Is there any sacrifice with active/passive circuits?

[Bassaga]

I generally just prefer passive, but once in a while I miss the utility of being active. So, active circuit with a passive switch, right?

But I'm getting wary of "best of both worlds" stuff nowadays. Like coil splitting gives you humbuckers AND single coil tones!! ...but it doesn't really  ever sound like a single coil. Stacked pots give you versatility AND a tidy control setup!! ... if you can keep the knobs from sticking when you need them.

So I thought I'd check your experiences on whether active/passive circuits really do give us both the full active and passive experiences, or if it's a good idea that doesn't usually work the way we hope it would. I know you've gotta watch out for unbalanced volume when switching between them, but is there anything else?

If it matters, I'm probably looking at either a Sire V7, P7, or Yamaha BB735 as far as this question goes. Thanks, y'all.

 

[fhm555]

IME, it depends on which preamp. My Jazz Plus has a 4 way rotary switch that gives me an off, a passive, and two different settings of the preamp, one with a fixed mid and the other with mid adjustable by a mini pot on the preamp board. It truly is capable of 2 distinct active outputs, and a passive output. All the other onboard preamps I used or tried, were full time active and required knob tweaking to change your output.

 

[Kerem Koseoglu]

You seem to address a highly controversial topic. I will share my "subjective" opinions and experience on the subject.

In my experience, the more you want to achieve with a single instrument, the less satisfied you will get. In other words, more "specialized" instruments fulfill their designated purpose better than more "generalist" instruments because they were designed for a single role. That's why I ended up possessing distinct instruments: a P with flats, a J with nickel rounds, a Sadowsky Modern with steel rounds.

In my coil splitting adventures, I came to the conclusion that you either get a good humbucker sound with an afterthought mediocre single coil sound, or a good single coil sound with an afterthought mediocre humbucker sound. The reason is, a good humbucker is not merely "two good single coils". There are many parameters that go into a pickup's design, like resistances, winding type, magnet strength, inductance, capacitance, etc. A good humbucker's values won't simply be duplicating a good single coil's values.

That's why a splitted humbucker doesn't automatically translate to a good sounding single coil. In some cases, your ears might like both the humbucker and the split sound - but that isn't a simple equation which works in all cases.

Active / passive is a similar story. A passive signal is very fragile (high impedance) and any resistance component in its path may alter the sound significantly. In passive basses, pickups and electronics are designed accordingly. Active signals are less fragile (low impedance) and are more robust against components. In active basses, pickups and electronics are designed accordingly, and in many cases, pickup characteristics are built to be supported by the preamp - which may not work as well with the preamp turned off.

So, simply throwing in a random preamp in front of a random passive pickup may not sound as good as you hoped. Likewise, simply turning off the preamp of an active bass may not sound as good as an originally passive bass. There may be cases where you like both active and passive sounds in the same bass, but it isn't a simple equation which works in all cases.

I used to own a Fodera Emperor 5. That bass satisfied my ears with all humbucker / split coil / active / passive sounds; so it's not an impossible task - but not a simple formula either.

 

[jj.833]

I have jazz bass with Audere active preamp and love it. I also have passive P with not even a tone pot and love it. Active jazz is universal, passive P is raw and surprisingly well responsive to finger techniques (likely because it is a very well made bass). Most times I use jazz, and find the rare P times more interesting.

Few of my students who use Sires never use them in the passive mode. I feel that the active/passive sound difference of Sires is generally not in favor of the passive, somehow. And also, our brains work that if you can turn an upgrade on, you tend not to turn it off again.

 

[Geri O]

I concur with the more it does, the less it does well.

I have an active Jazz-style bass and a passive Precision. I’m not doing “the best of all worlds” with my basses.

Sometimes, I want to ask, what song lists are you playing that needs several different bass tones and EQ settings. But I’m afraid that if I ask, someone will have an answer…...

So I just continue on with my 2 basses.

 

[InhumanResource]

I generally just prefer passive, but once in a while I miss the utility of being active. So, active circuit with a passive switch, right?

But I'm getting wary of "best of both worlds" stuff nowadays. Like coil splitting gives you humbuckers AND single coil tones!! ...but it doesn't really  ever sound like a single coil. Stacked pots give you versatility AND a tidy control setup!! ... if you can keep the knobs from sticking when you need them.

So I thought I'd check your experiences on whether active/passive circuits really do give us both the full active and passive experiences, or if it's a good idea that doesn't usually work the way we hope it would. I know you've gotta watch out for unbalanced volume when switching between them, but is there anything else?

If it matters, I'm probably looking at either a Sire V7, P7, or Yamaha BB735 as far as this question goes. Thanks, y'all.

My takeaway after a lot of years is that in general, like others are saying, trying to cram a lot of extra versatility into an instrument can leave you with a lot of half solutions but none really great. I’m not into swapping components anymore for this reason, I have a few basses I like and some are active, some are passive.

