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Matching passive bass with active sound

SteveLo42

SteveLo42

Feb 18, 2024
232
257
#1
Hi.

I have been playing my Ibanez SR600 for about 18 months, and I love it. Always use it in active mode.

A few months ago I bought an LTD Surveyor 97 (passive, PJ setup), as I wanted a second bass but also something different.

Short story, the LTD just doesn't live up to the Ibanez in my rather heavy thrash band. Granted I didn't adjust either my compressor or DS pedals. Now, it seems to me that the LTD is purely missing the pre-amp that is present in the Ibanez. Therefore, if I was to get myself a pre-amp pedal and stick that in front of my pedalboard, I could get a more well-matched sound, comparable to the Ibanez.

Is it really that simple?

Thanks!
 
#5
I doubt the solution is as simple as adding a preamp, unless you are strictly concerned with level matching.

1. The position and type of pickups have an effect on the tone. There is significant variance in the two basses.
2. Preamps can be be transparent or have their own baked in tone. No idea what the Ibanez preamp does to the tone or how you would have to shape the LTDs signal to get a similar sound....or if a similar sound is even possible.
3. Frequency centers and bandwidth of the tone controls can have a significant impact on the overall voicing and the range of different tones the bass is capable of.
4. It's usually necessary to tailor the settings of your effects whenever you swap instruments with different tonal qualities. It's also typically necessary to adjust effects if you plug into a rig with a different overall tone.

I am not saying you shouldn't try a preamp, only that there is no guarantee that it will provide the exact results you are looking for. Who knows, maybe a preamp will give you a totally different sound you really like.
 
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#6
It's sure that an active bass and a passive bass are different. You can add a preamp in your LTD (by the way I have an LTD Surveyor 5 with EMG pickups and preamp) and it might get closer but it will always be different, mainly because of the pickups, wood, construction, etc.

Instead of a preamp, I would add an EQ pedal. This will get you closer to your Ibanez. But if you want to sound like your Ibanez, then simply used your Ibanez :roflmao:.
 
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#8
SteveLo42 said:
Hi.

I have been playing my Ibanez SR600 for about 18 months, and I love it. Always use it in active mode.

A few months ago I bought an LTD Surveyor 97 (passive, PJ setup), as I wanted a second bass but also something different.

Short story, the LTD just doesn't live up to the Ibanez in my rather heavy thrash band. Granted I didn't adjust either my compressor or DS pedals. Now, it seems to me that the LTD is purely missing the pre-amp that is present in the Ibanez. Therefore, if I was to get myself a pre-amp pedal and stick that in front of my pedalboard, I could get a more well-matched sound, comparable to the Ibanez.

Is it really that simple?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Different setups/configurations, pickups, etc. result in different sounds. In what way does the LTD not live up? What characteristics of the Ibanez are you trying to achieve from the LTD?
 
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#9
Thanks for all the responses. I totally accept the points about the sound naturally being different, and appreciate it probably seems odd that I intentionally went for something different and am now complaining that it is different :bag:

I think the main point was that the LTD just didn't sound as beefy. I guess in the same way the Ibanez sounds in passive mode compared to active. I have thought about changing pickups but trying not to go down that road.

I might go for a small MXR preamp with eq adjustments. Probably just needs some experimenting to figure out what I like and why.
 
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#10
Sorry but it all sounds completely illogical...

You "wanted something different" and that's what you got!

Messing about with it to sound like the one that already works for the situation, defeats your whole starting point and costs you a wad of cash to boot..
Perhaps you should've just bought the same Ibanez in a different colour?
 
#11
Get a cheap loop pedal and a 6 band eq pedal. Place them in that order at the start of your pedal board. Record a loop on the looper of your Ibanez. Then play your LTD through the setup, swapping back to the Ibanez loop to compare. Use the eq pedal to try and get them more matched. Make sure you turn off the eq pedal when you play the Ibanez loop.
 
