What do you guys think of putting a single Active pickup in a guitar?

[AGWAN]

that is the whole question!

 

[swarfrat]

All depends on the application and the pickup. But I have nothing against either active pickups or single pickup guitars. I don't care for using actives (or massively overwound passive pickups for that matter) to attempt to wring every last bit of distortion out of the input stage possible, but that approach is not unique to active pickups.

 

[Strat Avenger]

I don't think much of putting any number of active pickups in any guitar.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

There has been much ado about mixing actives and passives in a single guitar.  A friend of mine did it, basically because he was dared to.  Other than the volume difference that can happen, it is not too big of a deal as long as it is wired so that the switch is last.  If it is the sound you are going for, then yeah, it is not impossible.

I do have to agree with a lot of what has been said though.  I'd take a properly designed passive pickup over an active any day.  But, that is largely due to the fact that my playing style works much better with passives, and I like the sound of passives more.
Patrick

 

[stubhead]

Les Paul insisted that passive pickups were a waste of space and time, and he had some clean & glistening tones to back him up. There's nothing in the design of them that specifically says you have to use it to blow up 12AX7's. Like, bass players use them to sound actually "nice" a lot of times. The evolution of rock guitar tone has been a constantly symbiotic interaction between guitar wiring, cords, amp preamps.... it didn't "have to be" this way, it just is. If Mr. Paul hadn't been so pissed off at Gibson over the "SG" with his name plastered on that he basically stopped working with them, If Leo Fender hadn't basically been a wiring neanderthal, it all could have zigged instead of zagged and passive pickups would only be on the WalMart Val-U-Pack guitar. And sneered at mightily, by YOU and YOU and YOU. Though you probably could buy hand-built mastercrafted "vintage-tone" 9 volt batteries for $77.... Reddy Kilowatt-autographed Special Selects for $139. :toothy12:

 

[pabloman]

Soooooooooo.............are you saying its a good idea??? :icon_biggrin:

 

[Patrick from Davis]

There are some basses that have active pickups, but most have active pre's with passive pickups.  While the active pickup notion has been stereotyped into the fire breathing high output gain of unlimited proportion shredtastic slice of guitar sounds, I still maintain that they don't behave like the passives, and I work better with the passive pickups on the market today.
Patrick

 

[line6man]

I personally dislike the active pickup concept, except when you have low impedance winds with a gain-boosting preamp. To my knowledge, a lot of EMGs stuff has high impedance windings.

You will have the advantage of a buffered, low impedance output. That's always desirable to me, but I know a lot of players do like traditional high impedance signals that they can load down to various degrees, depending on what they play into.

What I would do, personally, is simply run a passive pickup into a unity-gain buffer. (Or a gain-boosting one, if you're into that.)

 

[drewfx]

I have a (completely ridiculous) BC Rich guitar with a single active EMG in it.

It's not versatile, but it does what it does.

 

[rockskate4x]

I would highly recommend against using just one pickup no matter what they are. No tele esquires, no Les Paul juniors, no Van Halen frankensteins, no single active pickup metal monsters. Almost any guitar with two pickups can be versatile ENOUGH, just because you will have natural (not necessarily electronic) phasing sounds when combining two pickups, and the neck pickup will sound warmest alone, and the bridge pickup will sound the brightest alone, no matter what the pickups are. That said, I am a big fan of active pickups to get that wall of sound from your stack when playing metal. It won't have the dynamics and articulation of passive pickups necessarily, but the duncan blackouts and emg x series are finding more of a middle ground here. If I was building an active pickup guitar for myself, it would be the EMG 81X for the bridge and the EMG 85X for the neck.  :icon_thumright:

 

[pabloman]

The Duncan Dave Mustaine Livewires are pretty awesome BTW :guitarplayer2:

 

[swarfrat]

If you think about, ALL electric guitars have active pickups. The question is only whether the preamp is internal or external, whether it glows in the dark or is painted snot green, etc...

 

[taez555]

If the sound you are looking for is that of an active pickup, there is no other choice.

Would I do it personally?

Never say never I suppose.

 

[line6man]

If you think about, ALL electric guitars have active pickups. The question is only whether the preamp is internal or external, whether it glows in the dark or is painted snot green, etc...

No, not at all. Most guitars have passive pickups with no preamp. The output impedance is complex, and rather high.
An external preamp, like on an amplifier, is not the same thing as an active pickup or onboard preamp. The high impedance signal is affected by things like the parasitic capacitance of your guitar cable, or the resistive load of pots. Filters, like tone controls, also affect the signal differently.