Having said that, if you are going the route of installing a preamp it pays to get a good one like a John East model with sweepable mid freq. I have a jazz with one of these that will do any flavor of jazz bass you want from passive to hifi, but I wing pretend it will do a stingray. So I have a stingray for that!

I think what I’ve learned is that I just get a bass I like the sound of and take it for what it is. Got my ray for the sizzle hifi ray sound, but I also have a really sweet sounding passive jazz, and a few others that I’m just not interested in cutting up anymore.

 

[JazznFunk]

I never bypass the preamp in my active basses. I never want or need to. I play active basses because of how they sound with the active preamp as part of their design. I play passive basses because of their specific character. I don't expect one to do what the other one does in full. I never feel like I am sacrificing anything on either side. I enjoy them both. I also change batteries before they fail, or before an important session or gig. A couple of bucks and under a minute of time for preventive maintenance has meant that I've never had a battery related issue in the studio or live.

 

[MCS4]

My personal opinion, based upon my experiences with various instruments, is that the only thing an active/passive bass "sacrifices" is the passive tone knob (although there are mods and workarounds for that as well). As someone who almost never touches the tone knob on a passive bass, this is not a negative for me, but it could be a complete dealbreaker for someone who uses the tone knob a lot. Beyond this, I've never noticed any significantly or consistently different characteristics of the purely passive basses I have owned in comparison to my active-passive basses when used in passive mode.

 

[FullumMusic]

I think the main (mostly) objective advantage to Active/Passive circuits is you have the features of an onboard pre if you like those, but if a battery dies on stage, you can pop it into passive and keep playing without stopping.

Every other "advantage" or disadvantage/sacrifice is gonna be more matter of preference, or very personal use-case instances, imho, as with most things in music.

Also, a lot of things are sold to use as "advantages" because they're being SOLD to us. A lot of these "advantages" are again, really just differences, and different people like different things, and one isn't necessarily better than the other. Just different. We see it all the time when people say they're going to upgrade their bass strings or pickups or [whatever], but really they're just changing it to suit their preference. Their upgrade might be someone else's cross-grade or downgrade. It's just a modification or customization, but we call them upgrades i guess to justify spending the money? Because it's better for us so i must be better universally? I dunno.

I think all the advantages of an Active/Passive circuit are probably personal preference things.

Edit to add:
I was thinking about well designed basses or circuits where thought went into pairing the circuit with good pickups and the player likes how it sounds in both active and passive modes, or circuits where passive mode and active with the EQ flat sound pretty much the same in tone and volume.

I guess another potential "objective" downside would be poorly designed basses where the bass just doesn't sound good in passive mode, and there's a noticeable tone and volume drop going active to passive, where playing passive isn't really an option. Could be because the pickups don't sound good without some EQ from the active circuit or some other thing. Dunno. I had one of those. It might be more a pickup problem than an active/passive problem. But if the bass sounds like trash in passive mode, it doesn't really matter if it's the pickups or circuit or something else. It still means you have a passive mode you can't really use.

 

[Zazie Moondust]

Typically full active basses can have things like Active Pickups, Active Blends and Filter Based Preamps that are difficult to implement in a switchable active/passive due to complexity. (And not implementable at all when it comes to active pickups)

Most switchable active/passive basses just have a switchable EQ and end of chain buffer. But at the same time it can be easier to add passive functionality it it's just an active EQ or Buffer at the end, like adding passive tone controls.

This said I am curious to try and implement as much of the best of both worlds as I can. So many different ways to combine things the possibilities can feel overwhelming.

 

[ClassicJazz]

I think it depends on the instrument and the quality of the electronics. Take my Fodera Emperor which has split coil pickups. There is no doubt you are hearing single coil pickups when you flick the switch. In single coil mode they are in the 70's Jazz location.

As far as passive/active mode, I never found a need to switch from active to passive. Being active gives me way more ability to tweak my tone from the bass when on stage. I think once I went to passive mode because my battery went dead.

 

[Dynacord]

My personal opinion, based upon my experiences with various instruments, is that the only thing an active/passive bass "sacrifices" is the passive tone knob (although there are mods and workarounds for that as well). As someone who almost never touches the tone knob on a passive bass, this is not a negative for me, but it could be a complete dealbreaker for someone who uses the tone knob a lot. Beyond this, I've never noticed any significantly or consistently different characteristics of the purely passive basses I have owned in comparison to my active-passive basses when used in passive mode.

I favor passive but have a Jazz that came with Sadowsky preamp installed which includes a conventional passive tone control. I like that a lot, useful in both modes. I know at least one of the Glockenklang pres has it as well.

 

[Brandon Shea]

I have a Sire V7 and P8. When I first got them, I didn't bother with the active electronics very much since the passive tone seemed really good. I started using the active preamp more often though, and it's definitely nice to have some extra flexibility at my fingertips. The stacked controls aren't usually a problem, but you'll definitely bump the wrong thing from time to time. Aside from the controls, I see absolutely no downside to having the active/passive switch on these basses.

