Bigger Wire, Less Turns

[David King]

Ron a buffer is pretty easy to put together. I really can't understand why you would pass up perfectly good sounding high-Z pickups for the added complexity and weak sonic signature of typical low-Z pickups. Flat frequency response is a myth in a bass guitar.

[gilligan]

Thanks David. I have never used active electronics on any guitar. I guess I was under the impression that active electronics with low z pickups would sound better, or different in a good way, than regular passive pickups. Less noise, smaller coil size etc... I started this thread to learn about active pickups. Now I am wondering why use active electronics on a guitar? I love my passive pickups, I just thought to go active you had to use low z pickups, for it to work properly. I will stay passive for now, and do some more research. I got confused somewhere along the line. ( again! ). Anyway thanks for the info. Any one have an opinion on going active? Is it worth it, does it improve anything or is it just "different"?
Ron

[Wired]

I agree with david schwabb. Active/passive switches work best when the pickups are originally designed as passive. But I should say that I think the pre should have little or no v gain. This way you can get two very different flavours from the instrument without the volume boost. And the switch should be true-bypass. Its especially good when the pre has a filter with a mid cut. A series/parallel switch here is pretty cool too (ie passive series/ active parallel) - although the pre should have a little boost (around 6 db) to compensate for the lower output of the coils in parallel mode. this works great with a MM bass. Also as mentioned, in a 2-p'up axe, the hotter hi z coils will blend better passively making true active/passive switching possible. (ie no buffering needed prior to blending.) And be aware that blending probs also are due to phase cancellation, though - not just the loading effects. Works well in a fender jazz though! - of course, many players love that phased/loaded sound of both vols up.

I ran the output right to the jack and into my Behringer mixer. All I had to do was give it some gain at the mic preamp. At 4K the pickup was still higher Z than the preamp works best with, but it works and sounded fine.

I'm afraid I disagree. If you think that a passive coil driving the line input in a behringer mixing desk directly sounds fine, then you need to get better reference speakers and/or cans. Or maybe some new strings. (Although my little behringer is pretty old - perhaps they've increased the line input z on your model.)

I have some passive guitars, but all my basses are active

Yeah, active guitars often sound sorta wrong to me cuz of that top end. - then again guitar speakers have huge treble and bass roll-offs. Bass speakers usually have the opposite these days. (that's why my other thread was asking about testing p'ups in different speakers etc) I have used stacked passive tone controls in basses (sort of a 2nd order LP)- you get a steeper roll-off - so the mids are preserved a little better. Might be worth a try.

I love my P bass and its been my main gigging axe for the past 5-6 years, and I've tried all sorts of pres and buffers with it, but it also sounds wrong to me without that cable loading. Most of my gigs are with a rock band these days, and to tell you the truth, its a little discouraging that so much of the subtlties of your tone are not important in the context of the gig - especially the treble. And also how much different the rigs sound in different places around the room. If you do a lot of recording sessions - (especially of your own stuff!) its another story, of course. I always find out as much about the player as possible - often its the bedroom wanna-bes that actually have a more discerning ear for this stuff - especially treble.

[David Schwab]

Ron a buffer is pretty easy to put together. I really can't understand why you would pass up perfectly good sounding high-Z pickups for the added complexity and weak sonic signature of typical low-Z pickups. Flat frequency response is a myth in a bass guitar.

It's not so much about flat response as it is about extended response. Let's take some high impedance pickups as an example. We will start with the most common.. Fender Jazz or Precision pickups. They sound fine for that sound, but they don't get a lot of top end compared to say something like an Alembic, and you can hear the resonant peak. It's a good sound, but it is what it is. It's not flat at all because you have that peak before the high end drops off. But it gives the pickups their characteristic tone.

You can make wider flatter passive pickups.. let's take Bartolini as an example. I'm a big fan of Bartolinis. But even then he makes either a deep sounding pickup, which has what is usually described as a "burnished" top end, or a bright sounding pickup, which isn't as deep sounding. But they are very smooth sounding pickups, because the frequency response is fairly flat. But you don't get both.

What you can't get with a high Z pickup is extended top and bottom end. The more wire you wind, the lower the resonant peak, and the more exaggerated the mids. The pickup begins to act as a band pass filter.

As I said there's nothing wrong with that sound, if that's what you want. There's an awful lot of people playing Jazz basses right now. If that's the perfect tone, than you and I should start making Jazz bass clones!

