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Preamp question - active vs. passive etc. . .

S

semajniwdoog

May 3, 2009
83
3
www.james-goodwin.com
#1
I have an Ibanez soundgear from the early 90's - a real nice piece. It has ADX active pick ups which I've been talking about replacing for about 10 years now. In addition it has an onboard preamp. Here's my dilema. I HATE the active pickups, but I like the on board eq. I want to put in a couple of Bartolini passives:
1. Will I have have to sacrifice the preamp options?
2. Will I still need to run on the 9V batt. to support my preamp?
3. I'm not sure if the preamp is active (is there such a thing as a passive preamp?) If it is active, will I still get the "Hot" sound of the active eq that I dislike so much?
Any help will be appreciated - I'm realy technologically challenged when it comes to this kind of stuff - I just want to play and sound good!
Thanks!!
JG
 
#2
Hmm. First you say you like the onboard EQ, then later you say you dislike the 'hot sound of the EQ.' Not sure what to say.
Anyway, if I were you, I would simply remove the pickups and wire the new ones into the old preamp. Should work fine. If you still aren't happy, try running it passive for awhile. Still not happy? Lots of better preamp choices available now.
 
#4
I owned a few Ibanez basses in the past. If I'm not mistaken those preamps are proprietary and will only work with that pickup setup. So my answer would be yes...forgo the preamp and go passive if thats what you want. I can almost bet you'll head back to active land.
 
#5
semajniwdoog said:
Well, what I mean is, I like having an eq on the bass where I can adjust at a moments notice - however, I dislike the sound of my active pickups (I've always been a passive guy).
Click to expand...

The thing is, what you're hearing is a combination of the pickups and the EQ. Maybe the pickups sound great and the EQ sounds terrible, what will you do then?

The vast majority of preamps are active (which means they require power). There are a tiny number of so-called passive preamps on the market, e.g. Villex, but it's so much cheaper and easier to make an active one that that's almost all you'll ever find in a production bass.

The thing is with active pickups, they may sometimes be designed with the EQ controls built into them. I've seen one guy on here who pulled the "EQ harness" from his one bass and installed it in another bass, and didn't understand why it wasn't working. The harness was just the knobs and wires that controlled the EQ in the preamp circuit inside the pickups, and had no function separated from those pickups.

If you don't like the sound of your bass, but you love the feel of it enough that you want to keep and mod it, start fresh. Buy some passive pups that you know you like, and read here in the forum for recommendations of a preamp (with EQ) that has a "passive-like" sound quality. There are a couple I can think of, but I actually don't feel like recommending them (for my own reasons).
 

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