Heads up bass players... I sit down with Chris May the master luthier behind Overwater basses and discuss the age old question... "Active Vs Passive Basses"! "Passive Vs Active Basses" - In Conversation with Master Luthier Chris May of Overwater basses
I honestly prefer passive. I feel like I get a cleaner, less chunky sound. But I do like active for certain things. I just pick and choose depending on what song I'm playing.
John Entwistle often recorded with passive basses, his favorite being a modded 60s P bass. He used a Fenderbird on the Who Are You album. However, he did use his Alembic Spider on the It's Hard album which you can clearly hear on Eminence Front. For the most part, he used active basses live but passive basses in the studio.
“I don’t like carrying batteries everywhere” Literally what people who don’t have or play active basses say. Because a battery lasts like. Months usually. Weeks if you play 8+ hours a day
I, too, have both active and passive basses. And same as with Scott, I usually prefer passive mainly because I don't want to rely on batteries which can die. There is enoguh sound editing that can be done with pedals, the amp eq and by the soundguy that I don't need another EQ on my bass too.
What basses are you guys using that the battery dies on you that often? I've used active basses since the late 90s and can't recall a battery ever dying in the middle of a performance. And I'm terrible at changing them on any sort of regular basis either. If it's that much of a problem then get a bass that has a passive bypass option so you can switch to a passive circuit. Most G&L basses do this.
With this vid and the "3 things you need to know when buying a Bass"... Great chemistry between you and Chris. I really learned loads on crucial technicalities... More of this type of video... Good job...
Great video! Re: Buzzing in Studio Environment In my home studio, I have battled with pickup noise. I finally got a Fender Am. Dlx. P-bass which solved all of that! It has an active/passive switch, a P pickup in the neck position and a J pickup in the bridge position. Scott, I'd love to see a video of how to get different tones in a studio setting by means of right & left hand techniques, mutes, picks, and outboard equipment. I'd also like to hear about what engineers look for when it comes to bass guitar.
This is why I love my G&L L-2500. I have the option of going between active and passive. When I am looking for the right sound, On the fly I can switch between the two. One of the best basses out there in my opinion, especially with a solid set of Rotosound flatwounds :)
One of the best things about the L2000 series basses is that while they have an active preamp, the tone controls are still passive. The reason why you can still get tones from vintage to modern out of them!
Got a Carvin 5-string with a push/pull switch for active and passive. It's amazing the tonal difference between the two, with all settings being exactly the same. I generally prefer active because it's cleaner, crisper and tighter.
I've owned passive basses, my favorite being a Rickenbacker 4001. I've owned several active basses with passive pickups, my favorite being my custom modded SX Jazz Bass with an Audere Preamp. However, I've only ever owned and still own a pure active bass. I had ordered my ESP F-415FM 5 string bass and I was scared I would hate the sound (because apparently EMGs suck...at least that's the consensus), but much to my surprise it sounded very great! Once I got my ESP with EMGs....my Rickenbacker saw no action anymore. I sold 4 of my basses including the Rickenbacker, now I only own 3 basses. Yep I'm now the biggest fan of active EMGs.
I have to clarify that noise such as 60 cycle hum has nothing to do with whether a bass is active or passive. I think actives sometimes get a bad rep because a lot of active players overboost and get that ultra hyped zingy sound. My personal opinion is that with a well setup passive bass, you can get a brighter tone to start, and bringing your tone control down a little bit will give you a natural resonance at that position of the tone knob. Then if you plug straight into a pedal with a quality buffer you get all of the benefits of an active bass and a passive bass without having to deal with batteries. If that pedal has an active EQ, you now have all of the important elements taken care of.
Noise can be prevented thanks to a flat and reasonable active setup. It's because the signal is a bit amplified before the cables catch the noises, so a good part of the noise itself is not amplified while the useful signal is aplified. Noise reduction works best on signals that need it the least.
I have a G&L L2000 which has active and passive selectable via toggle switch. I tend to play it in passive mode. But sounds good in any mode. I love my G&L!!!!
The best application I've found so far for active tone control is when you select a low-bass pickup e.g. a single coil at the bridge, and you want all the snap and midrange but you've lost loads of bass. With an active bass you can dial in a bit of bass and the sound you get has all the low end from the neck pickup but with all the tonal characteristics of the neck.
Quite surprised there was no mention of the obvious Active Bass disadvantage - batteries going flat half way through a gig! Seen that happen to other bassists a couple of times which made me make sure I got a bass with a passive / active switch when I moved from passive.
Very interesting and totally relevant to me! I now solely use active bass's! And I literally laughed out loud when you said 'Errr Scott.. there's a bit of buzz on your bass' :-D Been there hahaha
I put EMG J set s in my Jazz bass, for recording, the noise reduction was incredible, especially at home where there is less shielding on power cords etc. Quite an effort squeezing a battery into that little space.
Active all the way for me. John East has sold me a lot of pre amps both as retro fit and in original basses including the filter based pre amps in my ACG's. I do have a passive Jazz but it's a Roscoe Beck IV so isn't single coil.
Saludos desde Mexico!!!!Scott, i just happen to have a jackson Ellefson's 4 string signature active bass.......and i just am astonished of how metal or jazzy or pop-star it can sound.........i can play bach's cello suite 1 and make it sound as mellow as a cello, and can also play megadeth or play funk in just the turn of a knob.I am also plug and play haha but man, it sound really churchy-like or truly badass!!!!Seeing all your vids ;)
For me, and with my basses, passive is more pleasing to my ears. I liken it to the even/odd-order harmonic comparison with tube vs. transistor and vinyl vs. digital. I used to like having that kind of powerful sculpting available on the bass but your tastes change and back around 2001 I experimented with hard-wiring a Jazz bass, both pickups wired straight to the output jack, and it changed everything. I was surprised at how much clearer it sounded and it forced me to do everything with my fingers. On a side note, it seems to me that a lot of players think that by putting their active bass into passive mode (if possible) they are able to leave it plugged in and not drain the battery. This is almost always not the case. Yes you may be able to run it in passive mode if your battery dies but the cable is the on switch for the preamp. If you unplug your bass when you're not playing it your battery(s) should last several months. I do prefer fully manual cameras so I never have to worry about batteries but I'm sometimes taking them way out into the wilderness. I don't really see how it's a valid argument against active basses. When do you play gigs that far from civilization? Not wanting to carry a tiny spare 9V battery (that might get changed once every 6 months) just sounds like laziness to me. If it's that big of a deal just never put a battery in and run passive. Furthermore, let's not confuse the differences between passive/active circuitry and single coil/humbucking pickups. Most of the time when you get 60 cycle hum it's from single coil pickups and poorly shielded electronics in the bass or somewhere else in your signal chain. This can be exacerbated by dimmers and neons, and computers, monitors, and your amplifier. You can make a properly shielded single coil pickup bass very quiet but you can never get rid of the hum completely.
I've wired a bypass on all my active basses in the past. I don't really have active basses anymore since I just have Fenders. When I did use active basses, I generally kept my EQ at noon and adjusted on the amp before the set, and once I got my sound, I kept my sound about the same. On the few occasions that I did touch the bass EQ, I could have just as easy turned around and fiddled with amp knobs. I would do detailed comparisons before and after bypass, and here's what I always noticed about active EQ on the bass: it almost always just made the tone a little more solid compared to passive, as though it just had a bit more body, and the high end seemed a little more tamed and controlled. I think I'd like that strengthening in certain styles of music, but for that flatwound/picking kind of sound, it kind of takes a bit of the magic away because the last thing flatwounds need is more body and taming. I think maybe if I were slapping on a Jazz Bass, I'd enjoy that extra something.
My old Levinson Blade (Jazz) bass had a hum cancelling coil installed in the back, killed hum and also allowed better output balance when panning between pickups
I've never had a engineer scowl at a passive bass in the studio. In fact, in my experience, they seem to prefer passive Fender Ps and Js. For myself, I prefer passive, unless we are talking about Alembic-type filters - that's the only active circuit I like; I have no use for on-board boost/cut active EQ. BTW, Mr. Devine... thank you! ...and please keep up the fantastic work!
esa davenport if it's gonna need a batteryh it might as well be some dam good effects, like an echo effect built in, or a wha wha pedal built in effect or an auto tuning system which i would despise, but still it has to have something, tone is completely in your hands the most you need is 1 tone, my fav bass is a P bass and i can change my playing position from back to front to get a rounded sound or a snappy sound with a little bit of growl, it's all there, active is just too much of a hassle you can have up to 6-7 knobs and not know what sound you want cuz you know there's just so many and dialing in sounds can take time, the hell with that, i say GET ON WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is why im very fun at the studio xD
Same for me, Esa. Vintage single coil basses are hotter than ever right now and showing up with your 8 string bass with an 18V 5-band active preamp with all the bells & whistles is just as likely to get you poo-pooed as a really noisy vintage bass that hasn't been shielded properly. If you unplug your bass after you play it like you're supposed to active circuits can last several months before needing a battery change.