Personally I always wanted more tone out of my basses. First I replaced my pickup in my Rick with Hi-A's (Barts). Those made me see all the tone that wasn't getting out of the bass.

That's why I started building my own basses... for something extra. Now having made my bass, I know what it sounds like. When I had EMG's in there, the bass sounded like EMGs. Now with my own pickups, when I play the bass unplugged it sounds the same as amplified (only of course quieter).

What convinced me about low Z pickups (besides hearing Stanley Clarke for the first time!) is when I made an 8 string bass back in the late 70's. I used two DiMarzio Model O pickups, because that's what was available as far as aftermarket pickups back then. The bass had a real harsh midrange and over powering highs. There was very little bottom end. Clearly the problem was a lack of flat frequency response from the pickups. I switched them for Fenders which I had laying around, and it was a bit smoother, but lacked top end.

So I rewound the Fenders to Low Z (1K) and the bass sounded great. Real smooth and warm, with a round bottom and extended smooth top end. Now it's strung up as a 4 string with flats, and it gets a perfect Motown tone.

The question is what are perfectly good sounding high Z pickups? There really aren't any Low Z pickups on the market, besides Alembic's and some of the active Basslines. Alembics are a bit top endy because they use larger gauge wire. I used to like the first Bassline pickups with the DIP switches. I find the newer ones to be a bit too "polite" sounding. Not as much texture as I like.

But the whole thing is if you are going for a "traditional" tone, you won't really get it with a hi-fi sounding bass. But people who want to sound like the last 50 years don't buy modern basses.

[David Schwab]

Thanks David. I have never used active electronics on any guitar. I guess I was under the impression that active electronics with low z pickups would sound better, or different in a good way, than regular passive pickups.

The first difference is generally more top end. Most active instruments don't have low Z pickups. Many don't even have active pickups. You don't need either to use an onboard preamp. And the preamp itself should buffer the pickups. The idea behind a buffer is to isolate the pickups from the loading effects of the controls, cable, and amp input. So what you are hearing is the actual sound of the pickup. When I started installing buffers in my basses the first thing I noticed was the top end goes higher, and the bottom end was tighter. And you get the same tone when you turn down your volume control.

Less noise, smaller coil size etc... I started this thread to learn about active pickups. Now I am wondering why use active electronics on a guitar?

The most common active pickups are EMGs. Their guitar pickups are pretty much regular high Z pickups connected to a differential buffer amp. The buffer amp helps cancel a lot of noise, and they do something called "tone modeling" where they tweak the tone to sound more like passive pickups.

I think this works real well for their guitar pickups, but I don't care for it with their bass pickups.

I guess the biggest advantage with them on guitar is they are quiet and can drive long cables and stuff. They have a compressed tone that some people like.

I love my passive pickups, I just thought to go active you had to use low z pickups, for it to work properly. I will stay passive for now, and do some more research. I got confused somewhere along the line. ( again! ). Anyway thanks for the info. Any one have an opinion on going active? Is it worth it, does it improve anything or is it just "different"?

I don't think low Z or active stuff works as well for guitar because guitar players are looking for a high Z sound. Bass players often want a very clean hi-fi tone, and that's where active works best.

This is why EMG made their guitar pickups sound like high z pickups. I have a guitar I made that had a buffer in it for a while, but it was too bright sounding so I removed it.

The other thing is you can make an active system that sounds passive. You just need to load the pickups the way a passive system would. If you decrease the input impedance of your buffer, if will sound pretty much like a passive system, but a bit more consistent. So the benefit here would be that your guitar will sound the same no matter what cables and gear you are plugged into, and at any volume control setting.

I have switches on my bass to load the pickups, and it goes from very hi-fi to a more traditional tone with less top end and an upper mid hump.

The nice feature with onboard preamps is active tone controls.

[David Schwab]

I'm afraid I disagree. If you think that a passive coil driving the line input in a behringer mixing desk directly sounds fine, then you need to get better reference speakers and/or cans. Or maybe some new strings. (Although my little behringer is pretty old - perhaps they've increased the line input z on your model.)

That's true if you plugged a high Z bass into the board. But mic pres are made for passive low Z coils... only usually much lower Z. The biggest problem was lack of volume, due to loading, but goosing the gain trimmer up to about 1 o'clock fixed that. It had a softer top end, and got a good Fender type tone. Plugging the same pickup into a high Z input didn't give much more volume at all, but was a bit brighter. My Roland VM-3100 digital mixer has a high Z guitar input. I actually like the (Mackie lawsuit) mic pres on the Behringer better. My mixer is from about 2000.

