active or passive pickups

I'm buying a new guitar, and i would like to have a little heavier distortion. i'm thinking about guitar with humbucker pickups, but not sure if i should use active or passive one? i never try to play a guitar with active, so how much is sound heavier. i like to play maiden and stuff with some 'cleaner' sound, so i think that better solution is passive one. any advice?

I absolutely HATE active pickups! passive pu's are more versatile, seeing as how they actually have a clean sound. Go to Dimarzio, and seymour duncan's web sites and look around.

I actually like my active pickups, but keep in mind active pickups are generally quite narrow minded about the sound they give out. If you're buying active pickups your almost definately buying them for hard rock, and well, hard rock alone. But then again their are active pickup combo's that introduce a little bit of variety, but they still are quite fixed.

Major advantage I believe in active pickups is that at high distortion levels chords come through damn nicely, once again though, you've got to have your mind on a particular genre. trying to play beach boys on an active pickup guitar might prove pointless, but playing metallica on active pickups is perfect.

Also the complaints about the battery are absolute bull crap, if players are willing to restring their guitar once a month (which takes time and patience) how hard is it to replace the 9v battery in the guitar every 6 months?

What's an active pickup and what's a passive pickup?

Passive pickups are your standard run of the mill invented in 1930's pickups (obviously there's been a bit of progression since then in pickup technology but the underlying technology remains the same), Active pickups are, in basic terms, a passive pickup with a preamp built in that amplifies the signal coming out of the guitar slightly which generally cuts the work of the amp down by a bit and theoretically allows clearer tone. However a more expensive pickup will probably have as good tone anyway.

Metallica and many other heavy metal artists, most notably those using ESP's, are heavy users of active pickups. Active pickups perform very well with distortion. That's about all I know on the subject. Despite the nature of active pickups being powered they actually work better close to the string (strangely), I have no idea why. Great for heavy metal and hard rock but not very versatile!

Originally Posted by: suicidalmoose... Also the complaints about the battery are absolute bull crap, if players are willing to restring their guitar once a month (which takes time and patience) how hard is it to replace the 9v battery in the guitar every 6 months?

how much do you play guitar per day? if i play about 4 hours almost every day, how long do you think this battery will last? in other hand you can buy rechargeable one, right?

the battery honestly last 6 months with that much play, its an extremely small voltage going through it. i haven't had my guitar for so long, but according to ESP if you play 2 hours a day its 12 months or something, so i suppose the 6 month estimate was pretty accurate. i play about 6 hours a day and i haven't had any problems. when you start having to turn the volume up for the guitars signal to come through the amp then its time for a new battery. no big deal really. as i said if you change your strings once a month then changing your battery once every 4 or 5 months shouldn't bother you too much at all.

Originally Posted by: suicidalmoosethe battery honestly last 6 months with that much play, its an extremely small voltage going through it. i haven't had my guitar for so long, but according to ESP if you play 2 hours a day its 12 months or something, so i suppose the 6 month estimate was pretty accurate. i play about 6 hours a day and i haven't had any problems. when you start having to turn the volume up for the guitars signal to come through the amp then its time for a new battery. no big deal really. as i said if you change your strings once a month then changing your battery once every 4 or 5 months shouldn't bother you too much at all.

4-5 months?! that's great!
when i asked my friend, he told me to get one without battery cause they get empty every weak :D

Im notorious for never turning down the volume knob on my guitar after I play. If I use active pups, will that waste battery?

If you unplug the cable from the guitar, the preamp is shut off. Leaving your guitar plugged in will drain the battery flat.

exactly what i was about to say. leaving the cable in a guitar with actives is like leaving a cable plugged into a pedal with a 9v battery, just drains the crap out of it within about 10 days or so (rough estimate) that's about 240 hours of playing, which 2 hours a day, is 120 days - there's your 3 - 4 months for you.

wow.

So im guessing thats a rule of thumb for just about anything active that needs to be plugged.

Originally Posted by: alucard0941wow.

So im guessing thats a rule of thumb for just about anything active that needs to be plugged.

Yeah. The jack usually has a switch built into it that connects the battery to the circuit when a cable is plugged in.

Another question,
Everyone says that actives are only good with high distortions. But is that only EMG'z or is that for all active pups. Cause most people can only name EMG as the only company that has actives. Because Carvin also offers some guitar with active pickups.

EMG has become the defacto 'Brand X' of active guitar pickups. The fact that they impose their own wretched tone on whatever guitar they are installed in, just ruins it for everyone else.

Anyone who has experienced the sounds available to users of piezo bridge pickups knows better, of course, but we are very much in the minority. I'm sure that there are some wonderful active pickups out there, but I don't have any personal experience with them.

Of the 8 guitars I currently own, only two have active pickups. They are my Washburn SBT-21 Tele-styled solid body, which has a Fishman (?) piezo bridge pickup, and my EA20-12B Festival Series 12-string electric/acoustic, which also has some kind of piezo bridge pickup in it.

