Has anyone here ran EMG HZs fully passive with no preamp?

[DanielSkilberg]

I have this old Spector with a Hz. This bass is fully passive. To me it sounds great.

 

[iiipopes]

Years ago, they were the stock pickups on my current #1 gig bass. I played them for awhile in a standard VVT configuration. They had good tone, but they didn't have the clarity, bandwidth, or the noise supression I needed. So I ditched them for EMG actives. They would actually make good guitar pickups to overdrive an amplifier for some heavier genres.

 

[keyofnight]

I once owned a Schecter bass with EMG 35hz pickups with active preamp.

The solderless system is great but that's where my fun experience with them starts and stops.

To me they had to much mids and way to much top end for my liking. Very HiFi.. (great if you finger tap, slap and pop, noodle all over the neck or want to play like a lead guitarist.... but thats not my style) and rather unpleasant lows that lacked smoothness and lost low end definition which just didn't work for me. NoFi
They were either to brittle, sharp and harsh or to muddy, boomy, wet fartish.

I'm glad you like them but IMO, I'd rip them out and get some DiMarzio pickups in there.

Interesting! I have a Schecter Bass with a pair of EMG 40HZs. I took out the stock EMG BTC preamp because I found the output weak, the EQ limited, and the sound muddy. I replaced the preamp with passive controls: 1MΩ pots for volume and tone, a pickup selector switch, and a tone cap selector switch. I am definitely a fan of upper midrange and treble sounds, so I find the sound pretty nice: high bandwidth and great clarity with the tone on max, smooth lows with volume and tone rolled back. I haven't really gotten any boomy/wet/muddy sounds, but I can see how you would run into brittle and/or harsh ones.

 

[alex1fly]

I once owned a Schecter bass with EMG 35hz pickups with active preamp.

The solderless system is great but that's where my fun experience with them starts and stops.

To me they had to much mids and way to much top end for my liking. Very HiFi.. (great if you finger tap, slap and pop, noodle all over the neck or want to play like a lead guitarist.... but thats not my style) and rather unpleasant lows that lacked smoothness and lost low end definition which just didn't work for me. NoFi
They were either to brittle, sharp and harsh or to muddy, boomy, wet fartish.
The preamp died, within the first week of ownership.. Love the solderless system...
Thought that might be the problem causing the poor quality tone. Replaced the preamp. Love the solderless system. Nope! That was their tone.
2nd preamp died a few weeks later. Perhaps it really was a preamp problem re: tone quality?
So I abandoned the preamp and had them wired passive VVTT. Nope! Harsh, shrill at one end and mud, fart, dull and lacklustre at the other end. From HiFi to NoFi with very little in-between.
Tech changed the pots with different values... Nope!
HiFi/NoFi and nothing in between.
EMG's just didn't work for me at all.
EMG's went in the bin.
Now I avoid EMG's like the plague as well as any bass with them installed.

It's odd to hear that you were not able to get useable tones or could only have "hifi" sounds. Quite honestly it sounds like your pickups were too close to the strings or something else weird was going on. You also shouldn't have been busting preamps... IME with 7 EMG installs is that their stuff is very robust, especially when you use the wiring kit they provide. I've yanked the tar out of their quick connects, no issues 5 years later, very impressed.

It's also possible the 35hz was just not a good match for your amp/style/tonal goals.

 

[alex1fly]

I know I'm probably walking into a minefield here since EMG HZs are much maligned pickups here on TalkBass. People either query about replacing them or replacing whatever preamps are paired with them.

But has anyone here gone in the opposite direction? Ditching preamps altogether and just running HZs fully passive? No preamps, no batteries, no nothing. Just HZs coupled with your basic V/V/T (or reasonable facsimile) setup.

If so, how did you like the results?

I also know that pretty much every bass with HZs attaches a preamp to it so there are almost no examples of HZ-equipped basses with fully passive configurations. But someone out there must have done it, right?

In my limited search, the few stray replies I've seen here and there say that EMG HZs don't sound as horrible as everyone says when run fully passive. A few have said they even sound good.