Last night I ran the pickup into an Alesis compressor, and then into the board. That did the trick! Better impedance matching. I don't plan on using the pickup this way... I just needed to know that it was working, and I felt like playing my bass plugged in.

When I get a chance I'll record it and post it somewhere. It sounded good enough to record or gig with.

I have brand new D'Addario XL's, Monsoon speakers and AKG cans.

Yeah, active guitars often sound sorta wrong to me cuz of that top end. - then again guitar speakers have huge treble and bass roll-offs. Bass speakers usually have the opposite these days. (that's why my other thread was asking about testing p'ups in different speakers etc) I have used stacked passive tone controls in basses (sort of a 2nd order LP)- you get a steeper roll-off - so the mids are preserved a little better. Might be worth a try.

I'm actually playing though PA cabinets lately. I like 12" speakers for bass best. I'm a soloist so I gear my tone in that direction, but I can roll off the highs, goose the lows and get a nice burpy groove tone. My neck pickup does a nice P bass impersonation. Good for dub too. I grew up with Motown, which is why I picked bass, so I always have that tone in the back of my head...

Alembic's whole thing is using low pass filters to simulate the peak and roll off you get with high impedance systems. So they make a pickup with real wide response, and because the resonant peak is so high, you pretty much don't hear it. Then you roll some top end off with the LP filter, with a Q setting to give a hump, and you have your typical bass tone. Pretty clever I think.

I love my P bass and its been my main gigging axe for the past 5-6 years, and I've tried all sorts of pres and buffers with it, but it also sounds wrong to me without that cable loading. Most of my gigs are with a rock band these days, and to tell you the truth, its a little discouraging that so much of the subtlties of your tone are not important in the context of the gig - especially the treble. And also how much different the rigs sound in different places around the room. If you do a lot of recording sessions - (especially of your own stuff!) its another story, of course. I always find out as much about the player as possible - often its the bedroom wanna-bes that actually have a more discerning ear for this stuff - especially treble.

I love P basses. They seem to be largely ignored these days, which is a shame. Either that or people think they only do the Motown sound... I guess they never listened to King Crimson with John Wetton! When I started playing I wanted a P bass, but then a guy came to school with a Rick 4001 and I was hooked. Over the years I made my 4001 sound more and more like a P-bass, which is a bit ironic I think.

And yeah, for standard rock you don't need a lot of top and and stuff. I played a lot of prog and fusion, and always wanted more top end. The bedroom tone is usually too wimpy.

Now everyone uses a bright tone, but when I started playing all basses came with flatwounds! Even with Rotosounds by Rick wasn't that bright through my old B-15...

[David Schwab]

I'm afraid I disagree. If you think that a passive coil driving the line input in a behringer mixing desk directly sounds fine, then you need to get better reference speakers and/or cans. Or maybe some new strings. (Although my little behringer is pretty old - perhaps they've increased the line input z on your model.)

OK, here's the passive low-ish Z pickup wired directly to a jack and plugged into the Low-Z 1/4" input on a Roland VM-3600Pro digital mixer. The Behringer is not connected to my computer in a way that I can record with it.. it's only for monitoring. I actually like the sound of the Behringer mic pre's better, they have a bit more presence.

The specs on the Roland say the mic and 1/4" inputs have an input impedance of 20 k ohms. I'd imagine these are on par with the Behringer.

Here's the pickup directly into that input. The gain at the mic pre was set to about 1 o'clock.

no buffer

Now here's the pickup plugged into the "Guitar (Hi-Z)" 1/4" jack on the same channel (same EQ, etc.). The Hi-Z input has an impedance of 1 M ohms.

Buffered

The buffered clip sounds much brighter with a higher resonant frequency. The unbuffered tone is more "traditional".

[mkat]

I love P basses. They seem to be largely ignored these days, which is a shame. Either that or people think they only do the Motown sound... I guess they never listened to King Crimson with John Wetton! When I started playing I wanted a P bass, but then a guy came to school with a Rick 4001 and I was hooked. Over the years I made my 4001 sound more and more like a P-bass, which is a bit ironic I think.

I too love the PBass sound and bought a '69 in '85 and a very early '70's Rick 4001 for backup during live gigs, both with round wound Rotosound strings. When using the Rick, I always tried to eq it to get the sound I liked. I finally realised that the sound I liked was the PBass sound - I was trying to make the Rick sound like a PBass LOL. Anyway, no real point to my post, I just thought it was funny reading your comments.