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Do you prefer passive tone or hi cut with active EQ?
- Thread starter Barcza
- Start date
I actually gutted my first bass (old ibanez sr300) and put in passive electronics and now its over the top crazy good awesome sounding. It really amazed me how much of a difference there was, its like taking a blanket off your amp. Although if a bass sounds good with active electronics i won't mess with it (i have 2 active basses, but only one with active eq).
You are mistaken on at least one point: Audere can in fact provide you with a Jazz plate onboard preamp that includes a passive tone control. You would simply need to configure it during the ordering process. Done.
MM
I voted passive. Of course there are applications for any and all configurations, but IMHO Passive tone (with good p/ups and tone circuit) + tubes is magic for me.
Good luck finding your "magic".
Peace.
Good luck finding your "magic".
Peace.
OP - just so you know, passive tone controls are fundamentally different than the usual active treble control. To oversimplify: A passive tone control lowers the frequency of the high pass filter as you turn it down. This means that as you lower the tone, lower frequencies get cut off. An active treble control keeps the cutoff frequency the same, and just increases the amount of cut at that frequency. They really can't sound the same.
It's a TV show, he was talking about your beard.
You call that a beard?
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I have no idea what I'm doing with those crazy dials so I'm just trying to sort out the fingerboard and the strings. For the time being I am sticking with passive.
both of my active basses have an additional passive tone control and I don't want to miss this feature anymore. no active treble cut can replicate a passive toneblend.
+1 The way I conceptualize the difference is that a passive tone control acts more like a lo pass filter. In other words, it kind of cuts a CONSTANT AMOUNT of LOWER AND LOWER frequencies the more you turn it up. An active treble cut (most of the time, it is a shelving circuit), cuts a HIGHER and HIGHER AMOUNT of a FIXED set of frequencies (typically everything above 4K or so on the typical on-board circuit). Very different impact.
With a more traditional instrument, I would suggest either Sadowsky pre or the Nordstrand two band. They have passive tone controls and bypass switches, so you can get back to true 'passive/vintage' mode if you want, and have very nice 'boost only' bass and treble that work great, along with the basic buffering of an active circuit, for 'widening and/or sparkling up the basic tone of the instrument.
On a 'Fender type' instrument, I would not consider a preamp that didn't have a bypass and a passive tone control.
Passive, it's more natural in tone, organic.
It's all about the pickup.
Too me a pre-amp on your pickup is there for one thing.
Too make a bad pickup sound better.
If you have a good sounding passive pickup. And a good amp,
your all set.
My bass has both options. But if I had to choose I´d go with passive and tone control. I play in active mode most of the time because there´s no diference between active and passive mode when eq is set flat. And most of the time I play flat unless there is an acoustic room problem and have to eq wich sometimes can be done at the amp or at the board.
Passive, it's more natural in tone, organic.
It's all about the pickup.
Too me a pre-amp on your pickup is there for one thing.
Too make a bad pickup sound better.
If you have a good sounding passive pickup. And a good amp,
your all set.
I would strongly disagree with some of this. An active circuit buffers the signal, resulting in, for many, and improvement with any pickup used. It widens the frequency response a bit (resulting in a deeper low end and more extended top end, with a more relaxed mid response), it eliminates (for the most part) difference in speaker cable capacitance, and as a bonus, it gives you a touch of additional control over EQ without going back to your amp.
Sadowsky, Fodera, and many other top line manufacturer's/luthiers do it right.... a high quality preamp, high quality pickups, a classic passive tone control, and the ability to bypass the preamp for traditional passive operation. With a passive tone control and a bypass switch (like on the Pope pre, the Sadowsky pre, the Nordstrand pre), there is literally no downside to having this capability, since when bypassed, it is literally like the preamp isn't there.
That being said, if you ALWAYs prefer the passive tone (like I do with my P Bass), then the downside would be a waste of money!
It's nice to have both, but I find I go active more often than . There's a bit more articulation in my judgement and I can tweak the tone without touching the amp.
You are kind of not understanding what an active circuit does. It is mostly about buffering the pickups prior to hitting the cable to your amp. Having a bit of extra tone control right on the bass is just a bonus.
Again, I'm not pushing active circuits at all. However, if you decide to go passive, it is always good to actually understand the positives and negatives of each legitimate choice. Again, with a bypass switch, there is no downside.
I prefer passive (no onboard preamp) for many of the reasons cited above, and because I find it easier to manage my tone that way. But I think also preferences may depend a little on the types and variety of music someone plays. For most of the material I play that familiar passive Fender tone that just sits in the mix and supports is all that's needed. I no longer have any active basses, but if I were playing a wider variety of styles in a set, or playing on multiple projects with very different sound needs, I might have a use once more for a more sophisticated active system.
So why do the pickups need buffering then? Guitarists don't do it. How is the bass different?
When I'm playing, I'm too busy playing to be able to fiddle about with any controls on my bass, and when I'm not playing it's just as easy to walk over to the amp and make any adjustments (although I hardly ever have to).