Of all the guitars I have owned, and subsequently sold, only my Washburn EA20MTS Festival Series 6-string acoustic/electric had an active pickup, again a piezo bridge type. I think that covers a group of about 30 guitars. I think it would be fair to say that I haven't been sufficiently impressed by many active pickup guitars to lay out my hard-earned cash for the purpose of taking one home with me.

I use passive pickups on my solid-body electric guitars. They will do anything I want them to do. The rest is in the hands of my amps, and sometimes a few pedals. I've never felt a need to move any of the amp circuitry into the guitar.

YMMV, as they say.

I've been impressed by some of the sounds that Dr_simon has coaxed out of his new Line 6 Variax. I am horrified by the thought that someone could buy one guitar that could mimic the tone and response of dozens of fine vintage instruments. I am consoled by the fact that the good Doctor's Variax only sounds as good as it does because he is playing it. He has good hands, and they were brought up on good guitars. I believe that a lot of his tone has roots in the fact that he knows what a good guitar should sound like, and he is teaching this to his new computerized gear.

In the hands of a neophyte, these things all sound just like any other undistiguished wannabe. Which suits me just fine. Tone is still in the hands, where it always has been, and ever shall be.

Originally Posted by: -im-I'm buying a new guitar, and i would like to have a little heavier distortion. i'm thinking about guitar with humbucker pickups, but not sure if i should use active or passive one? ...

Passive!

If you want to play a wide range of music, with a wide range of tones, you will need an amplifier with many capabilities, or many amplifiers. Other than the piezo bridge pickups in amplified acoustic/electric guitars, it's been my experience that active pickups actually reduce the variety of tones available to you.

So many people get sucked into thinking that the guitar is the main focus of 'their sound'. It ain't so! BB King plays Gibson ES guitars exclusively, but if he picked up a Tele, he would still sound like BB King (playing a Tele). A huge portion of what makes one player distinguishable from another is in the hands. Most of the rest is in that player's choice of effects and amplifier, and how those pieces of equipment are set up.

I sometimes jam with a band that gigs frequently. I'll slot my self into whatever gap is open. If the bass player happens to be away on that particular evening, I'll play his bass. I don't touch his settings, but when the tapes are played back, there is no mistaking who is playing on any particular song. We play differently. And we sound different.

If you want more distortion, you need to get either a distortion pedal, or an amp that will distort more. If your guitar feels good in your hands, and it can be set up so that it stays in tune in spite of what you do to it, then there's no need to replace it. You can get different picking dynamic/frequency response from it with different pickups, but distortion is almost purely a matter of what happens to the signal after it leaves the guitar.

i was watching recently jackson guitars with this EMGs. they look nice and i got feeling that they are good for rhythm, but on the other hand when you play solo....sound is just to much empty. i'm wondering is there any effect maybe that will change this sound when i turn off distortion on amp. i would like to hear something more closer to normal single coil pickups. is this possible?

I can imagine that the negative remarks are coming from those who play more bluesy music on their guitars or what have you, i admit that if you would like to play a variety of different genre's actives aren't that amazing, but the point i was trying to make is that if you can't afford all that fancy equipment and you have your heart set on hard rock music then actives are a good way to make sure that you get the right distortion even on cheap equipment. In the end i don't think it really matters, it's all up to how you play, but i'm enjoying my actives right now, playing mainly heavier hard rock, all in all if you get a good combo, like an 81/60 you might get some more versatile tone (aka Metallica how every now and then they play some of their new bluesy style music, probably switch to their emg 60's for that - btw EMG's won't automatically make you sound like metallica!).

Don't chose a guitar by its pickups though, pick it up (excuse the pun) and give it a good play at the music store and see which one sounds best to you.

Originally Posted by: -im-i was watching recently jackson guitars with this EMGs. they look nice and i got feeling that they are good for rhythm, but on the other hand when you play solo....sound is just to much empty. i'm wondering is there any effect maybe that will change this sound when i turn off distortion on amp. i would like to hear something more closer to normal single coil pickups. is this possible?

compressor?

Originally Posted by: suicidalmooseI can imagine that the negative remarks are coming from those who play more bluesy music on their guitars or what have you, i admit that if you would like to play a variety of different genre's actives aren't that amazing, but the point i was trying to make is that if you can't afford all that fancy equipment and you have your heart set on hard rock music then actives are a good way to make sure that you get the right distortion even on cheap equipment.
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You can of course get the same result with passive pickups...
any decent pickup (by that, I guess I mean any pickup with its own model name ect) should be able to sound good all the time...if you get a Seymour Duncan Jb Humbucker (which I would recommend, its a great place to start...very versatile and with lots of balls when needed) you will need some really shoddy gear and playing to make that thing sound worse than any stock pickup.

I would also check out pickups by DiMarzio, and ...my favourite...Bareknuckle...

I find that the only difference between active and passive pickups is that actives are louder, more expensive, and generally a bit lifeless...but thats just me...