Bradley S true he cuts through but he also plays a rack rig setup through Marshall guitar cabs which gives some of the “clack” to his tone as well as his technique
I was thinking the same thing.....poor Jaco must not have cut through either with his passive Jazz bass. Fact is...a passive bass plugged into an amp has a preamp.
@@ChadHargis everyone knows that, it's just a preamp before a preamp adds even more tonal shaping. what the greats did worked for them, what people do now works for them too. that's what matters
To be fair, iron maiden has a pretty clear cut sound, its not like death metal where you can barely tell the two guitarists apart, let alone the bassist
I think both passive & Active are good, but It all depends on what your trying to achieve. To me Passive is either good for jazz & backkground bass lines like for either light jazz or easy listening music. Active are real bright if you want them to be & helps cut thru the muffle sound . I know to each their own, I use to hear that flat wound strings on a passive bass, worked good for studio recording. Then again Actives have been used on studio work as well. You have to experiment. If the shoe fits wear it.
@@hyalinamusic18 yeah I know who Tom is. he's an amazing guitarist but we're talking bass. I just can't see the use of having a killswitch and if you're gonna have one wouldn't it be better to wire an actual switch instead of using the pickup selector
95% of the time, even in an active bass, the pickups are still passive pickups. "Active" in this context refers to the presence of the onboard preamp. The only actual active pickups you will commonly see are EMG's.
In my experience people calls it active pickups even though it is wrong. I've been a bass player for 14 years and it was only recently that I learned about this lol. To my excuse, I go my first active bass this year.
@@leFoodeater lol. That's okay. Been playing for years too, less than your years. I thought active is just for preamp. But as long as I like the sound, I don't give a fuck ha.
There is some misinformation in this video 1- a active bass is not always louder than a passive bass 2 - most of the time pickups are passive, active basses are passive pickups with active preamp 3 - an active bass is not cutting through the mix better, but the active preamp is there to help you cut through the mix if you use it well. 4 - Dynamics is not better on a passive bass. 5 - if a preamp compress the bass sound, then it is not designed well. 6 - "active" preamps are like effect pedal, they have buffers inside to adapt impedance to the next source in the chain. Clearly bass mythologie and BS information will have a long life with this kind of videos
100% agree. This video is full of sh**... I'm surprised, because Reverb normally post great vids with nice and accurate info. This one should be deleted ASAP.
Exactly my thoughts, hate when people confuse those, basically you have 4 options, passive pick-ups no preamp, passive pick-ups woth active preamp (the best option I believe), active pickups without preamp and finally active pickups with active preamp
Eivan lml I prefer the simplicity of calling them either active or passive Basses, even if the pickups are either passive or active I like to call them what they are based on how many knobs are on the bass rather then the pickups itself. As I cannot find much examples of a bass with an active pickup without a preamp either I am looking at the wrong place or the wrong brand.
guy i know... bassist comes in and essentially doubles the Gibson Les PAul in tone. He had zero signature...best musician out of the bunch though. I strapped his bass (chinese P/J 5), turned the treble ON...seriously, thats how close they sounded. He is guilty of having a 5, yet tuning E to D. Dont get a 5 if you cant transpose well. Ya...Geezer Butler never cut through...probably found his bass under a porch couch. The space btwn the notes is where the music is found
ACTIVE PICKUPS ARE NOT THE SAME THING AS AN ACTIVE PREAMP COMBINED WITH PASSIVE PICKUPS. And yes, this is a relevant criticism of this video because it says in the thumbnail "Active bass pickups." Active pickups are pickups with incredibly low impedance due to the low number of winds of wire. This produces a pickup with no resonance peak or cut frequencies, but they also do not produce a signal loud enough for general use; thus, most active pickups either have a preamp built into the pickup themselves (such as EMG pickups and some MEC pickups that Warwick uses) or require a more typical onboard preamp (such as Alembic's pickups) in order to add gain to the signal. Those pickups with builtin preamps also typically include a built-in EQ curve to offset the flat frequency response of an unaffected active pickup.
"active pups" generally are pickups that use active (not passive) electronics. That's why they called active. So, passive pickups with built-in preamp are active pickups by definition. Everything else is just a commercial bullshit.
The model they used in the video for the "active" portion has passive pickups paired with an active preamp, hence the active on/off switch to run passive. So poo poo on you
Active pickups have a battery connected to each pickup, and they have much less copper wire because the extra electricity provided by the battery makes up for it. Passive pickups wired to an active pre-amp are NOT active pickups, but of course they benefit from the active EQ.