I haven't tried Fender's new Player II Modified basses yet, but those seem like they'd be solid contenders as well. The issue I had with the previous generation (Player Plus) was the lack of passive tone control, and thankfully Fender addressed that this time. I've also heard great things about the active/passive toggles on G&L basses, although I've only ever been able to try one of those myself.

 

[Fuzzbass]

In my experience, the more you want to achieve with a single instrument, the less satisfied you will get. In other words, more "specialized" instruments fulfill their designated purpose better than more "generalist" instruments because they were designed for a single role.

Fair point that there are downsides to versatility, but the downside is mostly in the mindset of the user, not the device itself. Think of a fully parametric equalizer: multiple bands of EQ, each with adjustments for cut/boost, frequency, and Q. There are countless ways to get unsatisfactory and even unpleasant tones from such a device. However sound engineers typically use these devices for minimal, surgical tweaks.

Likewise, the user shouldn't expect that every setting will sound good on a bass loaded with features. The old Fender Roscoe Beck bass is a great example: it was passive, but each of the humbucking pickups could be run in series, parallel, or single coil modes. An active bass can add fancy EQ to that mix, including midrange controls that are frequency-switched or even sweepable (semi-parametric). The great advantage to all these controls is that they allow the user to find one, or two, or a few tones they enjoy best. For one user it might be the neck pickup soloed in series/humbucking mode, for another it might be both pickups in parallel/single coil.

Versatility is especially useful for those like me who have fickle ears. If I get tired of a specialized bass, then I'll put it away -- or flip it, as I did when I couldn't afford many basses. With a versatile instrument, if I get weary of one particular tone then I can choose from many more -- and still have that original tone onboard should I change my mind yet again.



TL;DR: as long as the user can find one or more pleasing tones in a versatile instrument, they shouldn't feel dissatisfied about the unpleasing ones.

 

[HolmeBass]

I generally just prefer passive, but once in a while I miss the utility of being active. So, active circuit with a passive switch, right?

But I'm getting wary of "best of both worlds" stuff nowadays. Like coil splitting gives you humbuckers AND single coil tones!! ...but it doesn't really  ever sound like a single coil. Stacked pots give you versatility AND a tidy control setup!! ... if you can keep the knobs from sticking when you need them.

So I thought I'd check your experiences on whether active/passive circuits really do give us both the full active and passive experiences, or if it's a good idea that doesn't usually work the way we hope it would. I know you've gotta watch out for unbalanced volume when switching between them, but is there anything else?

If it matters, I'm probably looking at either a Sire V7, P7, or Yamaha BB735 as far as this question goes. Thanks, y'all.

One issue is pickup blend knobs - in passive mode they can be pretty lossy unless done in a particular way.

The other is volume knobs. In passive they dull the tone as you turn them down unless a treble bleed circuit is implemented.

That’s why on my latest custom build I dispensed with the active/passive switch to just run active, but kept the passive tone knob, which when well-implemented is the best part of a passive circuit in my opinion.

 

[BassicJazzy]

IME, it depends on which preamp. My Jazz Plus has a 4 way rotary switch that gives me an off, a passive, and two different settings of the preamp, one with a fixed mid and the other with mid adjustable by a mini pot on the preamp board. It truly is capable of 2 distinct active outputs, and a passive output. All the other onboard preamps I used or tried, were full time active and required knob tweaking to change your output.

I also own a Jazz Plus, and since the snap cap on the battery broke am only playing it in passive mode. The Kubicki preamp was apparently designed to link with the passive pickups without affecting the gain, to the bass doesn't lose anything being in passive mode. There is one position on the selector that does scoop the mids a bit, but not much. My Ibanez SR1350B, on the other hand, is always in active mode but I play it with the EQ switched off. Which bass sounds better? The Jazz Plus, in passive.

 

[J Wilson]

I prefer a real active instrument (genuine low impedance EMG or Alembic and their accompanying tone controls), or a traditional all passive instrument like most Fenders.

I'm no fan of the active/passive switch based instruments. I think they're a cheap way to ad-speak the unsuspecting that they're buying a true active system which falls outside the traditional concept using low-impedance pickups.

But the active/passive switch soothes the fears of battery failure, and since this layout runs regular high impedance pickups, you get the free fringe benefit of asking in your TB thread 'I'm going back to passive tone control, I've had it with this active stuff . . . '

 

[Aloe]

I prefer all my active/passive instruments in active, but that's just me. nothing's wrong with them in passive mode if that's your thing. take out the battery and enjoy if you don't need the active side.

I've however had some passive/active instruments with tricky wiring (like one pot for a passive tone in passive and active treble in active), they're still serviceable, but sometimes just not at home with a 40W iron. some of pots on those circuits might be on PCB, so if you'll get to fixing something there, you might end up ripping the active part and just wiring it as passive.

 

[iiipopes]

I tried passive/active once. Once. I ended up using the active 99% of the time, and really never used the passive. So the "sacrifice" was the waste of time, energy, and money wiring that bass both ways. I ended up selling it.

 

[mambo4]

If my bass did not have an active passive switch, I would never have discovered I like passive better