Half active and half passive pickup?????

Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

Also it wasn't really advice i was after. Just the sharing of ideas related to the subject
 
Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

krulty said:
It says on the original post what im trying to accomplish. A ballance of active and passive tonal qualitys. I want the advantages of an active but i want to keep some sweetness to the tone. And im not sure how its impractical??? Once its all wired it would work the same as any pup.
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Then go with a Blackouts modular preamp and be done with it. It can turn passives into actives.

Impractically: All-or-nothing is what occurs for your idea. If you're trying to mix the qualities and have the best of both, you won't really get to experience say: 60% active with 50% passive. You will only get 100% for both, or 0% from both. Meaning you will only get some weird in-between sound that isn't guaranteed to be a mix of the best qualities for both. In fact, it can very well be a mix of the worst qualities of both pickups. Whatever you get it what you get in doing so - there is no modifying the sound by volume controls/tone controls etc.

And everything else said about magnetic fields is correct. Yes, both rods and magnets are magnetic fields. BUT the way they act is different, and if three humbuckers so close together affect the sound via the magnetic field (3 pup LPC), what makes you think any form of single coils would be any different?

Read this thoroughly:
http://www.moore.org.au/pick/07/07_innovative.htm
 
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Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

Myaccount876 said:
Then go with a Blackouts modular preamp and be done with it. It can turn passives into actives.

Impractically: All-or-nothing is what occurs for your idea. If you're trying to mix the qualities and have the best of both, you won't really get to experience say: 60% active with 50% passive. You will only get 100% for both, or 0% from both. Meaning you will only get some weird in-between sound that isn't guaranteed to be a mix of the best qualities for both. In fact, it can very well be a mix of the worst qualities of both pickups. Whatever you get it what you get in doing so - there is no modifying the sound by volume controls/tone controls etc.

And everything else said about magnetic fields is correct. Yes, both rods and magnets are magnetic fields. BUT the way they act is different, and if three humbuckers so close together affect the sound via the magnetic field (3 pup LPC), what makes you think any form of single coils would be any different?
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The blackout modular pre amp is awesome. But it gives you a pure active pup. No tonal quality from its passive origin. And i fully realise it'll be 100% both. Not a true mix of the two. But that not really what i meant. I just want to colour the tone of each.
 
Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

allstarrme said:
because passives use a 250k or 500k volume and actives use a 25k.

you can add a preamp to the passive to boost it up to active levels or put a resister in front of the active to make it see 25k but using it with a 250k volume makes it an on/off switch.

it'll never really be a balance, pick one or the other.

a 30k resister in front of the active will make a 250k pots look like a 28.8K pot and a 30k resister in front of a 500k pot will see 28.3k and trim some gain off, but I've really only seen this work for say a passive neck and an active bridge, where you are looking for very different sounds and outputs from the same guitar.
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On this, if I want to use a humbucker that's active and a single-sized hum (like a cool rails) that can be done so long as I don't try to use the same volume control (I was told that sometime ago)

If I were to use the passive through a 25k pot (Volume only) what kind of sound would I get..?
 
Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

krulty said:
Bar or rod a magnetic field is a magnetic field. They dont come in types! And you can get passives with bar mags, like the passive single i mentioned (emg s3) has.
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Yes, I have multiple passive pickups with bar magnets.

What's the objective of this show again?
 
Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

Oh, and head over to the blog section. Someone just did the leg work for you, experimenting, trying to get passive and actives to play nice together using the same controls.

cg
 
Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

One thing to keep in mind is that an active pickup isn't really a coil. At least as far as the wires you have to work with. You're dealing with the output of a tiny SS amp. So, it's like connecting a single coil in series with the output of your iPod. But the SC does generate some voltage. So, as the AC signal flows one way, you're injecting voltage into the amp. As it flows the other way, the amp sees a negative impedance. Not good for the amp in either situation. The good news is the output of the SC will be small. Probably won't hurt anything, but probably won't sound like you expect either.
 
Re: Half active and half passive pickup?????

DeathMetalRob said:
On this, if I want to use a humbucker that's active and a single-sized hum (like a cool rails) that can be done so long as I don't try to use the same volume control (I was told that sometime ago)

If I were to use the passive through a 25k pot (Volume only) what kind of sound would I get..?
Click to expand...

You can use the same controls as long as you place a resistor inline with the hot output wire. This puts the resistor in parallel with the pot and makes the pickup see close to the correct value. Use the correct value pot for your passive pickup.

This was done by Seymour & recommended in the diagrams way back when the livewires came out.
 
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