So, yeah, EMG HZs run fully passive... thoughts?

Thanks for humoring me and satisfying my curiosity. When it comes to pickups, I'm more of a Seymour Duncan guy personally, but that's neither here nor there.

I've used them with a preamp, never passive. But I didn't use the onboard preamp much. I liked them, very much a jazz bass style of tone with a little more clarity and sparkle in the highs. Didn't keep them because it was a fretless and that was an experiment that didn't pan out. However my experience with EMGs is that their website descriptions, while short, are pretty spot on. The 35HZ says:
The EMG 35HZ is our passive Extended series pickup for 4 string bass. This modern passive model features a humbucking design for low noise and plenty of output.

Using ceramic bar magnets with steel, the tone is warm with a smooth attack and a big mid-range response. This pickup uses an extended housing that is 3.5 inches (89mm).

So, is that something you want? Warm with a smooth attack and a big mid-range response? If so you might enjoy the HZs. If not, you should get them anyways so you can be dissatisfied and rant about how bad every EMG pickup is every chance you get

 

[Dincrest]

One of my basses I want to have de-active-ated already has HZs in it (albeit with a preamp) and I like how it sounds. The preamp is a stock ESP/LTD preamp. I've had good luck in the past having active basses de-active-ated.

 

[Dincrest]

Well... I had a luthier I know rewire my LTD F-205 (which had EMG-HZs and a 3-band preamp) passive with a V/V/T configuration. I also had him upgrade the plastic nut to a GraphTech TUSQ one and set it up with LaBella Rx Steels 40-118. So far, I LOVE it! Acoustically, through an amp, and through his DAW, I think the bass sounds fantastic. The low-B is plenty powerful.

I'll have to put it through the paces (August 10 I'm playing for my special ed students again; Music, Motivation and Movement I call it), but so far I'm in the camp of liking EMG-HZs fully passive. My favorite passive soapbars are still Duncans, but my newly de-active-ated F-205 plays beautifully and I feel like I can make it sound killer in multiple musical contexts and using various techniques (fingers, pick, slap, tap, chords, rakes, etc.)

And as a side note, I'm liking these LaBella Rx Steels. They're pretty smooth for steels and that 118 B is something else. I don't know how LaBella did it, but its tone and feel are better than other companies' thicker Bs. We'll see how long they last and how they compare to my benchmark of D'Addario ProSteels.

 

[iiipopes]

Yes. When I got my Ibby SRA305 in 2012 it had stock HZ's. I thought they were muddy and changed them for EMG actives 40CS neck & 40JX bridge.

 

[dedpool1052]

Did this with two basses.

First was a Schecter Stiletto Elite-5.
Had the BTC pre pulled, and ran it V/B/T/T.

Output was weak, but that's why amps have volume controls.

Sounded good. Clear and even.


Also had another Schecter.
Can't remember the exact model name.
It was a P/H combo, that I had swapped over to a PHZ/35HZ combo with a series/single coil/parallel switch on the bridge pickup.

Gave me some tonal options, but the bridge always sounded best in series, as it better matched the output of the P.
It was bright, growly, and in your face.
Quite the "rock bass" tone.

 

[Dincrest]

So far, I haven't noticed much of a drop in output when jamming along to songs through my practice amp. My practice amp is at 1.3 instead of 1 when my bass was active. I think it'll be fine through my infinitely more powerful gig rig.

The bass has 250k V, V, and T pots.

Maybe it's because of the way my luthier set it up and/or upgrading the cheap plastic nut to a GraphTech TUSQ one, but the sound of my low B (especially amplified) is very even in volume compared to the other strings, which is big for me.

I like to play with the neck pickup volume at 75%, the bridge pickup volume maxed, and the tone in the middle.

The bass definitely has a nice growl to it with the midrange bump I like. It holds its own amidst distorted guitars in heavy music and gives a little heft to poppier pieces. I don't hear the "mud" or "scooped" or "weak" that others say about HZs run passive without a preamp. (I look forward to when the new strings settle in. They're a little too zingy now).

