pasive/active

A totally passive bass has very simple pickups and tone controls. The pickup consist of a magnetic bar surrounded by a coil of wires. The controls usually consist of a volume control and a tone control that will only roll off highs. This is a standard p-bass. A standard J-bass is very similar only it has two pickups. The wire coils are wound in opposite directions which makes it hum cancelling. The p-bass pup is actually 2 pickups very close together with the coils wound in opposite directions too. There are a lot of totally passive basses out there and many people feel they are still the best sounding.

You can take a bass with passive pickups and add a powered preamp to it. These basses have passive pickups with active electronics. MusicMan basses are this way and so are a bunch of others. The active preamp adds more tone controls like treble, mid, and bass. You can add and subtract from the sound. Active electronics require a battery of some sort usually 1 or 2 9 volt batteries. I personally prefer this type of setup. Fender Deluxe basses are setup this way too.

The third type uses active pickups and electronics. Active pickups have a built in preamp right in the pickup. Basses with active pickups usually have an active pre-amp for tone controls as well. EMG, Seymore Duncan, and Bartolini make active pickups along with several other companies. Basses like Spector , Alembic and Steinberger use active pickups. These pickups have an ultra clear highly articulate sound. They are not for everybody.

 

Passive = no battery or other power source required. Active = battery or other power source required. Note that some "active basses" default to passive operation if the battery dies; also some active basses have a switch for passive operation, that bypasses the preamp.

 

greybeard is right on the ball. very good description.

most high end instruments will be active, and have bass/mid/treble eq right there on your bass. a nice thing to have..only downside is that when your battery is dying, youve got to have one onhand to replace it..unless your bass has an active/passive switch (some dont. for good reasons, too.)

your average p bass or J bass is passive...low maintanance, being that there is no battery. less control over your sound- however you can EQ your bass on your amp if you want, you dont neccesarily need it on the bass itself.

 

What's the advantage to not having a bypass?

 

well, *the* DISadvantage to not having a passive bypass on MY bass is that when the battery dies, so do the bass. it happens quick too--- like fine one minute and completely gone 20 minutes later, with 10 minutes of increasing fartiness leading up to its death. that is a hassle all by itself. but on mine, i dont have a battery door, so the control cover has to come off to change it. it just *cant* happen during a set without stopping.

one of the main reasons i will always have two basses on "stage" (even if it is just a parking lot or the corner of a patio), no matter how pretentious it looks.

 

Yeah yeah, I dig that toobalicious, but what I don't get is tomvelsor hinting that some basses might be better off w/out a active/passive switch. I for one wouldn't own an active bass that can't go passive.

 

Many preamps with buffered blend controls do not have active/passive switches, because the blend pot is not set up to work with a passive signal. Other active basses have active pickups (i.e. EMGs) that don't have a passive mode, or pickups with low enough output that they have to be boosted to be usable.

Mike

 

Yeah, that must'a been what toobalicious was talking about. I didn't think about active pups.

 

how long does the battery last?