean noise-free sound of passive. There is something about that kind of tone. But other times some EQ or cable drive is useful too. Note that L2500 have passive tone controls except for the "high boost".
 
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#10
Thanks for all the answers!

My current bass is an Ibanez GSR200EX, and the preamp, as far as I can tell, is a hissy mess and the EQC awful. It's actually a one band (!) EQ, I think. I am quite intrigued however by the idea of having a proper, three band EQ such as the one on the Ibanez SR505.
 
#11
You also have to count that the pre-amp acts like a buffer, that´s why it has more highs than in passive mode. Actually the highs you listen in active mode are actully the real highs of the bass, but in passive mode because of the impendance and long cables interacts over the original tone and high frequencies are lost on the run.

I don´t know if I make myself understood. Even for me it´s hard to read myself! o_O
 
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#14
One Drop said:
There's also the issue of what PUPs are used with active basses- often noiseless ones are required due to the noise floor of the preamps, which sound different than SCs.
Click to expand...

Noiseless pickups are often used on active basses but you would have to ask their designers why that is. "Noiseless" pickups suppress power line hum pickup but they do nothing to suppress ordinary thermal noise, the kind of noise a preamp makes. I suspect that in many cases it is as simple as this: active basses are premium models so they get better (for those of us who hate hum) pickups. It is certainly true that the low current preamps that are often used in active basses (to get good battery life) are noiser than the high current preamps you would find in pedals and stage amps. So using high output humbuckers would help the signal to noise ratio. But then you run into headroom problems if you want to run from a single 9V battery as many active basses do. And that leads to a compressed sound or to what Fender does on their Deluxe Active Jazz: use low output pickups that work well with a nearly depleted battery. I have one of those and it does not sound compressed although it is a quiet bass which bothers some people. If you listen to it with headphones or record with it I am sure you can hear a diminished signal to noise ratio from the low pickup output and preamp noise floor. In live use it is not an issue however. My Reggie Hamilton on the other hand uses the same preamp but 18V and hotter pickups so it sounds neither compressed nor particularly noisy. It's Precision pickup is the same one that was/is used on MIA Precision basses. Its bridge Jazz pickup is a dual coil noiseless design and if you wanted the single coil sound from it you would have to switch it out for a single coil or a split coil. Either would work just fine with the preamp it has.
 
#15
crust_cheese said:
So would I be right in assuming that an active bass could deliver me that bright, sightly "clanky" bass tone that I love? Like what you get when you crank up the tone knob - I don't know how to describe it, it sounds like an ever so slight musical fret buzz
Click to expand...
Sure. The bass most well known for producing that kind of sound is a Stingray, probably the most famous active bass.
 
#16
I am going to rock the boat a little on this.... I am of the opinion that if you took two of the same identical instruments and they were both of exceptional quality, resonate and sound amazing without being plugged in, then the passive instrument should always sound better. When I say better, I mean a truer representation of the instruments character and tone. Introducing onboard circuits into the signal path will likely only deter from this, not to mention introduce noise.

Yes, active circuits can change the way the instrument responds in your hands, which is sometimes a good thing depending on your playing style. Yes, having the ability to EQ your bass itself rather than walk back to your amp is CONVENIENT. But does it sound better? Does the average cheap Chinese built onboard EQ circuit, sound as good as the EQ available in a quality hand wired amp? Not likely. To me thats a compromise.
 
#17
Zanderwestcoast said:
I am going to rock the boat a little on this.... I am of the opinion that if you took two of the same identical instruments and they were both of exceptional quality, resonate and sound amazing without being plugged in, then the passive instrument should always sound better. When I say better, I mean a truer representation of the instruments character and tone. Introducing onboard circuits into the signal path will likely only deter from this, not to mention introduce noise.
Click to expand...

Well I´m not sure about that. A preamp acts like a buffer, in fact, if you have a very good pre-amp it will deliver the exact original tone of the bass (that´s why I love Glock onboard pre-amps) as long as you don´t start to turn up/down knobs. On a passive bass, the impendance and long cables alter the original tone. IMHO.
 
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#20
I had the same problem as you with the big muff sounding meh, and it was definitely due to my bass being active. The signal an Active bass sends is just too powerful for the big muff to handle and to cooperate with. It can't get the proper effect out and it makes it sound... weird. I love my active Ibanez bass, but I just ordered myself a passive Fender Nate Mendel P bass for when I need that passive tone to come through, just to have the best of both worlds :)
 

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