myth busting - just because your bass has a battery, doesn't mean the pickups are active

[Killed_by_Death]

Seen this a LOT, so I thought I'd bring it up:

OP asks for suggestions for a bass with Active pickups,
99% of the replies are recommendations for active basses with passive pickups (literally 1 out of 100 will be a bass with truly active pickups)

Stingray & L-2000 use passive pickups, BTW
Even most Ibanez have passive pickups.

The vast majority of Active basses are considered Active, because they have a pre-amp, which requires a battery.
If your bass has an active/passive switch, the pickups are passive.

If you're unsure, open the controls cavity & take a look at the wires to the pickups.
If there are only two wires, they are not active. Active pickups would require another conductor for the power to the internal pre-amp.

 

[socialleper]

You could have a passive bass with LEDs in the neck that require a battery, a la Warwick.

 

[catcauphonic]

I can attest that my Spector Forte X does indeed have active EMGs

 

[Samatza]

Good point on this actually. You can have active pickups and an active circuit or passive pickups and an active circuit and often if you're changing the preamp or pickups you need to know which you have.

 

[tom-g]

...
If your bass has an active/passive switch, the pickups are passive.
...

Not necessarily. I have active MEC pickups with a two band active MEC preamp. The active/passive switch bypasses the active preamp.

 

[Nashrakh]

Seen this a LOT, so I thought I'd bring it up:

OP asks for suggestions for a bass with Active pickups,
99% of the replies are recommendations for active basses with passive pickups (literally 1 out of 100 will be a bass with truly active pickups)

In most cases I've seen, the OP will have no idea what he's actually asking for and is not looking for actual active PUs. So the assumption by the respondents may be quite fair that OP has also succumbed to this faulty naming convention.

Of course, you know what they say about the word "assume"!

 

[Killed_by_Death]

I have active MEC pickups with a two band active MEC preamp. The active/passive switch bypasses the active preamp.

That switch is incorrectly labeled, it's a pre-amp bypass, not an active/passive switch.

 

[tom-g]

That switch is incorrectly labeled, it's a pre-amp bypass, not an active/passive switch.

That is correct. You labeled it incorrectly, because that is exactly what those switches do all the time - bypass the preamp, as I have stated.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

If the pickups are passive & you bypass the pre-amp, the bass is in PASSIVE mode.
Not so if your pickups are still Active! (requiring power to function)

I can't get my head around why people argue these types of points. It's FACT.
Especially Stingray owners who insist their pickups are active.

 

[JRA]

I can't get my head around why people argue these types of points.

i'll take a crack at it:
- we call it "entertainment"
- we are relatively anonymous
- we are misinformed
- we are parrots
- we are stupid

i'll come up with some more and get back.

i think your OP is both constructive and informative.

 

[Coolhandjjl]

When my bass is just hanging on the wall, it's passive.
When I'm playing it, it's active.
'Nuf said

 

[Kukulkan61]

My basses turn the other cheek always...

 

[sikamikanico]

Didn't EMG used to have (they may still do) active pickups with passive tone controls? Talk about confusing...

 

[subtlestew]

I was much confused about this back in the '80s. I wondered why my Steinberger XL-2 wasn't an XL-2A, the one with the active EQ. Mine has a tone knob and a battery, so active, right? No - it's the passive version of the XL-2, in that it doesn't have an active preamp... but the EMG pickups require battery power to function. This was explained to me as a situation where there were active pickups, but it's not an active bass because it doesn't have an active EQ.

 

[subtlestew]

@sikamikanico , I was typing my experience as you were posting about the exact same thing! Yes, it is confusing.

 

[FugaziBomb]

I was much confused about this back in the '80s. I wondered why my Steinberger XL-2 wasn't an XL-2A, the one with the active EQ. Mine has a tone knob and a battery, so active, right? No - it's the passive version of the XL-2, in that it doesn't have an active preamp... but the EMG pickups require battery power to function. This was explained to me as a situation where there were active pickups, but it's not an active bass because it doesn't have an active EQ.

I would say a bass is active if it has active PICKUPS, regardless of the tone circuit.

EMG w/ passive tone circuit is still active to me.

A Stingray is a passive bass with a powered preamp to me.

Like I said; to me active/passive is all in the pickups themselves. The market doesn't share my classifications, though.

 

[arbiterusa]

Didn't EMG used to have (they may still do) active pickups with passive tone controls?

Both my Steinberger and the Jazz that has EMGs are done this way. I hate active tone controls.

 

[micguy]

The goofy thing about all of this is that EMG's aren't really all that different than normal pickups - they have magnets and wire inside, just like any other magnetic pickup. The difference is they decided to put a preamp inside the pickup housing - hence you can't wire a passive bypass switch to them - if the battery goes dead, you're out of luck. I have never seen why this is an advantage. EMG pickups are (if you dig inside far enough) passive, they just made an unfortunate decision about where to put the electronics. As a result, I won't use their "active" pickups.

 

[sikamikanico]

I think part of the confusion is the distinction between the preamp and EQ. Assuming preamp is simply gain/boost, and EQ is any kind of tone shaping via cut, boost, or other kinds of filtering...

so an active pickup has the preamp in the pickup itself, to boost the signal... my understanding is that active pickups are typically low-z, to yield a more hi-fi sound. They sound weak passive and so they use a preamp to boost the signal. But not to shape the sound in any way, just boost it.

You can shape the sound of either type of pickups (active or passive) actively or passively. Cut only is passive - like tone control (really a low pass filter), or G&L L series controls, or those EMG systems. Cut/boost is active. Then there are filter-based preamps like Alembic, Wal and ACG that are active filters.

so I guess Stingray is a tricky one to classify. I understand it's a low-z pickup that sounds weak by itself. But the preamp (boost) is not in the pickup, it's integrated into the control assembly, right? So does it really matter where exactly the preamp is? The pickup itself seems to be designed like an active pickup...

 

[sikamikanico]

The goofy thing about all of this is that EMG's aren't really all that different than normal pickups - they have magnets and wire inside, just like any other magnetic pickup. The difference is they decided to put a preamp inside the pickup housing - hence you can't wire a passive bypass switch to them - if the battery goes dead, you're out of luck. I have never seen why this is an advantage. EMG pickups are (if you dig inside far enough) passive, they just made an unfortunate decision about where to put the electronics. As a result, I won't use their "active" pickups.

Are other active pickups designed any differently? Aren't all ultimately just passive pickups with a preamp inside?