On the flip side Brad, showing up with a jazz bass with active EMG's and a Volume/Volume/Tone control set can be a studio engineer's dream come true, clean simple signal.
I have always been a passive player - P and J basses until I got my first active bass, a Lakland 44-02. Like many, I liked the simplicity of passive - plug and play with one tone knob to shape your tone, plus, as everyone says, the whole battery dying thing. But man, when I first plugged in the active bass, the punch of the tone just got me. It took me some time to get comfortable with the onboard preamp, but I love the single volume and blend knob (compared to a Jazz). The battery is not an issue at all, and to change it is super easy on this bass (no screws for the battery compartment). When I plug in my Jazz bass now, it sounds thin and limp compared to the active bass. My 44-02 is the first bass I grab when practicing. I guess I am an active convert.
Sounds like you've found your groove with the active bass! 🎸🔊 It's all about finding the right tool to shape your sound, and it seems like you've discovered your sonic match. Rock on! 🤘😊
I got the signature Flea Jazz Bass with passive pickups, will a preamp pedal (for example MXR M81 Bass Preamp) give the same effect/opportunities as active pickups?
Hi Scott, a very newbie question here. Is there a difference between an active pickup and active preamps? My Squier Deluxe Jazz says it has passive pickup with active preamps. My Warwick RB Corvette says it has active MEC pickups also with preamps onboard. Is there a difference between the two? I liked how both sounds :D
I am a new player and I already have 3 basses and I have no idea how to work the pick ups lol. I have a 80s passive fender that has a toggle switch which I can't figure how to work. I also have an active music man and a modulus with that composition neck. I basically keep everything flat lol. Guess I haven't developed an ear yet. I just bought a markbass amp and the tone settings make no sense to me. Anyhow I am enjoying playing and looking at Scott's video's. Great video with good information.
I've always had active basses and I really miss that plug and play mentality. Having to carry around some extra batteries everywhere just incase it dies, can be frustrating.
I often wonder if it would be possible to power active pickups through the lead instead of using batteries, kinda' like phantom power for condenser microphones.
Mike Miller Not to mention that it's really hard to reject power supply ripple down into bass frequencies. It sure would be an interesting thing to look into though.
Chris May is a Bass Genius.. And I play Both.. I love the beauty and sound of many passive basses.But my Active Schecter 5 String does the "Damn Thing" All the Time... Some of us LOVE our Actives!💯🖤🤠 5 stringers are BassPlayers 2!⚡🤠💯💣
Great conversation Scott, but I suggest trying to improve the voice input, sometimes it´s not clear at all, it has a lot of bass on it (not a joke!). It makes it harder for us non-native english speakers. You site is great, congrats! Dani
One thing he was talking about really resonated with me. I know what a blend control (or double volume control on a Jazz Bass) on a passive bass is supposed to do, but the fact is, on your average passive bass w/ two pickups, you only get three basic sounds: Neck, Bridge, and N+B at equal volume. As soon as you get away from the two pickups being at exactly the same volume, the slightly louder pickup pretty much dominates the mix and it's because of the pickups loading each other. And since most active basses use a passive blend control, they also suffer from the blend control being basically a three way switch. I would love to have a bass where the blend control actually results in a different sound throughout the sweep, and it seems like a buffer can do that for me. Maybe a completely active setup is in the works for me.
There is something about the tone of a good passive pickup that is unbeatable. But I generally run active as overall they do a better job. It's whatever floats your boat really :P
I own one passive bass right now, my fretless j-bass and it is my favorite. I have recorded a lot with it. There are tricks you can do to get rid of the sound I believe. My engineer did something. But I love my active basses for certain songs though. I just hate relying on them ya know? I always have bad luck when my battery dies or worse, I've had the pre-amp burn out on me on two basses. It killed me when they were my only 5 string and primary bass. I want to get a lakland or make my own bass though. Lakland cuz I love the sounds you can get and they are beautiful. As well as the passive active switch. But if I made my own bass, I wouldn't know how to do anything with active. Which brings me to another point, if you aren't a tech, you can't do anything yourself. I am a mechanical engineering student and I can't even figure out how to fix those myself. But passives I can do all day long. If you could point me in the direction to easy active solutions. If anything, I want to do a p-j bass. If I wanted it to be active I would want a passive bypass. If I didn't want to make the bass myself, do you recommend any company who makes these. So many questions. But at least they are kind of challenging and almost trivial.
Thanks Scott! You have one of the most interesting bass guitar channels. My ears vote for a passive bass, BUT....if it's a four-string bass. On a five-string bass, the fifth string, especially below the "D", sound too slurred and muddy for my ears even with the tone control fully open. In this case, I would choose active bass. And what Chris says about a passive tone control and an active buffer is implemented in the G&L 2500. If I got his point right. These basses have a lot of positive reviews on the Internet, but for some reason I have never seen them in the hands of professional top players.
Scott, you said it at 3:30 and you are so right: "passive circuit the sound of wood", thanks for that. I have a warwick thumb 98 ovankol in the body wenge in the neck, I always use it in passive mode (it is a false passive since you only avoid the eq, but when you take out the 9v battery it does not sound). In this false passive is where you can clearly hear the qualities of these woods, when I move to active mode, goodbye to these beautiful sounds of wood, simply destroys them. this is why so many warwick owners prefer passive mode even though almost all models come with active pups. Now I am thinking about changing completely to a circuit with pups and passive circuit, I am sure that this will further enhance the sound of the wood
I love the active emg pick ups on my schecter. It's so much cleaner sounding than my jazz bass. It does affect the tone though. My bass is very punchy and almost a little compressed. When the battery is dead it sounds different.
Passive or active/passive switch definitely, IMHO. When you run out of battery in the middle of performance accidentaly, there is nothing more disappointing.
Even Leo Fender eventually went to Active basses when he designed with Musicman StingRay after making passive basses at Fender. I have had no issues with batteries and it takes less than a minute to change one in my StingRays.
I second your comment David, I have a 79' stingray I bought in 1980 and the sound is amazing, the batteries last for ages and I'm not talking months here. I gig every week and the only thing I change are the strings ! nuff said lol
I just got a stingray after really only using passive jazz and p bass... And oh man oh man does that stingray sound good. It just sounds so phenomenal. I'm considering retro fitting a my two favorite books ones with active electronics if they fit
Hola saludes desde honduras solo una sugerencia ya que esto se ve a nivel global crees es posible en tus tutorias de bajo poner los subtitulos en español ya que asi tendrias una mayor visita en tu canal y uno como latino tendria un recurso mas para poder aprender de grandes bajistas como es el caso tuyo gracias
around 4:40 - C. May "in active bass you amplify the stuff you don't want, so you get into the whole shielding".... at the end of the video - Scott says he uses active to avoid the noise. So which one is it? Can you not use shielding for a passive bass? And which ones are more noisy to begin with
6:35, I just think (and I'm not the only one) that wood has very little (if any) influence on the sound, many blind tests confirms that, a mic on the bass is giving signal when the metallic string move thru the magnetic field and as long as the string is firm positioned between nut and the bridge its fine, the electromagnetic mic does not catch any signal from wood vibrations or any acoustic phenomenon, that is if the bass is stable or in any other way absorb or influence the movement of the string. There are so many other things that has a great more influence on tone, sustain or what ever you are looking for in bass sound and characteristics.
It’s not a mic on the bass. It’s a pickup. Both are transducers, meaning, they each use the movement of metal across a magnetic field, with the rate of that movement being the frequency, and the amount, or amplitude of that movement becoming the volume. With a microphone, air movement impacting the diaphragm, forces the diaphragm to move its voice coil, which is copper wire windings around a former, or formed shape, across a fixed magnet, or magnetic field. This movement creates an electrical impulse, or waveform, of varying voltages, or amplitude, volume, etc and various rate of oscillation, which is responsible for the tone, or frequency. So air movement, AKA, sounds, affect a microphone and thusly create an electrical signal which is then PRE-amplified, by, you guessed it, a preamp, which MUST be acted upon by an outside energy source to be ACTIVE, which increases the initial voltage created by the initial moment, which was generally in the millivolts range, to become a few volts, then to OP amps, AKA output amps, where it is increased to around maybe, 1-3 volts, before finally sending that signal to an amplifier, which increases the electrical signal many times over, reaching upwards of 30 volts or more. Think of it this way, microphones “hear” sounds, because they use air movement to activate a diaphragm, much like our own ears, which is comprised of copper wire wound into lots of coils on a formed shape, which in turn moves across an field, making an electrical signal. Pickups are NOT microphones. They use the movement, usually of a metal object, across a magnetic field, to create an electrical signal. They “hear”, nothing. There are exceptions to this, but they relate to very nuanced situations we don’t need to get into here. I’ve seen guys scream into a Les Paul pickup and you could hear their voice through the rig. Pretty incredible. But it’s all about oscillation of a conductive metal wound into coils as a group, called the coil, across a permanent magnet. It is the movement of the coil across the magnet which creates current, which creates the electrical signal.