A lot of misleading generalizations, half-truths and misinformed opinions in this video. I respect the effort but this has a lot of bad information in it mixed in with a few good points.
I find passive pickups to always sound better, it really comes down to player/amp set up/pedals/etc. So active electronics or pickups just make shit even more complicated
Correction. It's not the pickups which are active its the circuitry which is active. All pickups are passive. Educate yourself first if you are going to make videos and pass correct information to others.
Active pickups made much more sense back in the 70s and 80s, but nowadays when the amps can easily make up for the low output of the pickups i just don't see the point, passive for me anytime
@@kimseniorb true, I overlooked that, though i still think active preamps are somewhat redundant, i guess an onbord EQ would be useful but i can't think of an ocassion where i'd need to change my eq settings in the middle of a song
Guy Dude I agree unless we are talking about emg or mec pickups, which sound really different and not only eq-boost wise. Just a different architecture
Most (if not all) amps lack a low-impedance input (XLR inputs on amps tend to expect line-level signal) that would facilitate the use of an unaided "active" pickup's low output; in general they need at least some source of gain for the natural capacitance of a long cable to not reduce the signal to nothing by the time it would even reach the amp. The signal-to-noise ratio would be far too low if you relied solely on the gain in the preamp stage of the amplifier (or elsewhere in your signal chain, such as from a boost pedal, a compressor, or pedal with buffered bypass) in order to boost the signal of a low-impedance pickup (this problem is compounded by the use of regular instrument cables, which are more susceptible to picking up external noise than, say, an XLR cable; noise which would be amplified at the preamp stage). That's why very low-impedance pickups are basically unheard of, despite the flat frequency response being fairly ideal with some good signal processing. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is the specific low-impedance pickup used in Warwick's Jonas Hellborg bass; while it has an onboard buffer for a 1/4" output, that can be bypassed with a balanced XLR output that requires the bass to plug into a microphone preamp (or, presumably, any instrument amplifier with a balanced input which provides gain).
Man I’m done with Active basses, I’m so glad I don’t hv to deal with the battery issue anymore. So lame, for my situation how often I play & hv to leave it plugged in, etc Active no bueno. Also I found dynamically Active pickups aren’t as open to responding to how much energy I put into notes. I love being able to tell the bass how to sound, thru my fingers & my playing. Love it 😁
My first bass was active, it sounded good for a while but then started crapping out on me so I just took out the active circuit and made it a passive bass, I prefer passive
I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent here: I can't hear Steve's bass live. I feel the presence of a bass, but I can't hear his iconic basslines. Tbh in any big bass arena/stadium, any bassist's tone that I admire gets lost in the sauce.
I prefer a passive bass these days. The tone is much more mellow and smooth to my ear. Plus, like he was saying, especially with a p or even a jazz, it's very simple. The older I get, the more I appreciate simplicity lol. I'm not much of a slapper either so that has guided me more toward the good ole p bass
I learned Higher Ground and everyone associated me w/slap. I learned double thumbing...yet thier are people that do it way smoother. Of course, drummer is nervous and comes in at %40-%50 quicker. Leftie guitarist w/locked whammy bar doesn't have a back up and breaks a string. No other lefties...nothing like moving yer gear for 15mins of playing. We were recording from the board for "trouble shooting". I quit next day. If i hear a Seinfeld theme request one more time...
I agree, also noticed that with certain great bassists, Geddy Lee and Flea for example, they started with crazy ass active basses and all ended up with passive fender basses.
This is a tipical story of an old bassist who can't play bass well. This p-bass cult. Stingray is also simple instrument, but sits much better in a mix.
@@bowel_movement Nope. Active preamp and active pickup is two different things. In this video we can see a passive bass with passive pickup+passive tone circuit and an active bass with a passive pickup plus onboard EQ. But there is the so-called active pickup as well, where the pickup has its own battery. Please check the EMG or the MEC designs.
@@CNick75 Lovely how everybody just screams 'ur wrong' without even bothering to explain. Either explain it if you're so sure about what it is and you're set on correcting me, or just don't say anything at all :)
Your definition of "active" is wrong. "Active" pickups incorporate electronic circuitry to modify the signal. Active circuits are able to filter, attenuate or boost the signal from the pickup. The main disadvantage of an active system is requirement of a battery power source to operate the preamp circuitry. Batteries limit circuit design and functionality, in addition to being inconvenient to the musician. The circuitry may be as simple as a single transistor, or up to several operational amplifiers configured as active filters, active EQ and other sound-shaping features. The op amps used must be of a low-power design to optimize battery life, a design restriction that limits the dynamic range of the circuit. The active circuitry may contain audio filters, which reduce the dynamic range and mildly distort certain ranges. High-output active pickup systems also have an effect on an amplifier's input circuit. - Wikipedia Any pickup that has an electrical circuit that requires power is an active pickup. So a pickup with a preamp is an actual active pickup.
Body Movement Not really, the pickups themselves don’t require any circuitry. Real active pickups like EMGs can work without the need of a preamp, they already have it inside the pickup itself. That’s why EMG sells active pickup kits that include passive volume knobs whilst the pickups themselves have the battery connection.
@@ilpatongi Yes, but the only difference is that the EMGs have preamp built in - which has advantages and disadvantages: e.g. it is not possible to use a common passive treble control (resistor + capacitor against ground) with EMGs as it will not change the resonance frequency of the pickup - it sounds completly different....
I prefer active if I'm not about to spend a lot of money on the bass itself, it just makes it sound better, but if I got a lot of money to drop on a nice bass it ain't gonna need no fucking batteries to play it
I have some Bill Lawrence pickups that are so hot, they're almost in the ballpark of an active pickup. They also have way more clarity than the stocks pickups. I'd definitely buy them again because of the awesome tone 🤘
1) He seemed to confuse active pickup (rare) with active instrument via preamp (common) with his erroneous use of the term "active pickup" when he meant "active bass". 2) He said a passive bass is "more work" for tone shaping due to lack of control knobs on the instrument. That is false. The work is simply at a different physical location. And one could argue that a passive is less work period, as your FOH will do it for you - literally. 3) He stated several times he would use the same instrument for consistency of comparisons, and then used a P/J for the active. And please tell me I wasn't hearing flats on the passive P and rounds on the active P/J. 4) He said that an active gives you more volume so you have to be careful. That is false - it's the signal that is different, not the volume as such. 5) He said that an active bass cuts through better, especially against loud drums or if you're playing pick. That is oversimplifying to the point of being false. It's not the bass that is helpful or less helpful - it's the musicians, the settings they individually use, and the one mixing the house; those are what must be right. If no one is competent an active bass will give you an unfair advantage but only if you don't know how to use your amp volume knob or bought an amp that is insufficient. Ok, I'll stop. Gosh. This vid is disappointing.
To be honest, the Fender "active" bass in this demonstration sounded terrible but wasn't given a chance by changing any settings. The dude talks about active basses "shaping the sound" but didn't do any sound shaping. And IME the PJ basses never seem to sound the same as a straight-up P bass.
Is there a point in buying and learning the bass just for enjoyment or do you have to be a musician? I'm interested in playing bass but just did not know if it is "wasting my money"
When i start play bass i thought active bass is better than passive, today i can sure this is wrong, your amp or DI pedal is much more important, even you have a cheap bass you still can have good tone.
I really enjoy this host and the channel's content, but when you emphasize so much how well one type cuts through other instruments versus another, maybe Reverb should invite other musicians to demonstrate that difference. Just a thought
You're making passive pickups the same as an active bass the minute you run It through a powered preamp ( the powered di you are using ). This negates any attempt to claim this as a valid demo. Active pickups are actually rare. EMGs are one of the watermark examples. Simple, irrefutable truth: most stock powered preamp options amount t o using $10 worth of components as the final gate on hundreds or thousands of dollars of bass. Solution: if you aren't going to spend money on a decent on board system, stay passive, invest in good pickups, and use good outboard gear. In other words, this video is misleading...won't get any further into the various fallacies here.
I always go active because metal. I use mainly a stingray, I also prefer schecter since they’re really awesome for my style. And yes I sweep pick on bass.
@@PSXBOX-lz1zq I am old metal bass player. So I spent many years trying to get Steve Harris tone, wich is basically p-bass and Trace Eliott. And the best aggresive and punchy bass tone is with Ampeg and active Stingray to my taste. Not a big fan of a p-bass, partially because of a p-bass cult, where everybody histerically adores p-bass. In gets on my nerves.
