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Guitar chord forum - chordie → Electric → Passive vs. active humbucker?
The Ibanez RG I'm looking at buying says that it has EMG-designed passive humbuckers, "for a massive, cutting tone". I saw some EMG humbuckers in a catalog, I think they were the 81 and 85, and they were labled active. What's the difference here?
Anyone?
EMG has multiple lines of pickups. The popular ones, the ones they are known for, are active. The 81 and 85 are active, use a battery and are widely used for teh metalz. They also have a variety of, cheaper, passive pickups that sound like typical budget models.
EMG has multiple lines of pickups. The popular ones, the ones they are known for, are active. The 81 and 85 are active, use a battery and are widely used for teh metalz. They also have a variety of, cheaper, passive pickups that sound like typical budget models.
OK, but what exactly is the difference here?
What follows is just one person's opinion. Your milage may vary.
So, regular passive pickups have coils of fine wire and either magnets as 'slugs' below the strings or metal slugs/screws with a bar magnet beneath them. When the metal string moves through the magnetic field, a small AC voltage is induced into the coils and out to the amp. To make enough signal, the magnets need to be strong (but if they are too strong, they damp string vibration) and the coils need to have many, many winds of wire. This gives them a fair amount of self-capacitence and inductance. An inductor and capacitor wired together makes a low pass filter. In other words, it blocks high frequencies. That is why hot passive pickups, with Alnico magnets can sound dull. Ceramic magnets are brighter (though with more ragged midrange) and so are oftern used on hot pickups.
Active pickups have many fewer turns of wire and weak little magnets. The signal is tiny, so a solid state preamp is built right in to the pickup, to boost the signal. That is why they require a battery. Since they have less wire and less inductance, they reproduce highs very easily. Also the preamp gives them a really hot output, compared to a passive pickup.
So, to vintage geezers like me, good quality passive pickups are the real deal. Making them is an art. For a younger, metal oriented player, getting enough output, bright highs and clear, fat midrange from a passive pickup is almost impossible. That is where the active pickups come in. They are also popular for certain super-clean tones. EMG is best known for their active pickups. In that area, they are the industry leader.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to make more profit, they have started making a whole line of budget priced passive pickups. These passive pickups are low quality units that play on the popular EMG name and are used for entry level metal guitars. They have nothing in common with the active units. If a metal guy wanted to use passive pickuos, he would be better off with Rockfields, Tone Riders, Bill Lawrence, Duncans or any of several other brands.
Active is far more common in bass guitars. I have two. With passive the tone control can only reduce, so it dops treble off. With active you suddenly have the ability to add more bass/mid/treble like on an amp (active basses usually have 3 tone pots for the 3 frequency ranges). Now I also have a bass with two batteries in it, it's 18W or 'double active' and can be taken between active and passive modes, so I can directly compare.
Key difference is responsiveness, with the double active it kicks like a mule (even when the tone is set to be identical in both modes). Play soft and you're thrumming away, play hard and you get big notes leaping out the speakers. With passive everything's much more on one level.
OK. So how will a pair of passive humbuckers on the Ibanez work compared to the lipstick single coils on my Dano? Hotter output I'd hope, right?
Triple the output, I'd guess. Lipstick pickups are low output single coils with about 6k ohms of windings and Alinco II magnets. Ibanez has some different humbuckers, including one sort of vintage model (58), but most are pretty warm. Esp. those on the pointier guitars.
Guitar chord forum - chordie → Electric → Passive vs. active humbucker?
