A different Active vs Passive thread

[whyachi]

I'm sold on passive pickups, but I'm down to passive electronics or a hybrid with Seymour Duncan 2-band EQ system, possibly the Blackout.

As I'm cramming 20 hours overtime a week I should be ordering soon, so I need to get this figured out.
Can I rig up coil tapping (think Warwick $$) with a fully passive system? I'm going to be running dual twinjazz-style pickups and I'd like to be able to switch from J-bass to big ol' fat nasty humbucker when I need to.

 

[blue313]

With essentially four single coils, it's easily done...so long as your pickups have enough leads.  That's why they make four-conductor passive humbuckers instead of making all of them two or single conductor.  Coil cuts and phase are both options.

 

[whyachi]

Passive it is, then. I've owned both and never liked feeding my bass batteries.

I see Warmoth sells 250k pots, which Seymour Duncan says to use in their passive systems. But I've seen Tonar use 280k pots before, at least I'm pretty sure it was Tonar. What's the difference?

 

[line6man]

The problem with the dual Jazz bass style pickups running in single coil mode is that if the pickup is designed for series humbucking mode, the coils are likely far underwound from normal J pickups so that when combined in series, they will "add up" to a decent output. If both coils were fully wound, the output would probably be too hot.
This obviously varies depending on the pickup though.

I had Curtis Novak wind me a custom dual Jazz style pickup to correct this problem and sound good in both modes.
It was essentially a regular Jazz pickup with a coil tap halfway through the winding, and then a half-wound coil.
In single coil mode, I play on the full winding of the full coil, and then in humbucker mode, I wire the half coil in series with half of the winding of the full coil, so that that way the output stays in check in both modes.

As far as pot values, these two threads from TalkBass are of relevance:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=494664
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=520484

Worth noting however, I have changed my stance on the linear versus audio arguement.
I very strongly recommend linear taper volume controls, as they have a much smoother roll off from 10 to 0 than audio tapers.
However, they give very little effect until toward the end of the rotation for tone controls, so stick with an audio taper tone.

 

[whyachi]

http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/basslines/progressive-1/passive_phase_i/

I'm having them make a 4-string version of this. It lists that its set up for coil tapping.

 

[line6man]

http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/basslines/progressive-1/passive_phase_i/

I'm having them make a 4-string version of this. It lists that its set up for coil tapping.

Ah, then you're good to go.

That pickup does not appear to have any coil taps, though I'm pretty sure you meant coil splitting, not tapping, based on your description of what you want to do.

How about using a 3 position switch for series/single coil/parallel wiring?

 

[whyachi]

That's what I thought I was talking about. I guess I don't know the difference. But yeah, I wanted the three-way switch for each pickup.