Active or passive bass , what is your choice ?

[s_mcsleazy]

passive all the way. i've owned a couple of active basses over the years and every time i always thought "why am i even bothering?"

[scottT]

Passive. Mostly because the sounds I like from the past were all recorded with a passive bass. Active felt artificially boosted to me--not "organic". I like a bass to respond to my touch without a lot between me and the amplified sound. I want a woody acoustic quality. I also like P-basses.

I didn't like a battery in the bass either.

[Squirrel]

Passive for me. Active pickups are way too '90s.

[DeathJag]

Thanks for this great question! I’m loving the discourse.

I have a MIM P-bass from the 90s which sounds pretty good. Slightly “airy” on the mids and highs and super deep on the lows.

The bassist in my surf band plays a P-bass Deluxe which has active something. It’s got the standard P-bass pickups, but also has a jazz bass pickup (which I assume is active) and several “tip / ring” knobs that mess with the active part.

I didn’t realize there was a thing as “active electronics” vs. “active pickups.” Seems strange since how could you have an active pickup without active electronics? And, how would active electronics work with passive pickups? Before you chide, know that I consider myself a dummy.

At the practice space we use an Eden Traveller head, which has lots of awesome EQ action. (Bassist has a PHATASS Mesa rig for shows.)

Even with all the EQ possibilities, the active bass fits the band’s sound waaaaay better. The band is kind of a punk rock take on instro surf so the more aggressive the bass tone the better. The passive bass is way too thumpy (sounds like it’s all around 50Hz) and you really can’t get any good mids out of it. Highs are fine thanks to the Eden EQ.

When I upgrade my bass rig I’m definitely going to get a bass that can do both. For another style of music the active bass might be too “loudness turned on” sounding. The passive sounds pretty good in a Souther Rock band I occasionally play bass in. (I’m also gonna upgrade the Eden to something awesomer. Always wanted a 90-pound tube affair head but maybe a small modeling amp would be better.)

[Squirrel]

And, how would active electronics work with passive pickups?

Active electronics with passive pickups is basically just having an effects pedal built into your guitar. I think one of the first companies to do it was Gretsch, who used an active treble booster on some of their guitars in the '60s.

[DeathJag]

And, how would active electronics work with passive pickups?

Active electronics with passive pickups is basically just having an effects pedal built into your guitar. I think one of the first companies to do it was Gretsch, who used an active treble booster on some of their guitars in the '60s.

Ah! That makes sense. Do these electronics exist in active pickups?

I guess I don’t understand how active pickups work! I get passives though. I think of it like a condenser mic (active) vs. dynamic mic (passive), which I’m sure is not at all accurate. Sorry for the OT.

[oid]

Ah! That makes sense. Do these electronics exist in active pickups?

I guess I don’t understand how active pickups work! I get passives though. I think of it like a condenser mic (active) vs. dynamic mic (passive), which I’m sure is not at all accurate. Sorry for the OT.

Active pickups are just lower impedance pickups, they use fewer turns of copper which means less output and less noise, but they can not drive a cable as well and would end up with higher noise, so we stick a preamp right in the control cavity to solve the noise and low output. They have a much clearer, more pure sound than passives. I think some active pickups have a simple preamp built right in with the pickup, and can be used with or without active electronics, but I do not follow that scene much and I could be wrong on that.

The low impedance pickup was championed by Gibson back in the day on a few of their high end Les Pauls, they used a transformer on the output instead of an active preamp to remedy the low output issues but really required a preamp after the guitar, or at least something better than a guitar amp input, to take advantage of the low impedance pickups. They were less than successful.

[DeathJag]

Hey thanks for the explanation! Now I see why you’d prefer active electronics vs. active pickups. Seems if one has a good amp, one may not need anything active?

[oid]

Amp has little to with anything here, any decent amp will play well with all three, they each just give a different sound. Both active types give more tone shaping ability, they pretty much have an onboard eq so you can find tune your tone to a greater degree than with a passive.

[agiehler]

I like the idea of active better, but at the end of the day passive has the purest, straight-forward tone that I'm used to hearing.