#12
LiptonJigglers said:
Sorry but it all sounds completely illogical...

You "wanted something different" and that's what you got!

Messing about with it to sound like the one that already works for the situation, defeats your whole starting point and costs you a wad of cash to boot..
Perhaps you should've just bought the same Ibanez in a different colour?
Click to expand...
Welcome to my world :woot:
 
#13
SteveLo42 said:
Hi.

I have been playing my Ibanez SR600 for about 18 months, and I love it. Always use it in active mode.

A few months ago I bought an LTD Surveyor 97 (passive, PJ setup), as I wanted a second bass but also something different.

Short story, the LTD just doesn't live up to the Ibanez in my rather heavy thrash band. Granted I didn't adjust either my compressor or DS pedals. Now, it seems to me that the LTD is purely missing the pre-amp that is present in the Ibanez. Therefore, if I was to get myself a pre-amp pedal and stick that in front of my pedalboard, I could get a more well-matched sound, comparable to the Ibanez.

Is it really that simple?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Pretty much. Active electronics are just an onboard preamp. A preamp pedal is just a preamp on the floor. Same thing, different spots.
 
#14
Yes but…

Lots of preamp choices. But a preamp in your bass and a preamp that your bass patches into are fundamentally the same.
Agree with @bassbrad maybe a boost gets you there. I’m a big fan of Sex Drive but like anything else there is no best.
 
#15
FullumMusic said:
Pretty much. Active electronics are just an onboard preamp. A preamp pedal is just a preamp on the floor. Same thing, different spots.
Click to expand...
It's not the same because your are adding volume pots (or volume and blend pots), tone pots and 15 feet of cable between the two. Mixing two passive pickups with passive electronics in your bass is again not the same, onboard preamps often do it with active electronics and buffers.
 
#16
DonaldR said:
It's not the same because your are adding volume pots (or volume and blend pots), tone pots and 15 feet of cable between the two. Mixing two passive pickups with passive electronics in your bass is again not the same, onboard preamps often do it with active electronics and buffers.
Click to expand...
It really depends on which onboard pre and pedal pre you get. Many onboard electronics also have passive tone or blends. Many pedal pres have buffers too, just like onboards. And many onboard pres allow you to put it in passive mode. And usually passive mode with the tone and volume open sounds exactly the same as active mode with the volume up and EQ flat (and passive tone open if it has.)

The 15 feet of cable before the pre or after the pre isn't going to make so much of a difference that one will sound like it's going through a pre and the other isn't.

They're all pre-amps.
- Active pickups have a pre-amp circuit in the pickup.
- Active basses have an onboard pre-amp between the pickup and the output jack.
- Pedal pre-amps are pre-amps between the instrument output and amplifier input.
- Amplifiers have preamps between their instrument input and the power amp.
- Some distortion and effect pedals also have pre-amps in them too.
They're all essentially the same thing in different locations and slightly different features depending on the manufacturer & model. They're all going to sound slightly different depending on where in the chain and what model, but they all sound like signal going through pre-amps. If you want your passive bass to sound active, run it through a pre-amp, whether onboard or off-board, because that's all your active bass is doing: running through a pre-amp before it hits the pre-amp on the amp.

To me, the sound of an active bass is just the sound of multiple preamps, because the signal is going through whatever onboard pre you have, and then the built-in pre on your amp... and also maybe a pre pedal too.
 
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#20
It SOUNDS like your pedal chain is set up for the Ibanez, and you don't change them for the Surveyor.

Here's the way to tell where you're at:

Take each bass
Skip the pedals
Plug each bass on a cable straight in, leave the pedals out entirely, one after the other (i.e., bass-cable-amp, and leave the settings on the amp alone)
Then see relative to each other if and how much difference there is in output between the SDGR and the Surveyor.

NOW you know where you're at, and what to do to use them both. It's not unusual going from one axe to the next to have to tweak things a bit, you just want to be sure there's no big, night and day difference between the two.
 
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