Active Pickup Bypass

A

axeripper

New member
Wouldn't it be cool if active pickups had a bypass or something? You know, just in case you don't have access to a 9V.

My question is, why not? I've been playing guitar for many years and never had to rely on a battery. As cool as they can sound, I just can't bring myself to make energizer any richer just so I can play my axe.
 
Re: Active Pickup Bypass

passive pups with active electronics can work this way but a true active pup, like emgs for example, have almost no output without the preamp which needs batterys
 
Re: Active Pickup Bypass

I understand that, but why not build in a bypass in active pickups so people can have the option? Why limit them to only work with a battery?
 
Re: Active Pickup Bypass

Because, at least with EMGs, they would be unusable. The coils are designed to drive the input of the integral preamp, and nothing more. Not only that, but a bypass system would be unfeasible. Each coil of an EMG is wired to it's own side of the preamp, so to bypass it all, you'd have to run a 4 or 6 conductor wire out to a DPDT or 3PDT switch, allowing you to disconnect both sides of both coils from their respective preamps. And, the extra pre-preamp wire strung out through the guitar would increase the noise that's amplified by the preamp. That all defeats the advantages of having an integral preamp. You might as well just buy regular passive pickups and put a bypassable preamp in the control cavity.
 
Re: Active Pickup Bypass

Just wanted to add that in the data communications field they are using POE. Could be something that might be integrated into music equiment. Instead of having to keep swapping batteries you get a small amount of voltage from the amp to run the pickups.
 
Re: Active Pickup Bypass

Actually, you could do that fairly easily now. The guitar is already a stereo jack. Just replace the battery clip with a straight wire. Replace the input jack with a stereo one and run 9 volts to the sleeve. Then, of course, you'ld have to use a stereo guitar cable.
 
Re: Active Pickup Bypass

I still can't figure out why they haven't switched guitar to use XLR cables, then you could have a phantom power supply from the amp, no battery and you could run a 300' cable without signal loss...

Of course I use a wireless for everything so that wouldn't work for me... :)
 
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