QBN37 if that was the only bass you were playing my guess is you would have payed just over $40 in the last 20 years to play your beloved bass LOL not to mention cost of electricity for the amp or who knows maybe im wrong how much is it for a pack of 2 9v's in your country over hear is pretty expensive lke $6 for 2 9v's
If you want to get clear out the buzz in the studio with a passive bass, take a Jack cable get one end attached to your Bridge with tape and put the other end in your sock so it touches your skin. Buzz will be gone, well not all of it but, good enough;)
I use both, i have a souped up j bass with passive and active. Personally i love the passive through a good amp (i use an orange ad200 and also an orange guitar amp aswell) and recorded i much prefer a great passive tone BBUUUUTTTTTTTT.............as a bass guitarist gigging, i cant count the amount of times i've rolled up to a venue and the bass goes right into whatever d.i theyve got there, sometimes the tone is terrible through the pa so i made the switch purely for live reasons, i can now have a slightly more beefy sound for stuff going through the pa. Everything recorded, i'll use passive if i'm using and amp or a really good di.
i never liked the idea of having to be reliant upon a 9v battery. i'm lazy and cheap. it made better sense to me to buy a decent outboard pre. those 9 v's are expensive here in the states, there like $7.50 for a 2pk. it just seems to me you can get to your sound easier and with greater consistency using the passive outboard pre combination. if that battery is a dud or slowly starts to die you will find yourself fiddling around with the controls on your bass to compensate for the loss of character or whatever.
I think this is more of a guitarist thing, but works the same on bass too if you like using fuzz pedals with your bass... Some classic fuzz circuits rely on being interfaced straight with passive pickups. They have low input impedance that loads the pickups down and while that kind of thing usually causes just dull and dark sound, with those circuits it just works. If there is an active stage feeding that king of fuzz, the result is usually too harsh. It may work with actives too, depending what you like and what you are aiming for, but usually those circuits are considered to sound best with passives.
Is it true that Active basses don't work well with effects? I use subtle effects with my active bass such as overdrive, chorus and wah and most of the time it sounds fine. But does it actually make a difference in tone whether I'm using active or passive?
Some fuzzes react very differently to an active or a passive bass. However, that's only if you plug in directly or only have true bypass in front of it. If you have even a Boss tuner in front of your fuzz pedal, you've already buffered the signal, i.e. it's now a low impedance signal, as though you're using an active bass. And if you use, say, a wireless unit, your signal is always active. So it's stupid when people say active basses don't work well with effects because how many professional pedalboards start out with a Boss tuner? Now, where people might have a point is that some active basses, especially older ones, have extremely high output because their preamps would add too much gain. Or they might have really hot pickups, whereas Fender basses stay within a pretty narrow range. In those cases, the active bass might clip all your pedals (and amp, too, which is why there's a -15 dB switch on most amps), but that's pretty uncommon these days, since most new active basses have about the same output level as a passive bass. I think the only exception is maybe the SUB4/5 basses.
Well I do not complicate much... to my taste I prefer passive, because if you are of the people sensitive to the bass sound the passive will always have their own sound, instead the active pickup, you have to live depending on a battery, and While the battery runs out with some frequencies phrases turn off and if you are the people who play every day, I recommend passive pickup. And about of equalization, easy... buy a good preamp and go. I have a jazz bass with Keftone pickup (I recommend them)
Scott please help, i need one bass that have te deep bottom and a small body size, like ibanez but with ballz jaja sorry. you know any bass brand like that?
It is quite untrue that if you completely turn off one volume control on a Jazz Bass (on a Fender Jazz Bass anyway) that the whole bass goes off. That is because of how the pick-ups are wired to the volume potentiometers. One side of each pick-up and one side of each potentiometer are all connected to earth. The non-earthy side of each pick up goes to the WIPER of the respective volume potentiometer. The remaining ends of the two potentiometers are joined and routed to the output. So, if one volume control is rolled completely off, that pick-up signal is no longer routed to the output BUT it does not load the remaining potentiometer, and so kill the complete signal from the bass.
Just put a pair of Seymour Duncan Apollo Jazz or DiMarzio Area J pickups in your passive Jazz Bass, and nobody will ever complain about noise ever again.
each has it's place in a player's stable. i think all things considered, it's about the player knowing what's required from the job and using the instrument that best fits the bill. i recommend buying affordable instruments so that you can afford to have an active and a passive, if you can't decide.
I think it's mainly a problem with older J basses. They can pick up a lot of hum. More modern ones or anything with a humbucker are usually pretty quiet. My passive P bass is totally quiet and has been used for recording (just not by me) in professional studios throughout Nashville.
I think that it is worth mentioning what "noise" is. Noise is the by-product of an active circuit. "Noise" manifests itself as "hiss" on the output. Passive basses are not active, and so cannot produce "noise". Pick-ups however can pick up "hum" from the electrical mains, especially when the pick-up is close to electrical equipment containing mains transformers, such as amplifiers. Single-coil pick-ups are much more prone to picking up mains hum than hum-bucking types.
Sorry Scott, don't want to sound like a troll but..... when someone is being interviewed it is so we can hear what that person has to say. If you keep talking over him we don't hear what either of you has to say - just sayin' :) Still a great subject though, thanks for your efforts.
I prefer active basses, they produce stronger and clearer notes. I can connect them to anything since they don't need preamps. (computers, speakers, etc.). I have a Yamaha RBX 765A.
I have a Yamaha rbx 800A. Great bass. But when I use pedals I tend to turn down the volume. It is true that it is sometimes better than a passive if you connect it directly for recording purposes or live. I also add a little bit of low end with the controls. The thing is, batteries are expensive in my country. And I dislike the fact that I have to carry an extra battery just in case. I like the pickups the bass came with. But I think that you can get the same sound with passive pickups if the design is what you are looking for tonewise.and some designs have high output as well. The shielding is indeed the best way to get rid of noise. Apart from having humbucking pickups.
Cool, I think that the 800a is even older than my model. Yeah I also hate having to carry around batteries and things like that, and rechargeable batteries suck. The sound is more compressed on actives too. And my bass empties out a battery real quick. But other than that it has amazing sound in any situation, even on crappy amps it can compensate.
As a bass player and someone who has done sound it does not matter what you sound like on stage the front of house mix will put you where you fit in with the drums, guitars etc.......Dont get caught up with your sound because that is not how you sound front of stage!..............
I think it's fair to say most people care about how they sound no matter where they are! Isn't that the whole point? You spend your lifetime honing your sound. Sure, most engineers will get their source from a DI or a pre-EQ out from the head but that's not always the case. Why do we mic cabs then? It's not just for 'air'. As an engineer and bassist myself I try to get cues from someone's (hopefully) painstakingly-crafted stage sound to inform me as to how they'd like to sound out front, of course all while making the necessary adjustments to make them sit in the mix nicely. Some people like a burpy Jaco vibe with the highs rolled off. Some like some grit on the top end. It's your job to preserve some of that. I expect the same from good engineers when I'm on stage.
This active-passive-thing sucks. When you go with a passive bass into a preamp or pedal the signal isn't passive any more. Even when you use the eq or the gain-section on the amp. An active bass is a bass with a built in preamp, that's all. I like both, the simplicity of passive and the extended frequency range of active.
I love jazz style but precision pickups come in lots of variations, and a thick pickup with split coils like musicman's are SEXY AS HELL. Bartolini jazz style pickups are the best thing on the market though. Their sound is, indescribable. Nice video anyway, Scott! Would love to see more "encounters" with Overwater people. They do a great job and is a pleasure to hear them talk.
Do what I did, get the Blacktop Jazz Bass. It's a Mexi-made Fender, but it's just a stone's throw from the American models. It features the split-coil P-Bass pickups instead of the single-coil J-Bass pickups. It has TONS of variation in sound due to two pickups, but can be adjusted to sound similar to a P-Bass by turning down the bridge-end pickup, and actually has an enhanced bridge over that of a normal J-Bass (The only drawback to this is Fender-made bridge covers don't fit over it). And, it of course comes with the amazing playability that J-Basses are well-known for. Best of both worlds, in my eyes. And that white-chrome pearl finish option is candy to the eyes.
