EMG 25K vs 100K pots

[idsnowdog]

After years collecting dust I replaced the nut and restrung my 4-pickup Aria Fullerton II today. The guitar has original Livewire strat pickups in the neck and bridge positions. I have two EMG SA pickups in the middle. If I remember correct I used 100K pots on the guitar. The Livewires are beautiful and lively sounding but the EMG's are dark and muffled in comparison. EMG's usually use 25K pots instead of 100K. Does volume pot value work the same in active electronics as passive electronics? I would have thought that with a 100K pot they would be brighter instead of darker. Is there any other pot value I can use to breathe some life in them?

 

[Artie]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

My 2-cents worth . . . with passive pups, you shape the tone with the vol/tone load. You can go too bright, or you can go too dark. But, you're just shaping the tone to fit your personal taste.

With active pups . . . they need a specific "engineered" load. Go too high, or go too low, and now the circuit is malfunctioning. It's not the same thing.

Make sense?

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

If that's the case I'm thinking I can just swap out one of the pots on the guitar because it is currently set up with the first two pickups to one volume pot and the other two to another volume pot with one master tone. I can just rewire it so the middle two EMG's are going to a 25K pot while the Livewires go to a 100K pot. That would also make more sense from a blending point of view because I like the sound of the EMG's when blended with the Livewires.

 

[Mincer]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

I would be interested to know if this changes things. I know very little about active pickups, but learn a little each day.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

I would be interested to know if this changes things. I know very little about active pickups, but learn a little each day.

I think I have some 25K pots and I could tweak the configuration so the middle pickups doesn't have a tone control.

 

[Teleplayer]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

I'll be interested to hear your result of swapping pots. Honestly I don't believe changing from 100k to 25k will make the difference you are looking for, but you can try it. I've heard some people had troubles due to active preamp stability issue which should never happen IMO. Changing the TONE control pot from 100k to 25k is fairly certain to make the tone warmer, since its a passive tone control. Passive tone control on EMGs with 0.1uF and 25k pots have a noticeable loss of top end, even when they are set to 10/10ths. For my EMG applications I prefer to use a 0.022uF tone cap, and only use the tone pot between 5/10ths to 10/10ths which has a much more subtle effect than when using the stock tone cap value.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

Back in the 90s when I was using EMGs in my basses, I experimented with volume pots. I had a box with a 25k and 100k pot I could switch between.

I found, at least with the EMG J5, that they were more open sounding and punchier. I mentioned this to one of the guys from EMG, and he thought that shouldn’t be. But it was an obvious difference.

The older EMGs have kind of a high output impedance for an active device. So it made sense that the 100k pot would work better.

The newer X series have a new preamp with lower output impedance.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

Open and punchier with 100K or 25K?

 

[greekdude]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

After years collecting dust I replaced the nut and restrung my 4-pickup Aria Fullerton II today. The guitar has original Livewire strat pickups in the neck and bridge positions. I have two EMG SA pickups in the middle. If I remember correct I used 100K pots on the guitar. The Livewires are beautiful and lively sounding but the EMG's are dark and muffled in comparison. EMG's usually use 25K pots instead of 100K. Does volume pot value work the same in active electronics as passive electronics? I would have thought that with a 100K pot they would be brighter instead of darker. Is there any other pot value I can use to breathe some life in them?

When I tried EMG 81 with the original livewire's 100K pots , the EMG81 was much louder than livewire neck, but in a very ugly manner. I ended up finding an original livewire bridge (non-metal) along with the stock neck livewire and it has been lovely ever since. EMGs are cool but only in mahogany IMHO.

Also a note on power : on standard configuration as recommended by the manuals (pots, caps, etc i.e. no mods), the EMGs are of equal output with the Livewires. The livewires are more "cutting" more highs, little bass, whereas the EMG 81/60/85 sound a little fuller. For superstrats I prefer the livewires.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

I tried running the EMG's at 9V instead of 18V as a test today. The Livewires sound a lot duller but the EMG's sound no better.

 

[greekdude]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

Yup, IMHO EMGs on 18V sound weak. On 9V much better.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

If I was looking to reduce interaction between the 100K pots and 25K pot would it make any sense to ground the EMG's to the 25K volume pot instead of the 100K pots for the Livewires?

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

I bought a pair of original Livewires off Reverb last night so I can get rid of the EMG's.

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: EMG 25K vs 100K pots

Goodbye and good riddance to the EMG's. All Livewire's now and it only took 4 try's to get the wiring correct this time.:smack: