EMG 81 in bridge position with 2 passive pickups - Fender Strat

[The_Misfit]

My son picked up some upgrades for his Strat and I'm in the process of installing everything.

My issue is with the wiring - mixing active and passive pickups. I searched here and saw a couple replies to simliar threads - one metioned this was a problem, another seemed to be ok.

If this can be done...

Do I use the pots that came with the EMG?
I've searched - but anyone know of a wiring diagram for this type of arrangement?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

[David Schwab]

You really can't do it. Even if you use all 250k pots when the EMG is selected along with the other pickups it will load them down because it has a low output impedance.

Now on a Strat you are mostly dealing with one or two pickups at once, so it's not to bad, but you will have a big volume difference between the passive and active pickups.

He really should get two EMG Strat pickups. Another way to do it is to get a small preamp like an EMG Afterburner, and run the passive pickups through that to make them active.

If you want to continue with it and see how it works, use the stock 250k pots and not the 25k EMG pots. The volume taper won't be very good, but you can't use the 25k pots with the passive pickups.