None of the audience will notice or care. Do what makes you comfortable e.g. passive humbuckers remove much 'fear of hum' and 'fear of battery death'. Remove the fear and don't think upon it. Using a plectrum will make 10x the difference. Active single coils are hummiest of all! Be careful good shielding can't cure all ills
"With an active bass, you can add. With a passive, you can only substract". True. But what do you actually add to the signal? You have a tiny preamp box that has to fit into the body of your instrument. You aren't gonna get any organic or hifi tone out of that. It only muddles the natural output of your bass or adds noise to it. You want a good EQ? Your amp has one. You can always get an extra EQ for your pedalboard or your rack. Why does it have to be inside your bass? A lot of active bass players tell me that only active basses can "cut through the mix". This I never understood. I don't want to "cut through" the mix. I want to find a good spot somewhere in the middle and settle there. I don't want any harsh treble clanking and rasping to overpower everything else in the band. Get everybody to roll in the mid frequencies and play at a sensible volume. You are there for the lower frequencies. Tell the egomaniacs at the guitar and keyboard to reduce the bass in their sound. The bottom end is your job. It's all about communication. An active bass is just another weapon in the arms race of "everyone louder than everyone else". In my experience, hum is not an issue if you have good humbucking pickups. Just don't get a shoddy instrument, or a Rick ;)
Why do you think onboard preamp is not Hifi?? That is so false, just an example; Your phone! In your phone you have ADCs DACs and headphone amp and some are very high end.
I'm a professional electrical engineer and a hobby bassist, who designs electronics for a living. I will tell you this guy knows his stuff. The engineering that goes into the electronics, even in modern instruments, is not very complex. We are still using techniques and components from the 1970's and 1980's in active basses and technology for passive basses hasn't really changed since the 1940's. An active bass can sound like a passive bass, but a passive cannot sound like an active bass. Active basses give you more control. A lot of players automatically get turned off by active basses without even hearing them first, assuming they won't sound "vintage" or "classic".
The only disadvantage to an active bass is that they sound characterless. I own both active and passive basses and much prefer passive pickups. My opinion only. :-) Actually I should change that comment because I bought a Dimension bass which has a really nice tone and has the advantage of onboard EQ without necessarily sounding like an active bass.
+Ian Vaughan I don't know, I think Stingrays, NS-2s, Wals and Warwicks have plenty of character. Having said that, when I took the preamp out of my Ray34 I noticed that my plucking position made a much bigger difference. It seems like your right hand position doesn't matter as much with a preamp.
+Doug Matthews There might be something wrong with your bass if you're having to do that. I generally play for a couple hours per day and get a month to six weeks on a single 9v battery. At one point something went wrong with it and my batteries were dying within a week or so of each other. I couldn't find the issue myself, nor was my local guitar shop able to, so we sent it to an amp repair guy in town and he was actually able to fix it. Not sure what the issue was but I'm back to a month or more between battery swaps again.
Honestly, I can live with replacing the battery once every 6 months. The advantages outweigh the single con of active basses. Most people who play active basses often use passive pickups but I prefer 100% active basses. A 100% active system has some distinct advantages: 1. Ultra Low Noise, even with little to no cavity shielding. 2. No need for bridge ground. Also eliminates a possible shock hazard. 3. The tone is clear and well defined and will not get muddied up by a long signal chain. 4. Active pickups tend to have very little magnetic pull which improves sustain considerably. 5. EMG pickup systems are really easy to install and require almost no soldering to be done. Also, the price of their pickup systems is a bargain when you consider how much passive Delano and Nordstrand pickups cost. That's also not counting the trouble of installing the pickups the old-fashioned way.
That's necessarily not the case. My Sandberg for example has an active /passive mode at the volume knob. If there is no battery or if the battery runs out I just push the knob down and go on playing. And the battery lasts a long time anyway
Now i know this comment is gonna be long but it does put the reason behind why passives are just as equally as awesome as actives. This guy is really really really biased in active electronics (i'am biased in passive) never in my life have i ever needed to use an active EQ in a bass, it's just not needed, guitar... Maybe just maybe, but in bass??? man all you need is 1 pickup 1 volume 1 tone you're set, active is just a little bit of a hassle, i mean you got like 6 knobs and sometimes not even labelled so really easy to forget, and also there is the problems of batteries, i hate having to replace batteries by the time the bass is 10 years old you would have spent more then $15 in just 9v batteries, is just not needed, leo fender got it right the first time when he had 1 volume 1 tone and a single coil in a fender telecaster bass ( back then it was popular to call it the telecaster bass) and guess what, more then 60 years of innovation and 1 pickup is still all you need!!!, i mean i can obviously get very growly punchy tones from a P bass, i can also get very rounded smooth bassy tones out of it, and all i need to do is roll off 1 tone, meanwhile in a jazz bass, if i want to go from bright to bassier sounding i have to cut off the back pickup get the front pickup on and if i need more bass i need to roll off the tone, that takes way too much time in music terms, i say GET ON WITH IT!!!!!! why do you think the precision bass has become so legendary throughout its time? is because is very simplistic in the sense that it feels like a bus but inside it feels like a high end sports car, if it were not for this little neat feature, many artists would have simply ditched the simplistic idea, but they din't it's like ferrarri and lamborghinni, both are very fast both are very exiting but the exhaust in every single one of them models is not the same. Its like asking a Humbucker to go single coil, it simply won't do it and there is a reason for that... but i think my comment is already long enough... Bye
Actually... You can make your humbucker go single coil... Its called coil splitting, you wire it so the lead on one coil on the humbucker can be disengaged. And what is a humbucker with only a SINGLE COIL running called?
Heads up bass players...
I sit down with Chris May the master luthier behind Overwater basses and discuss the age old question... "Active Vs Passive Basses"!
"Passive Vs Active Basses" - In Conversation with Master Luthier Chris May of Overwater basses
I honestly prefer passive. I feel like I get a cleaner, less chunky sound. But I do like active for certain things. I just pick and choose depending on what song I'm playing.
***** Great to see you coming along and joining in the conversation Rob! More cool bass shizzle on the way :)
active all the way:) marcus miller uses it and so do i:)
Passive=classic sound
Active=modern sound
Best is a bass that has the passive/active switch :)
yet John Entwistle has a classic bass sound on many 70s albums and he used active..So much for your "Theory"
You are talking about the bass player that changed everything, though. I don't consider the 70's as classic as the 60's anyway.
John Entwistle often recorded with passive basses, his favorite being a modded 60s P bass. He used a Fenderbird on the Who Are You album. However, he did use his Alembic Spider on the It's Hard album which you can clearly hear on Eminence Front.
For the most part, he used active basses live but passive basses in the studio.
calvin harden~
What in the world is wrong w/you?
“I don’t like carrying batteries everywhere”
Literally what people who don’t have or play active basses say. Because a battery lasts like. Months usually. Weeks if you play 8+ hours a day
I don't think there is a reason to play out the battery 8 hrs or more a day. Only when I play in a group would I use the battery
True, but they only stop working at gigs, so best to take a spare ;)
@@grahamlewis4884 exactly. If they only last months, batteries are required to have on hand to cover every emergency situation.
Who plays 8hrs a day?? Lmfao they last quite a while been playing active for years never had one issue in a live setting
PP3 batteries don't weigh much and take up little room.
I, too, have both active and passive basses. And same as with Scott, I usually prefer passive mainly because I don't want to rely on batteries which can die. There is enoguh sound editing that can be done with pedals, the amp eq and by the soundguy that I don't need another EQ on my bass too.
Cheers for watching Stevie! :)
What basses are you guys using that the battery dies on you that often? I've used active basses since the late 90s and can't recall a battery ever dying in the middle of a performance. And I'm terrible at changing them on any sort of regular basis either. If it's that much of a problem then get a bass that has a passive bypass option so you can switch to a passive circuit. Most G&L basses do this.
With this vid and the "3 things you need to know when buying a Bass"... Great chemistry between you and Chris. I really learned loads on crucial technicalities... More of this type of video... Good job...
Ahhhh great to hear you enjoyed them man! More on the way :)
Your Channel is the best on YT Scott, you're awesome!
Great video!
Re: Buzzing in Studio Environment
In my home studio, I have battled with pickup noise. I finally got a Fender Am. Dlx. P-bass which solved all of that! It has an active/passive switch, a P pickup in the neck position and a J pickup in the bridge position.
Scott, I'd love to see a video of how to get different tones in a studio setting by means of right & left hand techniques, mutes, picks, and outboard equipment. I'd also like to hear about what engineers look for when it comes to bass guitar.
