Passive vs Active, what do you actually gig with?

[dave64o]

Rehearsal? I bought a very inexpensive bass that I would be comfortable keeping in our LS/BL’s basement practice space just so that I didn’t have to bring an instrument back and forth to rehearsals. I considered several, but bought a Yamaha BB235 for a little over $300. It’s my first PJ, is passive, and it plays and sounds much nicer to me than you’d expect from a bass that cost so little.


Gig? I always bring 2 basses to a gig and roughly 90% of the time it’s two of these four:
- Stingray 5HH: active
- Stingray Special 5HH: active
- Big Al 5SSS: active/passive, I play it passive about 75% of the time
- Sire V5R Jazz 5: passive
So, for gigs, it’s a probably about 55/45 passive/active


If I like the bass overall, I’ll keep it, I’m not hung up on whether a bass is active or passive, though I do like an active bass with a passive option. My Stingrays are an exception, though – I simply love Stingrays. But, in general, I enjoy having and using different options. The one thing I *do* like about active basses is that they tend to have more controls right on the bass, which makes tonal adjustments on gigs easier. Our guitar player is usually standing between me and my bass rig and, on the small “stages” we play, we’re often packed together too tightly for me to easily be able to access my amp to make adjustments between songs. So, generally speaking, I find active basses to be a little more useful to me than passive for gigs.

 

[tvbop]

Passive, having played active back in the 80's when it all needed to be 'electric sounding and up front'. Passive now for me sounds natural... subtle.

 

[sc_precision]

It really depends on the genre. A lot of modern pop, hip hop, modern metal, etc usually an active bass is used for a loud stable, clean tone, slap tones and especially for stadiums and arenas.

I prefer passive P basses myself but have an active P/MM for more modern tones. If you could only own one bass for whatever reason then an active/passive bass with a P/J or P/MM would be the way to go.

Cliff Williams used a P bass, J bass, etc over his career but eventually stuck with the active Stingray because AC/DC were by then playing huge arenas and stadiums but who knows.. the bass player that replaced Cliff after he retired plays a passive P bass but I prefer Cliff's punchy stingray in that setting.

 

[smeet]

Active. 5-string. Rounds. Use the onboard eq to get a bit more mid definition and punch. Always.

 

[el murdoque]

I honestly don't care.
At the moment I use four basses for gigging, and all are passive.
About six years ago, I had 8 and 7 of them were active.

I usually bring a pedal board, so the settings on the bass are not changed much (if at all).