General question about active pups and SS amps

R

Rick

New member
Hey all..
I have an old 1969 Kustom amp. It's old school. All analog, nothing digital in it at all. Powered by transisters not tubes. My normal rig includes guitar --> boss GT10 --> Kustom amp.

This amp has no effects built in other than reverb.

As I understand it, active pickups have a little battery powered pre-amp that give the signal a boost which as I understand it is to drive an amp harder. Now, considering I have a Boss GT10 for my effects, going into an old school analog amp, would running active pickups have any useful benifits?
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

Active PU's have a battery, not to drive the amp harder, but because they have so few windings, they don't generate an audible signal on their own. The reduced windings help to reduce noise, along with tone quality. Actives also use 25K pots, to darker the tone, as they are ungodly bright with normal pots.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

That's what I was gonna say, but I just got up and couldn't think of the right way to say it :lol:
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

blueman335 said:
Active PU's have a battery, not to drive the amp harder, but because they have so few windings, they don't generate an audible signal on their own. The reduced windings help to reduce noise, along with tone quality. Actives also use 25K pots, to darker the tone, as they are ungodly bright with normal pots.
Click to expand...

Ah, ok great information. I guess I would have a follow up question. When I've read about them, they always seem to be associated to metal. I'm not really a "metal" guy per-say, rather I'm more of an 80's hair rock. (RATT, Tesla, Van Halen, AC/DC, Def Leppard on and on). So, I guess I would ask... Are they a one trick pony type of pup? Metal????
 
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Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

I've tried EMG's, and I can say without fear of contradiction, they are bereft of tone. Thin, cold, and sterile. That's from a blues perspective. But...if you play metal with a ton of distortion and effects, that's what you want, to keep from being lost in mud. They have they're uses, but it's actually that they're so puny they need a battery, and then they're so sterile that they handle mega-doses of distortion well. For some guys that's a good thing, for others, not so much. Then there's the issue of using anything battery-powered on stage; batteries die at the worst times, and as they gradually age and weaken, you lose some tone quality.

As to your question, I'd call actives 'one-trick-ponies' as they don't clean up well, and really aren't suited for the genres I play. The '80's guys you listen to were using passives to get those tones.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

Again, thanks for the great information.

Completely forgetting active pups now...

Referring to passive pups, high output and low output pups, will they make any kind of difference with an analog amp other than just volume? I get the fact that different pups have different tonal characiteristics, I'm just wondering from stricly how much harder they drive an amp...

It seems to me that, a low output and a high output would not have any impact on breakup on an old school analog amp. My amp simply does not have any distortion at all. NONE, nada. It's a one trick pony "clean". It has tone controls, but thats it.

Having said that... Throwing in my BOSS GT10 into the mix. Will the difference in output of a low vs. high output pup make any difference?
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

Yes. While it's not quite the dynamic interaction that you get plugging straight into good tube amps, your GT10 still has models (simulations) of those amps/distortion types that will definitely be affected by your pickups. Plus, IMO, Boss does a better job than many at making those simulations.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

Guston7 said:
Yes. While it's not quite the dynamic interaction that you get plugging straight into good tube amps, your GT10 still has models (simulations) of those amps/distortion types that will definitely be affected by your pickups. Plus, IMO, Boss does a better job than many at making those simulations.
Click to expand...

Wow, I didn't realize that the amp sims were that accurate (within reason).
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

In my experince, processors/sims seem to work better with low /medium output pups that let the processor do the heavy lifting whilst still being able to cut through.

I've had experinces where a very loud pup has overdriven the input stage of the processor and given me some nasty clipping. Better units usually have input level and impedance options that let you tune this.

On the active vs passive thing, actives can work well with processors too as they have a very even note dynamic and a great cut through.

I dont own a GT10 so maybe someone that does can help there.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

Tell David Gilmour EMGs don't work with blues, I'm sure he'd love to know. :p

And your old-skool amp has old-skool distortion - it's called turn it to max (both volume and master volume, if it has one) and crank the pickup as close to the strings as you can, then beat the strings as hard as you can.

Once the speaker is blown, then you'll have a nice farty distortion :p


Some processors have input buffering which prevents input overload and thus clipping. At least on distorted presets. I'm sure you can make 'em fart on a clean patch.

However, not all input overloading is a bad thing (except on cleans, of course). I used to run my Digitech GSP21's Input level up high so that cleans were non-existant but the crunchy channels were heavily saturated. Back down the internal gains for the "not peeling your face off" tones.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

blueman335 said:
Active PU's have a battery, not to drive the amp harder, but because they have so few windings, they don't generate an audible signal on their own. The reduced windings help to reduce noise, along with tone quality. Actives also use 25K pots, to darker the tone, as they are ungodly bright with normal pots.
Click to expand...