I've been a working player for 40 years both live & studio, and I just learned several cool things.
This is why I love my G&L L-2500. I have the option of going between active and passive. When I am looking for the right sound, On the fly I can switch between the two. One of the best basses out there in my opinion, especially with a solid set of Rotosound flatwounds :)
One of the best things about the L2000 series basses is that while they have an active preamp, the tone controls are still passive. The reason why you can still get tones from vintage to modern out of them!
I use a passive bass with off-board preamps. Best of both worlds.
Got a Carvin 5-string with a push/pull switch for active and passive. It's amazing the tonal difference between the two, with all settings being exactly the same. I generally prefer active because it's cleaner, crisper and tighter.
I have just started working with Chris and everyone at Overwater, learning every day ❤
So awesome dude! Enjoy the journey 🙌🏻🧡🔥
I've owned passive basses, my favorite being a Rickenbacker 4001. I've owned several active basses with passive pickups, my favorite being my custom modded SX Jazz Bass with an Audere Preamp. However, I've only ever owned and still own a pure active bass. I had ordered my ESP F-415FM 5 string bass and I was scared I would hate the sound (because apparently EMGs suck...at least that's the consensus), but much to my surprise it sounded very great! Once I got my ESP with EMGs....my Rickenbacker saw no action anymore. I sold 4 of my basses including the Rickenbacker, now I only own 3 basses. Yep I'm now the biggest fan of active EMGs.
John East's preamps are the absolute best!! I own two of them...a J-Retro in my jazz and a Uni-Pre in a Lakland. Excellent preamps!!
I have to clarify that noise such as 60 cycle hum has nothing to do with whether a bass is active or passive. I think actives sometimes get a bad rep because a lot of active players overboost and get that ultra hyped zingy sound. My personal opinion is that with a well setup passive bass, you can get a brighter tone to start, and bringing your tone control down a little bit will give you a natural resonance at that position of the tone knob. Then if you plug straight into a pedal with a quality buffer you get all of the benefits of an active bass and a passive bass without having to deal with batteries. If that pedal has an active EQ, you now have all of the important elements taken care of.
Noise can be prevented thanks to a flat and reasonable active setup. It's because the signal is a bit amplified before the cables catch the noises, so a good part of the noise itself is not amplified while the useful signal is aplified.
Noise reduction works best on signals that need it the least.
I LOVE Scott's Bass Lessons!
Hey Scott, awesome video as always. I think I have a bit more of an understanding of why engineers don't like my Rickenbacker. :)
I have a G&L L2000 which has active and passive selectable via toggle switch. I tend to play it in passive mode. But sounds good in any mode. I love my G&L!!!!
I have a lakland and the passive tone is as good as my jazz
The best application I've found so far for active tone control is when you select a low-bass pickup e.g. a single coil at the bridge, and you want all the snap and midrange but you've lost loads of bass. With an active bass you can dial in a bit of bass and the sound you get has all the low end from the neck pickup but with all the tonal characteristics of the neck.
your voice is so smooth and soothing
passive with a pre amp pedal 👍
Or active with a preamp pedal I'm getting myself the MXR M81 ,man that thing is studio quality.
@@savanaviolenta isn't it bad to stack Multiple preamps? Unless your have active/passive switch
Quite surprised there was no mention of the obvious Active Bass disadvantage - batteries going flat half way through a gig!
Seen that happen to other bassists a couple of times which made me make sure I got a bass with a passive / active switch when I moved from passive.
Very interesting and totally relevant to me! I now solely use active bass's! And I literally laughed out loud when you said 'Errr Scott.. there's a bit of buzz on your bass' :-D Been there hahaha
I put EMG J set s in my Jazz bass, for recording, the noise reduction was incredible, especially at home where there is less shielding on power cords etc. Quite an effort squeezing a battery into that little space.
I used to have a jazz with EMG's in.. sounded great! Thanks for watching man :)
Jazz with active/passive switch. Job done!
Active all the way for me. John East has sold me a lot of pre amps both as retro fit and in original basses including the filter based pre amps in my ACG's.
I do have a passive Jazz but it's a Roscoe Beck IV so isn't single coil.
Saludos desde Mexico!!!!Scott, i just happen to have a jackson Ellefson's 4 string signature active bass.......and i just am astonished of how metal or jazzy or pop-star it can sound.........i can play bach's cello suite 1 and make it sound as mellow as a cello, and can also play megadeth or play funk in just the turn of a knob.I am also plug and play haha but man, it sound really churchy-like or truly badass!!!!Seeing all your vids ;)
For me, and with my basses, passive is more pleasing to my ears. I liken it to the even/odd-order harmonic comparison with tube vs. transistor and vinyl vs. digital. I used to like having that kind of powerful sculpting available on the bass but your tastes change and back around 2001 I experimented with hard-wiring a Jazz bass, both pickups wired straight to the output jack, and it changed everything. I was surprised at how much clearer it sounded and it forced me to do everything with my fingers.
On a side note, it seems to me that a lot of players think that by putting their active bass into passive mode (if possible) they are able to leave it plugged in and not drain the battery. This is almost always not the case. Yes you may be able to run it in passive mode if your battery dies but the cable is the on switch for the preamp. If you unplug your bass when you're not playing it your battery(s) should last several months. I do prefer fully manual cameras so I never have to worry about batteries but I'm sometimes taking them way out into the wilderness. I don't really see how it's a valid argument against active basses. When do you play gigs that far from civilization? Not wanting to carry a tiny spare 9V battery (that might get changed once every 6 months) just sounds like laziness to me. If it's that big of a deal just never put a battery in and run passive.
Furthermore, let's not confuse the differences between passive/active circuitry and single coil/humbucking pickups. Most of the time when you get 60 cycle hum it's from single coil pickups and poorly shielded electronics in the bass or somewhere else in your signal chain. This can be exacerbated by dimmers and neons, and computers, monitors, and your amplifier. You can make a properly shielded single coil pickup bass very quiet but you can never get rid of the hum completely.
I've wired a bypass on all my active basses in the past. I don't really have active basses anymore since I just have Fenders. When I did use active basses, I generally kept my EQ at noon and adjusted on the amp before the set, and once I got my sound, I kept my sound about the same. On the few occasions that I did touch the bass EQ, I could have just as easy turned around and fiddled with amp knobs. I would do detailed comparisons before and after bypass, and here's what I always noticed about active EQ on the bass: it almost always just made the tone a little more solid compared to passive, as though it just had a bit more body, and the high end seemed a little more tamed and controlled. I think I'd like that strengthening in certain styles of music, but for that flatwound/picking kind of sound, it kind of takes a bit of the magic away because the last thing flatwounds need is more body and taming. I think maybe if I were slapping on a Jazz Bass, I'd enjoy that extra something.
My old Levinson Blade (Jazz) bass had a hum cancelling coil installed in the back, killed hum and also allowed better output balance when panning between pickups
I've never had a engineer scowl at a passive bass in the studio. In fact, in my experience, they seem to prefer passive Fender Ps and Js.
For myself, I prefer passive, unless we are talking about Alembic-type filters - that's the only active circuit I like; I have no use for on-board boost/cut active EQ.
BTW, Mr. Devine... thank you! ...and please keep up the fantastic work!
esa davenport if it's gonna need a batteryh it might as well be some dam good effects, like an echo effect built in, or a wha wha pedal built in effect or an auto tuning system which i would despise, but still it has to have something, tone is completely in your hands the most you need is 1 tone, my fav bass is a P bass and i can change my playing position from back to front to get a rounded sound or a snappy sound with a little bit of growl, it's all there, active is just too much of a hassle you can have up to 6-7 knobs and not know what sound you want cuz you know there's just so many and dialing in sounds can take time, the hell with that, i say GET ON WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is why im very fun at the studio xD
Same for me, Esa. Vintage single coil basses are hotter than ever right now and showing up with your 8 string bass with an 18V 5-band active preamp with all the bells & whistles is just as likely to get you poo-pooed as a really noisy vintage bass that hasn't been shielded properly. If you unplug your bass after you play it like you're supposed to active circuits can last several months before needing a battery change.
On the flip side Brad, showing up with a jazz bass with active EMG's and a Volume/Volume/Tone control set can be a studio engineer's dream come true, clean simple signal.
I have always been a passive player - P and J basses until I got my first active bass, a Lakland 44-02. Like many, I liked the simplicity of passive - plug and play with one tone knob to shape your tone, plus, as everyone says, the whole battery dying thing. But man, when I first plugged in the active bass, the punch of the tone just got me. It took me some time to get comfortable with the onboard preamp, but I love the single volume and blend knob (compared to a Jazz). The battery is not an issue at all, and to change it is super easy on this bass (no screws for the battery compartment). When I plug in my Jazz bass now, it sounds thin and limp compared to the active bass. My 44-02 is the first bass I grab when practicing. I guess I am an active convert.
