I think we need to keep harping on this just to make you relive it and feel bad.
Just kidding, no reason to feel bad. We all have forgetting something or did just plain stupid things. That's how some of us became parents.
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I will never buy another "active-only" bass
- Thread starter Greenman72
- Start date
I think we need to keep harping on this just to make you relive it and feel bad.
Just kidding, no reason to feel bad. We all have forgetting something or did just plain stupid things. That's how some of us became parents.
I found it wisest to never say “never” about anything when it comes to bass and bass playing.
In their defense, those are bad things.
I still at least drive a stick shift.
I've always driven stick and it's getting tougher to find. Just bought a '23 WRX and that will probably be my last stick unless there is a revival of manuals. I was surprised when the new Integra was announced and that stick was an extra $5k.
I was in the car business for quite a few years. The fact is only about 20% of people even know how to drive a manual transmission anymore.
You sound like someone who uses common sense. The world could use more people like you.
Hundreds of gigs over the past six years with active basses and never had a problem with one or needed to use the bypass pot that's on two of them. It's comforting to know I have the option on them, but I bring a P bass along as a backup even though I've never had to use it.
I'm waiting for the eventual "escape" scene in a movie where the protagonists hop into a vehicle only to discover that none of them know how to drive a stick shift and have to be rescued by the boomer they were mean to in an earlier scene.I was in the car business for quite a few years. The fact is only about 20% of people even know how to drive a manual transmission anymore.
Unrelated: where is the OP with an explanation of what they don't like about active basses?
It was a strong and unequivocal statement. Tell us why.
The only time I use passive on any instrument is when the battery goes out!
I like shaping my tone. If I’m playing straight ahead jazz I’m usually boosting the bass & cutting mids & highs.
If I’m playing modern then I’ll usually scoop the mids and boost the treble. As oxymoronic as it may sound, I have a tonal vision…
V
I like shaping my tone. If I’m playing straight ahead jazz I’m usually boosting the bass & cutting mids & highs.
If I’m playing modern then I’ll usually scoop the mids and boost the treble. As oxymoronic as it may sound, I have a tonal vision…
V
In the words of the immortal Rufus T Firefly....... Whatever it is... I'm against it!We should start a poll to see who agrees with this.
I gotta Precision and I gotta Dimension. One's passive & one's active. Sometimes I choose one over the other.
They sound like Fender basses.
They sound like Fender basses.
I agree with the sentiment in your OP, but not really with any of the options in your poll.
I do prefer active/passives, and on my last two basses the passive mode was a key selling point. Being able to flip to passive not only saves your song/set if your battery craps out halfway through, but on basses like my Sire P7 where you still have a master tone control available, passive mode becomes a legitimate tonal choice and not just an emergency option. My Sire's set up so the 3-band produces a slight scoop for more modern genres, and then I just flip passive/active as the song calls for.
For that reason, I voted "generally disagree" because one of the best tricks many actives can do, is be passive. However I'd say the poll is poorly worded. Reading the options, it sounds like you're choosing between passive only and active only, when you clearly imply the thread topic is about basses that can be both.
Basses all require circuitry somewhere to make music - wherever it is, it's part of the instrument. Most bases have pickups that are wound to be "hot" - which means they have more output and impedance than....you probably want. I designed microphones for a living, and in the world, everything is low impedance - you can hook up any decent professional mic to 500 feet of cable, and it'll sound just fine. Electric guitars and basses? Not so much.
All that said, there are ways to make basses lower impedance, so you get some of this benefit - you wire hum cancelling pickups in parallel, and the impedance drops by a factor of 4. OK, so what? Well, basses with active circuitry in them do two things for you:
1) They buffer the bass from the cable load, so it sounds the same, even if you put a different cable on it, and....
2) The let you have active eq on board the instrument - at your fingertips, as it were.
In exchange for this, you have a battery, and the circuitry is typically designed for long battery life, which gives performance compromises (often in the form of noise). Anyway, if you don't need #2 (If you're OK with your eq being elsewhere), you can deal with problem #1 and still keep the bass passive (no batteries or the issues that come with them) by lowering the impedance. Most of my basses are done this way - they can have enough extended high frequency content to sound "active", yet they don't need a battery. I use a Source Audio EQ 2 for my eq (it has far more flexibility than any on board eq), and I have a few other carefully chose pedals that get me where I need to go sound wise. It's an "active bass" conceptually and sonically (the circuitry is part of the sound), but it isn't all physically located on the part of the instrument that I wear.
All that said, there are ways to make basses lower impedance, so you get some of this benefit - you wire hum cancelling pickups in parallel, and the impedance drops by a factor of 4. OK, so what? Well, basses with active circuitry in them do two things for you:
1) They buffer the bass from the cable load, so it sounds the same, even if you put a different cable on it, and....
2) The let you have active eq on board the instrument - at your fingertips, as it were.
In exchange for this, you have a battery, and the circuitry is typically designed for long battery life, which gives performance compromises (often in the form of noise). Anyway, if you don't need #2 (If you're OK with your eq being elsewhere), you can deal with problem #1 and still keep the bass passive (no batteries or the issues that come with them) by lowering the impedance. Most of my basses are done this way - they can have enough extended high frequency content to sound "active", yet they don't need a battery. I use a Source Audio EQ 2 for my eq (it has far more flexibility than any on board eq), and I have a few other carefully chose pedals that get me where I need to go sound wise. It's an "active bass" conceptually and sonically (the circuitry is part of the sound), but it isn't all physically located on the part of the instrument that I wear.
I have active only and passive only basses and active/passive basses, but when it's time to play the gig, it's always active at this point. It's probably the build rather than the electronics, but I just feel like I have a little more energy in active mode and prefer the sound given the basses that I have.
Given a specific bass that has a passive or active version such as the Fender Precisions and Jazz models, I will always choose the passive version.
With that said, if I desire a particular model bass that comes in active only, I won't let that stop me from purchasing it.
I prefer the active preamp mode on my basses that come with the passive/active option such as my Warwick Thumb. Note that there's not an option regarding the pickups which are active, and if the battery dies, you've got no sound.
The only reason I would update a passive bass to active is if it has soap bars and I want a P-style coil configuration - because passive versions in the confines of a soapbar don't work as well as true P-pickups which benefit from greater distance between the two coils.
To sum up, I selected 'No opinion' as my best response for this poll-
With that said, if I desire a particular model bass that comes in active only, I won't let that stop me from purchasing it.
I prefer the active preamp mode on my basses that come with the passive/active option such as my Warwick Thumb. Note that there's not an option regarding the pickups which are active, and if the battery dies, you've got no sound.
The only reason I would update a passive bass to active is if it has soap bars and I want a P-style coil configuration - because passive versions in the confines of a soapbar don't work as well as true P-pickups which benefit from greater distance between the two coils.
To sum up, I selected 'No opinion' as my best response for this poll-