Yes many/most actives have low impedance windings. But they don't all use 25k pots, and they don't need to use 25k pots, you can use almost anything 5k, 500k, whatever, it doesn't matter, and it doesn't have any effect on tone, unless you load it right down with something ridiculously low. The whole point about being active is that there's a buffer amplifier isolating the pickup from the load that follows. The -3dB point is always well outside the frequency range of the pickup, so the characteristic of the pickup's output is not dependent on whatever load follows and can be set by the pickup designer based only on the interaction of the coil, any tone shaping components prior to the buffer, and the buffer.


zakk_speed said:
In my experince, processors/sims seem to work better with low /medium output pups that let the processor do the heavy lifting whilst still being able to cut through.

I've had experinces where a very loud pup has overdriven the input stage of the processor and given me some nasty clipping. Better units usually have input level and impedance options that let you tune this.
Click to expand...

Yes I've also experienced this with actives. As you say, if you clip the initial pre-amp feeding the ADC on these sort of processors, it can't be fixed downstream and sounds awful. You've got to get into the ADC unclipped, then go crazy with distortion if desired after that.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

My experience is only with Blackouts and only the standard version. In my Charvel with just a volume nob I can get a suprising variety of tones. I play a lot of metal, but also blues and classic rock and they're not bad for that at all. I can only imagine that with some tone controls Blackouts could be an extremely versitile pick up. With regards to SS and effects, I think that pick ups tend to affect your tone more with tube amps, especially active pick ups. However, they will still have an effect on an SS amp, just maybe not as much.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

blueman335 said:
Active PU's have a battery, not to drive the amp harder, but because they have so few windings, they don't generate an audible signal on their own. The reduced windings help to reduce noise, along with tone quality. Actives also use 25K pots, to darker the tone, as they are ungodly bright with normal pots.
Click to expand...

Actually most active pickups would produce a vintage or slightly lower than vintage output without the preamp. It's not inaudible. Many active humbuckers would read around 8k without the preamp. And as others have said, the pot value isn't affecting the brightness as it does with a passive pickup. It's pretty much like the fader on a mixing board at that point. If you hear a change in tone out of your amp as you roll the volume up and down, it's because the amp tone changes as it's hit with more or less input gain from the pickup.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

This is all VERY good information. Some of my suspecisions have been confirmed.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

EMGs sound just fine clean. I met a local blues artist who uses SAs in his Strat and he sounds great. Although active pickups are associated today with metal music, as Lou pointed out several years ago, recording is when active pickups shine. They are hum free and quiet. Try a few guitars with active and passive pickups with your amp before you decide. You won't get real over-driven tube sound in an old ss amp, but the Kustom was a warm and popular amp in its day. Love that tuck and roll covering.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

Yeah, it's not a bad amp. It's grown on me. It's not my only amp, but the one I play though the most for practice. I'm still developing my skills at the ripe age of 44. It was my grandfathers, he gave it to me when he passed years back.

I've modded it a little bit. Put in two 10" some Eminence Ragin Cajun speakers into it. The originals were in bad shape. Replaced all the caps. It does have a very nice warm clean tone for sure.
 
Re: General question about active pups and SS amps

blueman335 said:
I've tried EMG's, and I can say without fear of contradiction, they are bereft of tone. Thin, cold, and sterile. That's from a blues perspective. But...if you play metal with a ton of distortion and effects, that's what you want, to keep from being lost in mud. They have they're uses, but it's actually that they're so puny they need a battery, and then they're so sterile that they handle mega-doses of distortion well. For some guys that's a good thing, for others, not so much. Then there's the issue of using anything battery-powered on stage; batteries die at the worst times, and as they gradually age and weaken, you lose some tone quality.

As to your question, I'd call actives 'one-trick-ponies' as they don't clean up well, and really aren't suited for the genres I play. The '80's guys you listen to were using passives to get those tones.
Click to expand...


Spoken like a true hater that has never really tried something (though im sure you will come back with your experience of spending years being tortured by having to use emgs)

Simply put EMG's dont have a vintage tone. They can do blues but its not a traditional sound. They can do clean but its not A2 style clean.

Do you know how many hours you can get from an EMG battery? In my regularly played EMG guitar it gets changed about every 2 years. And the batteries dont just die you can hear the change long before it will die. If its a really important show how hard is it to pop the battery out and put your multi meter to it to see how much juice is left? or if you dont want to do that just slap a new one in and keep the old one for home practice.

They do not need 25k pots I have a guitar that has both EMG and a Dimarzio Super D in it and i use a 500k pot. It isnt any brighter than it was with a 25k pot. The only downside is you have no volume sweep with the EMG its basically on or off.

EMG's do their own thing and do it well but its not every ones cup of tea and thats cool but atleast have it down straight when your gonna hate.
 
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