My bass sounds so much better fully passive. I know a lot of people say you need active electronics to bring out the low B, but I say that myth has been busted. Then again, the Mothman busted that myth too.

So, yeah, consider me a fan of EMG-HZs run fully passive with no preamp on a 5-string. Yeah, Duncan SSBs are still my favorite passive soapbar, but these HZs are here to stay.

 

[BassyBill]

I have a Precision fretted, a P fretless and a PJ bass, each with passive EMGs and no pre amp. I'm a huge fan of EMG pickups and the passive ones are just as good as the actives in my opinion, even though they're quite different.

Incidentally, the EMG GZR P and the EMG P Hz are the same pickup in different casings (exposed poles in the former case).

 

[epimaster]

I have a Precision fretted, a P fretless and a PJ bass, each with passive EMGs and no pre amp. I'm a huge fan of EMG pickups and the passive ones are just as good as the actives in my opinion, even though they're quite different.

Incidentally, the EMG GZR P and the EMG P Hz are the same pickup in different casings (exposed poles in the former case).

I have the EMG HZ in two basses - Schecter Elite-4 and Spectorcore 4 fretted. Physical characteristics are more important to me than electrical - I definitely like their overall feel and quality. IMHO, if a bass doesn't sound good unplugged in a quiet room, all the fancy electronics can only be of limited benefit. I think that these pickups can sound quite good with the proper wiring and amp. One very overlooked variable is amplifier input impedance. Can't say that I have any hard data, but with the thousands of amp and pedal combinations out there, there is likely a broad range. Generally speaking, a high impedance will have negligible effect on the circuit and would most likely be favorable for a passive setup, but depending on tastes and characteristics of the system, lower impedance could be beneficial. Sometimes, the pups may not like the amp or vice versa. That being said, I was not totally impressed with these pups as wired by the makers.
After reading about the Music Man pickups, decided to wire the coils in parallel. Less output, obviously, but that's what the knobs on your amp are for. More solid defined tone to my ear.
The Spector has a piezo and one HZ. The piezo has its electronics, but the HZ is a passive setup that is buffered through the board unchanged. Changing the tone cap from .047 to .1 did the trick. When fully engaged, there must be a resonant tank circuit set up, it actually increases the volume of high harmonics but still takes out the scratch. Sounds kind of like a P-Bass to me. Very pleased with the sound when blended with the piezo. Also like the fact that I can work the strings hard close to the bridge without a pickup in the way.
The Schecter suffers from poor stock wiring, no doubt contributing to their general low esteem in the community. The preamp is just a B/T, does an OK job. The root of most problems with passive setups is the parallel wiring scheme - not referring to the coils as referenced above but the overall wiring of the instrument. This applies when there is more than one pickup. Let's assume two, as in my case. The old school parallel V/T with neck/both/bridge switch allows for little flexibility. Almost always get the best results with a nuanced blend. The parallel V/V/T gives that flexibility, but requires the pots to be wired bass-ackwards (pun not intended) to allow for blending. The consequence of this is that at low settings, the pickup sees a very low resistance, sapping the energy. In the case of the classic Jazz Bass, this effect may contribute to its distinctive character at those settings. My observation is that the HZ's don't like low impedance loading. Furthermore, in parallel the pickups are "tugging" at each other - more low impedance. The Schecter has a blend and a master volume, very convenient, but even worse problems than twin volumes - a noticeable loss of crispness and character with the blend centered. I have two old Epiphones that I rewired with the Danelectro series scheme with excellent results. Rewiring the Schecter in series did the trick. Many have used the series scheme - it's usually love/hate just like the EMG's (see the Jazz Bass thread on this issue). With the series scheme, you make up most of the level difference from the coil rewiring, and are also able to use 2 totally independent tone controls. The Epiphones also have phase switches. Probably will put one in the Schecter for grins. Out of phase with neck on full then adding a little bridge is a blast.
Bottom line, works for me!