[Meme Library]

I've never tried an instrument with active pickups! Seems really cool but with potential to be a pain in the butt

[rumfoord]

It seems like such a petty thing, but I hate having to worry at home about whether or not I unplugged an instrument with active anything.

Otherwise, as others have sort of mentioned, an active bass is essentially just like having an always-on boost pedal of some type. And it feels like it. Sometimes it feels like it works. But it can sound too crisp, in a way, where a passive bass responds in a smoother and slightly mushier way---which works better sometimes in other ways. I have a SUB Ray5, and feel the same as countertext: you can really really easily make it sound terrible.

I think it's really important to just first treat active instruments like you should cut frequencies to make it sound right. THEN, if that doesn't work, very carefully consider boosting something. But you just gotta be careful!


But if you missed it, mbene085 said it so well not too long ago when he wrote up a really comprehensive review of his '77 Stingray guitar. Reading this totally helped me understand my own Ray5 better.

The electronics are the real star of the show. The bass and treble knobs are neutral at "5", but have no centre detent, and can both give you way more boost than you'd ever need. The bright switch is, on the surface, totally unnecessary-seeming, since the treble knob has such aggressive boost available. However, the controls are VERY interactive, kind of like an AC30's tone stack if you've ever used one of those. Boosting and cutting the treble knob with the bass knob just 1 point up or down gives a different sweep. The bright switch seems to boost slightly different frequencies based on where the treble knob is at. Cutting treble and engaging bright is totally different from boosting treble and disengaging bright.

I think the rough tonal reputation of these guitars comes from the typical guitarist habit of starting with everything on "10". If you do that, and run it into an amp that had been set for a passive Fender or Gibson guitar, the bass is boomy and the treble and high mids are like a searing knife to the eardrums. I think the lack of detent made it tough for guitarists to understand where "neutral" was on this thing. After all, we are talking about the same pre-Internet (and post-) guitarists who were and still are mystified by the "complicated" switches of the Jaguar, Jazzmaster, and Mustang.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot to mention that the 4-way rotary pickup selector also has an out-of-phase position. If you crank the switch clockwise, "diming" it along with the EQ knobs, you get out-of-phase pickups with massive treble and bass boost and a presence boost. Possibly the most scooped and shrill guitar tone I have ever heard. So I kinda get why a lot of people basically said fuck this guitar. But, being used to active basses, it wasn't hard for me to wrangle this thing. I mean, anyone who has dimed the EQ knobs on a 2-band Stingray bass knows what a mess of a tone that yields (the eardrum-shattering slap tones of most people trying out a 'Ray in a music store come to mind). The magic of active electronics usually lies in the subtle ranges of boost and cut.

viewtopic.php?f=41&t=108715&hilit=stingray+guitar

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

So far I seem to have a proclivity for somewhat hot passive pickups. I like the active preamp in my Sterling 4H but it winds up a bit more modern sounding than I'm generally looking for. The P-blade in the Wattplower is pretty significantly higher output than the Sterling after I put the TI short scale Jazz rounds on it and seems to be more focused on the kind of attack and body that I like w/ minimal tone pot twiddling...

Probably my favorite bass for old school sounds across a fairly broad range of styles is my most recently acquired: a Guild B-301 w/ its passive single coil and Rotosound monel wound flats:

[gazkonvektor]

I've got a Fender Deluxe active bass, it has a switch for passive/active, and if the batteries go flat you're covered. I got used to playing nothing but a passive PJ bass for years so I haven't really used the active mode. To me a bass sounds like a bass, (I don't ever use bass effects) and so the other mode doesn't sound like an improvement to me, just a variation. But I suppose there are situations where it could cut through better.

I had the same bass for 13 years now, and love it. It certainly sounds different than a regular JB, but it really suits my playing style.

I like both active & passive instruments, but with the active I find myself playing with the EQ between songs & sections. It gives you more versatility in my opinion.

[zenarcade]

At the moment the only band I am in I play an old japanese Ibanez Atk bass which has active pickups. It is really versatile. Sure it won't sound like a jazz or p bass, but I can get similar sounds, it's just a bit more difficult to dial them in. Also active pickups are dead quiet which is also a plus. For recording I sometimes wish I had a p bass. They just sit perfect in a rock mix.