Sounds like you've found your groove with the active bass! 🎸🔊 It's all about finding the right tool to shape your sound, and it seems like you've discovered your sonic match. Rock on! 🤘😊
I got the signature Flea Jazz Bass with passive pickups, will a preamp pedal (for example MXR M81 Bass Preamp) give the same effect/opportunities as active pickups?
Great interview...
Hi Scott, a very newbie question here. Is there a difference between an active pickup and active preamps? My Squier Deluxe Jazz says it has passive pickup with active preamps. My Warwick RB Corvette says it has active MEC pickups also with preamps onboard. Is there a difference between the two? I liked how both sounds :D
very interesting, thanks for sharing this knowledge Scott
Great and important subject man!
Cheers Jonas! :)
Old man Old ways Old school No sense in changing
Excellent information in this video .
Thank you Thank you
That's why I have passive pickups with an internal active EQ with Bass/Treble boost.
I am a new player and I already have 3 basses and I have no idea how to work the pick ups lol. I have a 80s passive fender that has a toggle switch which I can't figure how to work. I also have an active music man and a modulus with that composition neck. I basically keep everything flat lol. Guess I haven't developed an ear yet. I just bought a markbass amp and the tone settings make no sense to me. Anyhow I am enjoying playing and looking at Scott's video's. Great video with good information.
I've always had active basses and I really miss that plug and play mentality. Having to carry around some extra batteries everywhere just incase it dies, can be frustrating.
Lol... i've had a few batteries die on me too, lol! :)
I often wonder if it would be possible to power active pickups through the lead instead of using batteries, kinda' like phantom power for condenser microphones.
Edgar Allen Noe I don't think it would be possible, considering phantom is sent on the ground, which on a bass is also connected to your fingers
Mike Miller Not to mention that it's really hard to reject power supply ripple down into bass frequencies. It sure would be an interesting thing to look into though.
Robert Harding How do you know when the battery needs changing?
Ibanez SRxxxE Series from 500 up has an EQ bypass switch for going between active and passive.
Chris May is a Bass Genius.. And I play Both.. I love the beauty and sound of many passive basses.But my Active Schecter 5 String does the "Damn Thing" All the Time... Some of us LOVE our Actives!💯🖤🤠
5 stringers are BassPlayers 2!⚡🤠💯💣
Great conversation Scott, but I suggest trying to improve the voice input, sometimes it´s not clear at all, it has a lot of bass on it (not a joke!). It makes it harder for us non-native english speakers.
You site is great, congrats!
Dani
Subtitles would be great. Im non-native english speaker too and its hard to me to understand it at all :)
Very good idea, subs will solve it! :-)
One thing he was talking about really resonated with me. I know what a blend control (or double volume control on a Jazz Bass) on a passive bass is supposed to do, but the fact is, on your average passive bass w/ two pickups, you only get three basic sounds: Neck, Bridge, and N+B at equal volume. As soon as you get away from the two pickups being at exactly the same volume, the slightly louder pickup pretty much dominates the mix and it's because of the pickups loading each other. And since most active basses use a passive blend control, they also suffer from the blend control being basically a three way switch. I would love to have a bass where the blend control actually results in a different sound throughout the sweep, and it seems like a buffer can do that for me. Maybe a completely active setup is in the works for me.
There is something about the tone of a good passive pickup that is unbeatable. But I generally run active as overall they do a better job. It's whatever floats your boat really :P
I own one passive bass right now, my fretless j-bass and it is my favorite. I have recorded a lot with it. There are tricks you can do to get rid of the sound I believe. My engineer did something.
But I love my active basses for certain songs though. I just hate relying on them ya know? I always have bad luck when my battery dies or worse, I've had the pre-amp burn out on me on two basses. It killed me when they were my only 5 string and primary bass.
I want to get a lakland or make my own bass though. Lakland cuz I love the sounds you can get and they are beautiful. As well as the passive active switch. But if I made my own bass, I wouldn't know how to do anything with active. Which brings me to another point, if you aren't a tech, you can't do anything yourself. I am a mechanical engineering student and I can't even figure out how to fix those myself. But passives I can do all day long.
If you could point me in the direction to easy active solutions. If anything, I want to do a p-j bass. If I wanted it to be active I would want a passive bypass.
If I didn't want to make the bass myself, do you recommend any company who makes these. So many questions. But at least they are kind of challenging and almost trivial.
Thanks Scott!
You have one of the most interesting bass guitar channels.
My ears vote for a passive bass, BUT....if it's a four-string bass.
On a five-string bass, the fifth string, especially below the "D", sound too slurred and muddy for my ears even with the tone control fully open. In this case, I would choose active bass.
And what Chris says about a passive tone control and an active buffer is implemented in the G&L 2500. If I got his point right.
These basses have a lot of positive reviews on the Internet, but for some reason I have never seen them in the hands of professional top players.
Scott, you said it at 3:30 and you are so right: "passive circuit the sound of wood", thanks for that. I have a warwick thumb 98 ovankol in the body wenge in the neck, I always use it in passive mode (it is a false passive since you only avoid the eq, but when you take out the 9v battery it does not sound). In this false passive is where you can clearly hear the qualities of these woods, when I move to active mode, goodbye to these beautiful sounds of wood, simply destroys them. this is why so many warwick owners prefer passive mode even though almost all models come with active pups. Now I am thinking about changing completely to a circuit with pups and passive circuit, I am sure that this will further enhance the sound of the wood
Why would you own a thumb and play passive?? Lmao get a Jazz then
I love the active emg pick ups on my schecter. It's so much cleaner sounding than my jazz bass. It does affect the tone though. My bass is very punchy and almost a little compressed. When the battery is dead it sounds different.
Cheers for coming along and joining in on the discussion man!! :)
Where can I have the link to the video you talk about in the end?
Passive or active/passive switch definitely, IMHO. When you run out of battery in the middle of performance accidentaly, there is nothing more disappointing.
Even Leo Fender eventually went to Active basses when he designed with Musicman StingRay after making passive basses at Fender. I have had no issues with batteries and it takes less than a minute to change one in my StingRays.
I second your comment David, I have a 79' stingray I bought in 1980 and the sound is amazing, the batteries last for ages and I'm not talking months here.
I gig every week and the only thing I change are the strings ! nuff said lol
David Desmond and with my G&L 2000 if the battery goes down, the bass still works....
I just got a stingray after really only using passive jazz and p bass... And oh man oh man does that stingray sound good. It just sounds so phenomenal. I'm considering retro fitting a my two favorite books ones with active electronics if they fit
Hola saludes desde honduras solo una sugerencia ya que esto se ve a nivel global crees es posible en tus tutorias de bajo poner los subtitulos en español ya que asi tendrias una mayor visita en tu canal y uno como latino tendria un recurso mas para poder aprender de grandes bajistas como es el caso tuyo gracias
around 4:40 - C. May "in active bass you amplify the stuff you don't want, so you get into the whole shielding".... at the end of the video - Scott says he uses active to avoid the noise. So which one is it? Can you not use shielding for a passive bass? And which ones are more noisy to begin with
6:35, I just think (and I'm not the only one) that wood has very little (if any) influence on the sound, many blind tests confirms that, a mic on the bass is giving signal when the metallic string move thru the magnetic field and as long as the string is firm positioned between nut and the bridge its fine, the electromagnetic mic does not catch any signal from wood vibrations or any acoustic phenomenon, that is if the bass is stable or in any other way absorb or influence the movement of the string. There are so many other things that has a great more influence on tone, sustain or what ever you are looking for in bass sound and characteristics.
It’s not a mic on the bass. It’s a pickup. Both are transducers, meaning, they each use the movement of metal across a magnetic field, with the rate of that movement being the frequency, and the amount, or amplitude of that movement becoming the volume. With a microphone, air movement impacting the diaphragm, forces the diaphragm to move its voice coil, which is copper wire windings around a former, or formed shape, across a fixed magnet, or magnetic field. This movement creates an electrical impulse, or waveform, of varying voltages, or amplitude, volume, etc and various rate of oscillation, which is responsible for the tone, or frequency. So air movement, AKA, sounds, affect a microphone and thusly create an electrical signal which is then PRE-amplified, by, you guessed it, a preamp, which MUST be acted upon by an outside energy source to be ACTIVE, which increases the initial voltage created by the initial moment, which was generally in the millivolts range, to become a few volts, then to OP amps, AKA output amps, where it is increased to around maybe, 1-3 volts, before finally sending that signal to an amplifier, which increases the electrical signal many times over, reaching upwards of 30 volts or more. Think of it this way, microphones “hear” sounds, because they use air movement to activate a diaphragm, much like our own ears, which is comprised of copper wire wound into lots of coils on a formed shape, which in turn moves across an field, making an electrical signal. Pickups are NOT microphones. They use the movement, usually of a metal object, across a magnetic field, to create an electrical signal. They “hear”, nothing. There are exceptions to this, but they relate to very nuanced situations we don’t need to get into here. I’ve seen guys scream into a Les Paul pickup and you could hear their voice through the rig. Pretty incredible. But it’s all about oscillation of a conductive metal wound into coils as a group, called the coil, across a permanent magnet. It is the movement of the coil across the magnet which creates current, which creates the electrical signal.
