EMG-40DC Dual Coil 5-String Active Bass Pickup

mmmm toasty

Quite toasty!

I think EMG's give you a good representation of what the bass sounds like, tone of the wood etc... but from my experience in having them in a Steinberger the high end response isn't what I was looking for. The low end boomed but I could never get the D and G strings to stand out on that bass for some reason.

I don't know how the EMG active soapbars are, but I've used the passives...and they aren't very good. I didn't like them, at least. And the guy I'm currently lending that bass to hates them.

I dig the high end response on the single coils, though. They can get very spanky and drive a tube amp wild. Nice and tight!

I like the EMG's in my Schecter, but the ones in my Steinberger were weak.

Chowderboots wrote:

I don't know how the EMG active soapbars are, but I've used the passives...and they aren't very good. I didn't like them, at least. And the guy I'm currently lending that bass to hates them.

What bass and pre-amp?

It's the Korean Spector Rex Brown Tbird with "EMG BT active tone controls".

All the active EMGs I've heard and played with have sounded incredible. Such gnarly high end response.

The Schecters have the EMG-HZ, full time actives. Nice full bodied tone.

OH MAN...GAS strikes twice...

Looking at the Spector website, I saw that they now have an Ian Hill signature bass. Damn I want one.

http://spectorbass.com/bass_euro_Euro4LX_Ian.html

Mo Beach wrote:

The Schecters have the EMG-HZ, full time actives. Nice full bodied tone.

i thought hz were passives

Chowderboots wrote:

EMG BT active tone controls.

Odd, I have a set of HZ's with EMG Active Electronics, and it sounds fantastic.

The HZ's usually suck on Spectors becaue they almost always pair 'em with that terrible Tonepump pre, whereas they're designed around the EMG pre, in fact I've often heard people relpacing the pump with a EMG pre, and being utterly delighted with the change.


Have you adjusted the dip switches in the control cavity?

Darkstrike wrote:

Odd, I have a set of HZ's with EMG Active Electronics, and it sounds fantastic.

The HZ's usually suck on Spectors becaue they almost always pair 'em with that terrible Tonepump pre, whereas they're designed around the EMG pre, in fact I've often heard people relpacing the pump with a EMG pre, and being utterly delighted with the change.


Have you adjusted the dip switches in the control cavity?

I guess it's a matter of taste. They just sound quiet and without any body, even when they're cranked.

It doesn't have a Tone Pump preamp. Just active bass and treble controls of EMG design. On Spector's site, it isn't specified as having the Tone Pump in it and I think the TP comes in higher end models. So there aren't any dip switches inside the cavity. I don't know. It's an okay bass, but just not THAT cool to me anymore, you know?

BoboMcNipples wrote:

Mo Beach wrote:

The Schecters have the EMG-HZ, full time actives. Nice full bodied tone.

i thought hz were passives

The electronics are active.

Mo Beach wrote:

BoboMcNipples wrote:

Mo Beach wrote:

The Schecters have the EMG-HZ, full time actives. Nice full bodied tone.

i thought hz were passives

The electronics are active.

oh

Just to further clarify what Jeff said, you can run standard pickups with active electronics. The reasons (at least from what I was told, at any rate) why most active systems employ low-impedance pickups is because the lower the impedance, the purer the string sound, as well as the fact they aren't as apt to overdrive an onboard preamp like regular high-impedance pickups might.

Since higher impedance means higher gain, you wind up with a hotter signal that tends to want to distort the original sound. Higher gain/output pickups give you more power and gain, but the sound reproduction of the string is not an exact copy because the pickup is distorting the original soundwave.

I once read that if you absolutely wanted to reproduce the exact string sound from your bass, you would have to have a single coil pickup with only one coil winding on it. Of course, this would never actually work, since a single turn of wire in a pickup coil won't produce squat for output, but in theory, that's exactly what you would have to do. So, most active systems are geared towards players wanting to amplify a pure string tone, thus, they use low impedance pickups.

I think a Piezo is the only way to get the actual tone a guitar produces, unless it's acoustic.

Chowderboots wrote:

Darkstrike wrote:

Odd, I have a set of HZ's with EMG Active Electronics, and it sounds fantastic.

The HZ's usually suck on Spectors becaue they almost always pair 'em with that terrible Tonepump pre, whereas they're designed around the EMG pre, in fact I've often heard people relpacing the pump with a EMG pre, and being utterly delighted with the change.


Have you adjusted the dip switches in the control cavity?

I guess it's a matter of taste. They just sound quiet and without any body, even when they're cranked.

It doesn't have a Tone Pump preamp. Just active bass and treble controls of EMG design. On Spector's site, it isn't specified as having the Tone Pump in it and I think the TP comes in higher end models. So there aren't any dip switches inside the cavity. I don't know. It's an okay bass, but just not THAT cool to me anymore, you know?

If it dosen't have those switches(they'll be on the circut board) its not EMG.

You'd know if it was a Tone Pump, because it'd be boost only, no cut.

The way I've always looked at it is, no pickup is active on it's own, the electronics need a battery or they don't. Or am I wrong here?

Mo Beach wrote:

The way I've always looked at it is, no pickup is active on it's own, the electronics need a battery or they don't. Or am I wrong here?

Little from colum a, little from colum b.

You're correct that there are no truly active pickups existing, even "active" EMG's only have the pre unadjustable, and actually inside the pickup.

But, it is possible to make a truly active pickup, just no one does it, again, it does involve a battery(the battery is the active in pickup terms), to make a truly active pickup, you need to hook the battery up to either the magnet, or the wrap wire, I can't remember which.


Unless you mean do all active pickups need an active pre, in which case, you're wrong, EMG active pickups, as long as theres a battery hooked to the pickups themselves, the electronics can indeed be passive, in fact in guitars this is usually the case, they rarely have active electronics, just the pickups.

What I meant was, that a battery needs to be involved for the electronics/pickup to be considered active.

Mo Beach wrote:

What I meant was, that a battery needs to be involved for the electronics/pickup to be considered active.

Well, yes, the pickups need their own powersource to be considerd active, electronics the same, they can be active pickup/passive electronics, passive pickups/active electronics, active pickups/active eletronics(can use the one powersource), or of course fully passive.

I'm surprised there's active systems on guitars. With the frequencies they put out active pickups aren't really needed. Unless they have a built in compressor, EQ or some sort of effects processor. My guitarists Charvel is hot enough plugged into my 32 track.

Technically, all pickups are active. It's just in the way you interpret things.

Every pickup needs current flowing through it to work. With passive pickups, you are relying on the small flow of current coming from the amplifier's preamp section. With active systems, you have the battery-powered preamp hard-wired directly to the pickup so that the signal has the potential of being much hotter and louder as it leaves the bass.

So why not simply use a preamp directly at the amp? Well, you can. There are such devices as pickup boosters that take a pickups signal and boost it. But when it comes to high-end/high-fi sounding pickups, you don't necessarily want a length of cord running between the low impedance pickup and the preamp/booster because every length of cable adds capacitive reactance and resistance, which can degrade a high-end signal. Maybe by only a very tiny amount, so that most of us won't notice it, but it is there. This is why there is a market for cable makers like Monster, since their cables allow much more of the signal to get through uncolored than a garden-variety cable will.

Basically (and we're talking REALLY basic interpretation here), you can use low impedance pickups that have a much purer tone amplified at the source with an onboard preamp OR you can use passive pickups with a preamp for a really hot (and in many cases TOO hot) signal.