Combining EMGs and passive pickups

[Willis]

EMG recommends using an EMG preamp on the passive pickup when combining passive and active pickups. If I have my own JFET preamp booster, can I use this on the passive pickup to get it to balance with the EMG? Or is there something different about the signal the EMG preamps run out? I want to use a Seymour Duncan humbucker with an EMG single coil.

 

[Artie]

Re: Combining EMGs and passive pickups

Ideally, you'ld want a pre-amp that has inputs for both the active and passive signals, so they could be mixed electronically - like the DTar Eclipse does. The reason is that if you mix the output of two preamps passively, (that is, on the output side), you run the risk of one output swinging positive while the other goes negative, essentially shorting out the power supply. The current flow through both outputs could be damagingly high.

It will just depend on how each preamp output section is designed.

Artie

I should add - thats the "theory" part. Its possible that its been done a thousand times.

 

[Willis]

Re: Combining EMGs and passive pickups

This is what EMG says:

This is the best alternative. Install an EMG-PA-2 on the passive pickups. There are two benefits to doing this. With the trimpot on the PA-2, you can adjust the gain of the passive pickups to match the EMG's. The PA-2 acts as an impedance matching device so you can use the low-impedance EMG controls (25K) without affecting the tone of the passive pickups. You will also be able to use other EMG accessory circuits such as the SPC, RPC, EXB, EXG, etc. For this application, we recommend ordering the PA-2 without the switch for easy installation on the inside of a guitar.

So if you do it this way, isn't each preamp on one pickup, like the way I want to do it?

 

[Artie]

Re: Combining EMGs and passive pickups

Yeah. I'm sure you'll be good to go with that setup. This is one of those times where the subject of your thread caught my "technical" interest, but I get carried away with the theory. I doubt that the maximum excursion of the voltage coming out of an active pickup is enough to worry about.

Sorry for causing undue concern. I just gotta watch where I butt-in. :smack:

Artie