I got a standard P bass made in mexico from the early 90's it's an active bass.I'v had it for 20's years and it still sounds pretty good.........
QBN37 how much have you had to spend on changing the batteries
Ernesto Chang Ha ha not much i got a couple of basses for back up................
QBN37 if that was the only bass you were playing my guess is you would have payed just over $40 in the last 20 years to play your beloved bass LOL not to mention cost of electricity for the amp or who knows maybe im wrong how much is it for a pack of 2 9v's in your country over hear is pretty expensive lke $6 for 2 9v's
If you want to get clear out the buzz in the studio with a passive bass, take a Jack cable get one end attached to your Bridge with tape and put the other end in your sock so it touches your skin. Buzz will be gone, well not all of it but, good enough;)
Yo Sander... thanks for the tip man! :)
Can you get a more even volume with an active bass? I want as little dynamics as possible, as close to a midi bass as possible??????
I own a passive and active bass and I prefer the passive because it doesn't pick up every small noise, such as minor fretbuzz and such :)
Hey man thanks for coming along and checking the video out! Welcome to the SBL Posse :)
I use both, i have a souped up j bass with passive and active. Personally i love the passive through a good amp (i use an orange ad200 and also an orange guitar amp aswell) and recorded i much prefer a great passive tone BBUUUUTTTTTTTT.............as a bass guitarist gigging, i cant count the amount of times i've rolled up to a venue and the bass goes right into whatever d.i theyve got there, sometimes the tone is terrible through the pa so i made the switch purely for live reasons, i can now have a slightly more beefy sound for stuff going through the pa. Everything recorded, i'll use passive if i'm using and amp or a really good di.
i never liked the idea of having to be reliant upon a 9v battery. i'm lazy and cheap. it made better sense to me to buy a decent outboard pre. those 9 v's are expensive here in the states, there like $7.50 for a 2pk. it just seems to me you can get to your sound easier and with greater consistency using the passive outboard pre combination. if that battery is a dud or slowly starts to die you will find yourself fiddling around with the controls on your bass to compensate for the loss of character or whatever.
I think this is more of a guitarist thing, but works the same on bass too if you like using fuzz pedals with your bass... Some classic fuzz circuits rely on being interfaced straight with passive pickups. They have low input impedance that loads the pickups down and while that kind of thing usually causes just dull and dark sound, with those circuits it just works. If there is an active stage feeding that king of fuzz, the result is usually too harsh. It may work with actives too, depending what you like and what you are aiming for, but usually those circuits are considered to sound best with passives.
Is it true that Active basses don't work well with effects? I use subtle effects with my active bass such as overdrive, chorus and wah and most of the time it sounds fine. But does it actually make a difference in tone whether I'm using active or passive?
Some fuzzes react very differently to an active or a passive bass. However, that's only if you plug in directly or only have true bypass in front of it. If you have even a Boss tuner in front of your fuzz pedal, you've already buffered the signal, i.e. it's now a low impedance signal, as though you're using an active bass. And if you use, say, a wireless unit, your signal is always active. So it's stupid when people say active basses don't work well with effects because how many professional pedalboards start out with a Boss tuner? Now, where people might have a point is that some active basses, especially older ones, have extremely high output because their preamps would add too much gain. Or they might have really hot pickups, whereas Fender basses stay within a pretty narrow range. In those cases, the active bass might clip all your pedals (and amp, too, which is why there's a -15 dB switch on most amps), but that's pretty uncommon these days, since most new active basses have about the same output level as a passive bass. I think the only exception is maybe the SUB4/5 basses.
Well I do not complicate much... to my taste I prefer passive, because if you are of the people sensitive to the bass sound the passive will always have their own sound, instead the active pickup, you have to live depending on a battery, and While the battery runs out with some frequencies phrases turn off and if you are the people who play every day, I recommend passive pickup. And about of equalization, easy... buy a good preamp and go.
I have a jazz bass with Keftone pickup (I recommend them)
Scott please help, i need one bass that have te deep bottom and a small body size, like ibanez but with ballz jaja sorry. you know any bass brand like that?
Edwin Vásconez Fender precision bass Lyte Deluxe edition baby check it :3
Me. My Fender Precision bass Highway One (2008). My Fender Rumble 100 V3 = A love affair
He mentioned the buffering S2
It is quite untrue that if you completely turn off one volume control on a Jazz Bass (on a Fender Jazz Bass anyway) that the whole bass goes off. That is because of how the pick-ups are wired to the volume potentiometers. One side of each pick-up and one side of each potentiometer are all connected to earth. The non-earthy side of each pick up goes to the WIPER of the respective volume potentiometer. The remaining ends of the two potentiometers are joined and routed to the output. So, if one volume control is rolled completely off, that pick-up signal is no longer routed to the output BUT it does not load the remaining potentiometer, and so kill the complete signal from the bass.
an passive bass with a preamp-pedal and not so long cable is exactly the same than on board active bass
Good staff.......missed the intro music....lol
Just put a pair of Seymour Duncan Apollo Jazz or DiMarzio Area J pickups in your passive Jazz Bass, and nobody will ever complain about noise ever again.
Active sounds so crisp
each has it's place in a player's stable. i think all things considered, it's about the player knowing what's required from the job and using the instrument that best fits the bill. i recommend buying affordable instruments so that you can afford to have an active and a passive, if you can't decide.
Hey Darrien, great to see you coming along to hang out man! :)
Scott's Bass Lessons sure thing! thank you for having this channel and providing us all with entertaining, educational, videos. kudos!
Darrien Day My pleasure man! :)
Well any bass would be better than what I currently have, but that will have to wait a while for an upgrade :(
No engineers I have ever worked with moan about passive basses. In fact every bass they keep around is usually passive.
I think it's mainly a problem with older J basses. They can pick up a lot of hum. More modern ones or anything with a humbucker are usually pretty quiet. My passive P bass is totally quiet and has been used for recording (just not by me) in professional studios throughout Nashville.
I think that it is worth mentioning what "noise" is. Noise is the by-product of an active circuit. "Noise" manifests itself as "hiss" on the output. Passive basses are not active, and so cannot produce "noise". Pick-ups however can pick up "hum" from the electrical mains, especially when the pick-up is close to electrical equipment containing mains transformers, such as amplifiers. Single-coil pick-ups are much more prone to picking up mains hum than hum-bucking types.
Sorry Scott, don't want to sound like a troll but..... when someone is being interviewed it is so we can hear what that person has to say. If you keep talking over him we don't hear what either of you has to say - just sayin' :) Still a great subject though, thanks for your efforts.
Good also if the battery goes dead.
I prefer active basses, they produce stronger and clearer notes. I can connect them to anything since they don't need preamps. (computers, speakers, etc.).
I have a Yamaha RBX 765A.
I have a Yamaha rbx 800A. Great bass. But when I use pedals I tend to turn down the volume. It is true that it is sometimes better than a passive if you connect it directly for recording purposes or live. I also add a little bit of low end with the controls. The thing is, batteries are expensive in my country. And I dislike the fact that I have to carry an extra battery just in case. I like the pickups the bass came with. But I think that you can get the same sound with passive pickups if the design is what you are looking for tonewise.and some designs have high output as well. The shielding is indeed the best way to get rid of noise. Apart from having humbucking pickups.
Cool, I think that the 800a is even older than my model. Yeah I also hate having to carry around batteries and things like that, and rechargeable batteries suck. The sound is more compressed on actives too. And my bass empties out a battery real quick. But other than that it has amazing sound in any situation, even on crappy amps it can compensate.
As a bass player and someone who has done sound it does not matter what you sound like on stage the front of house mix will put you where you fit in with the drums, guitars etc.......Dont get caught up with your sound because that is not how you sound front of stage!..............
I think it's fair to say most people care about how they sound no matter where they are! Isn't that the whole point? You spend your lifetime honing your sound. Sure, most engineers will get their source from a DI or a pre-EQ out from the head but that's not always the case. Why do we mic cabs then? It's not just for 'air'. As an engineer and bassist myself I try to get cues from someone's (hopefully) painstakingly-crafted stage sound to inform me as to how they'd like to sound out front, of course all while making the necessary adjustments to make them sit in the mix nicely. Some people like a burpy Jaco vibe with the highs rolled off. Some like some grit on the top end. It's your job to preserve some of that. I expect the same from good engineers when I'm on stage.
Well Stated!
Pasive with active eq, but actually active all the way!
This active-passive-thing sucks. When you go with a passive bass into a preamp or pedal the signal isn't passive any more.
Even when you use the eq or the gain-section on the amp.
An active bass is a bass with a built in preamp, that's all.
I like both, the simplicity of passive and the extended frequency range of active.
??? I thought this was a Split 2 trailer
p bass forever!
What about jazz vs precision?
I've got both, hee hee... but great question man!
I think it's all about what you want in the mix, jazz is like a "sword" and percision is like a "punch". But yeah its a great question!
I love jazz style but precision pickups come in lots of variations, and a thick pickup with split coils like musicman's are SEXY AS HELL. Bartolini jazz style pickups are the best thing on the market though. Their sound is, indescribable. Nice video anyway, Scott! Would love to see more "encounters" with Overwater people. They do a great job and is a pleasure to hear them talk.
gadzintu Yeah man... i've tried some bartolini's before - they sounded awesome! :)
Do what I did, get the Blacktop Jazz Bass. It's a Mexi-made Fender, but it's just a stone's throw from the American models. It features the split-coil P-Bass pickups instead of the single-coil J-Bass pickups. It has TONS of variation in sound due to two pickups, but can be adjusted to sound similar to a P-Bass by turning down the bridge-end pickup, and actually has an enhanced bridge over that of a normal J-Bass (The only drawback to this is Fender-made bridge covers don't fit over it). And, it of course comes with the amazing playability that J-Basses are well-known for. Best of both worlds, in my eyes. And that white-chrome pearl finish option is candy to the eyes.
Active basses usually use 9v batteries? My bass uses a battery.
Yes. That's why they're called active... They need active circuitry to function properly.
Seems like it was a ,,plura thing" trolling. But hey, my basses have 2x 9V battery.
I prefer active, I think.
None of the audience will notice or care. Do what makes you comfortable e.g. passive humbuckers remove much 'fear of hum' and 'fear of battery death'.
Remove the fear and don't think upon it. Using a plectrum will make 10x the difference. Active single coils are hummiest of all! Be careful good shielding can't cure all ills
I prefer an active on stage
"With an active bass, you can add. With a passive, you can only substract".
True. But what do you actually add to the signal? You have a tiny preamp box that has to fit into the body of your instrument. You aren't gonna get any organic or hifi tone out of that. It only muddles the natural output of your bass or adds noise to it. You want a good EQ? Your amp has one. You can always get an extra EQ for your pedalboard or your rack. Why does it have to be inside your bass?
A lot of active bass players tell me that only active basses can "cut through the mix". This I never understood. I don't want to "cut through" the mix. I want to find a good spot somewhere in the middle and settle there. I don't want any harsh treble clanking and rasping to overpower everything else in the band. Get everybody to roll in the mid frequencies and play at a sensible volume. You are there for the lower frequencies. Tell the egomaniacs at the guitar and keyboard to reduce the bass in their sound. The bottom end is your job. It's all about communication. An active bass is just another weapon in the arms race of "everyone louder than everyone else".
In my experience, hum is not an issue if you have good humbucking pickups. Just don't get a shoddy instrument, or a Rick ;)
Why do you think onboard preamp is not Hifi??
That is so false, just an example;
Your phone!
In your phone you have ADCs DACs and headphone amp and some are very high end.
I'm a professional electrical engineer and a hobby bassist, who designs electronics for a living. I will tell you this guy knows his stuff. The engineering that goes into the electronics, even in modern instruments, is not very complex. We are still using techniques and components from the 1970's and 1980's in active basses and technology for passive basses hasn't really changed since the 1940's.
An active bass can sound like a passive bass, but a passive cannot sound like an active bass. Active basses give you more control.
A lot of players automatically get turned off by active basses without even hearing them first, assuming they won't sound "vintage" or "classic".
The only disadvantage to an active bass is that they sound characterless. I own both active and passive basses and much prefer passive pickups. My opinion only. :-) Actually I should change that comment because I bought a Dimension bass which has a really nice tone and has the advantage of onboard EQ without necessarily sounding like an active bass.
+Ian Vaughan I don't know, I think Stingrays, NS-2s, Wals and Warwicks have plenty of character. Having said that, when I took the preamp out of my Ray34 I noticed that my plucking position made a much bigger difference. It seems like your right hand position doesn't matter as much with a preamp.
constantly replacing a battery is a deal breaker for me.
+Doug Matthews There might be something wrong with your bass if you're having to do that. I generally play for a couple hours per day and get a month to six weeks on a single 9v battery. At one point something went wrong with it and my batteries were dying within a week or so of each other. I couldn't find the issue myself, nor was my local guitar shop able to, so we sent it to an amp repair guy in town and he was actually able to fix it. Not sure what the issue was but I'm back to a month or more between battery swaps again.
Unplug when you aren't playing and batteries last a long time.
Constantly, once a year, omg
Honestly, I can live with replacing the battery once every 6 months. The advantages outweigh the single con of active basses. Most people who play active basses often use passive pickups but I prefer 100% active basses.
A 100% active system has some distinct advantages:
1. Ultra Low Noise, even with little to no cavity shielding.
2. No need for bridge ground. Also eliminates a possible shock hazard.
3. The tone is clear and well defined and will not get muddied up by a long signal chain.
4. Active pickups tend to have very little magnetic pull which improves sustain considerably.
5. EMG pickup systems are really easy to install and require almost no soldering to be done. Also, the price of their pickup systems is a bargain when you consider how much passive Delano and Nordstrand pickups cost. That's also not counting the trouble of installing the pickups the old-fashioned way.
RECHARGABLe battery, have you ever hear about that?
Not to mention any stray radiation from lights and other electronics make a jazz bass noisy.
"Master Luthier Chris May of Overwater basses gets talked over"
Seymour Duncan stk j noiseless for jazz passive basses problem solved..
What happens when an active bass does'nt have a 9 volt battery? nothing. You can't play it until you go buy a battery.
That's necessarily not the case. My Sandberg for example has an active /passive mode at the volume knob. If there is no battery or if the battery runs out I just push the knob down and go on playing. And the battery lasts a long time anyway
Joseph Seraile my G&L L2000 works when the battery goes flat...
Now i know this comment is gonna be long but it does put the reason behind why passives are just as equally as awesome as actives. This guy is really really really biased in active electronics (i'am biased in passive) never in my life have i ever needed to use an active EQ in a bass, it's just not needed, guitar... Maybe just maybe, but in bass??? man all you need is 1 pickup 1 volume 1 tone you're set, active is just a little bit of a hassle, i mean you got like 6 knobs and sometimes not even labelled so really easy to forget, and also there is the problems of batteries, i hate having to replace batteries by the time the bass is 10 years old you would have spent more then $15 in just 9v batteries, is just not needed, leo fender got it right the first time when he had 1 volume 1 tone and a single coil in a fender telecaster bass ( back then it was popular to call it the telecaster bass) and guess what, more then 60 years of innovation and 1 pickup is still all you need!!!, i mean i can obviously get very growly punchy tones from a P bass, i can also get very rounded smooth bassy tones out of it, and all i need to do is roll off 1 tone, meanwhile in a jazz bass, if i want to go from bright to bassier sounding i have to cut off the back pickup get the front pickup on and if i need more bass i need to roll off the tone, that takes way too much time in music terms, i say GET ON WITH IT!!!!!! why do you think the precision bass has become so legendary throughout its time? is because is very simplistic in the sense that it feels like a bus but inside it feels like a high end sports car, if it were not for this little neat feature, many artists would have simply ditched the simplistic idea, but they din't it's like ferrarri and lamborghinni, both are very fast both are very exiting but the exhaust in every single one of them models is not the same. Its like asking a Humbucker to go single coil, it simply won't do it and there is a reason for that... but i think my comment is already long enough... Bye
Actually... You can make your humbucker go single coil... Its called coil splitting, you wire it so the lead on one coil on the humbucker can be disengaged. And what is a humbucker with only a SINGLE COIL running called?
Fuzz pedals are better on passive
I never prefer an active bass, just don't like the sound. Plus I hate the battery and all the knobs and buttons and switches