I have a squier vintage 70’s jazz with original 74 pickups and I don’t need any friggin signal boost. It’s as loud or louder than my bass with active eq
Also I’ve never had the need for a “fresh new battery” in my active bass I just always unplug. Even when I was gigging non stop I’ve never had. Battery die except for leaving it plugged in
I beg to differ. Cutting through the mix depends on sound shaping, and you can (in fact, _should_ ) do that in the pre section of your bass amp. You also usually have more complex shaping options there than the basic bass/mid/treble on your "active" instrument. Signal degradation in the cable is really the only argument for me to ever use active. And while some might argue that an "active" signal has slightly more dynamics, I dare say you can match the active vs. passive sounds of the same instrument with appropriate pre-amp equalization. I don't think the difference will be notable - as long as you do not use a crappy - or too long - cable. Hmmm,... maybe I really need to test my basses... I am no fan of the rudimentary 3-band EQs on an instrument. I don't ever need the treble to be higher than neutral, and I never touch bass and mid, so I have 2 knobs that I constantly need to check if they are in the neutral position I want them in. As for giving your thin-sounding bridge pickup the oomph it needs, I find a 3-band EQ completely unsuitable for this. I use the _EQ balance_ on my Trace Elliot, which gives me an absolutely fantastic gnarly, bone dry mid bite that is far more than just cranking the parametric mid EQ on the instrument. I wonder why they don't make these any more. Come to think of it, I find current bass amps strangely wanting in sound shaping options. They have become really cheap and small and incredibly powerful, but the pre amp sections don't hold a candle to my 30-year-old GP12-SMX. Anyway, I really would have liked a comparison of the _same instrument_ in active and passive modes against each other - with matching EQ compensation.
All pickups are passive. The term active pickups is misleading. It's just the EQ that is active. There is another advantage to active electronics and that is they also function as an impedance buffer. What this means is that the capacitance of the cable between bass and amp no longer has an impact on the sound. An active bass which doesn't allow switching between passive and active will not work with a dead battery.
I knew there were batteries in my bass, but I didn't realize how the batteries can go to waste. I've never heard of Lakland basses before. I never really researched pick-up history before either. Thanks for the good video. I like both Passive & Active.
I totally agree. I had two active basses before I got my passive MIM jazz bass. In my experience, the active preamp just caused more problems than they solved, they were noisy and keeping up with batteries was a huge pain. I play through a programmable Sansamp bass driver for tone sculpting. Problem solved.
@@kieraenoch3145 I own a musicman stingray, a Yamaha TBRX304 and an EH Battalion. I use it only with the dist on. The clean tone I get it from both basses directly. And I will change the stingray for a Fender Jazz Bass with my eyes close.
@@danielwibowo8133 I sold it, because a needed the money. But... You can buy it with your eyes close man. Is a really well built bass, sounds delicious and it's affordable. Also check the squier PJ. I purchased one about three months ago and I love it. I use more than my Musicman Stingray
IMHO, active basses were largely rendered obsolete by the pedal revolution, boost, etc. Why carry the pre-amp/eq on your shoulder when you can drop the weight and put on the floor, or in a Bass Fly rig on top of your amp beside you? Also, I believe active basses generally don't record as well as passives. At least that's what engineers tell me... The most important thing that I didn't hear Jake didn't mention, though, is the the nuance issue. Low output passive PUs have more nuance, or "grease" as bassists put it. If you've got the technique and the touch, you can get more expressive nuance out of old low output passive PUs than active PUs of the same type. The actives run hotter, but they tend to be more ON and OFF, without some of that wonderful tonal shading you can get with low output passive PUs. Today you can use pedals or a Bass Fly Rig to give a passive bass a better EQ than active basses have, and make a passive bass run just as hot as any active bass -- while retaining the delicious tonal complexity that many active basses lack. This is part of why there has been such a big movement back toward traditional passive basses in recent years...
Okay. I came to this instruction with an intellectually honest and open mind. I learned on a 1972 passive Fender Precision. I seemed to be able to cut through all of the noise of the drums and the lead guitars. I also was able to slap, pull and pop like I do on an active bass. Therefore, based on your statements I should have been an excellent bass player. However, I wasn't. The question still stands, passive or active? Based on your instruction, I would humbly have to say active. No more teaching for the progression of active basses, I would presume? Balance, my friend.
I prefer both. I do session work in the studio and fill in for people often at live gigs. It depends on what style you’re playing. For a beginner, I’d look into a bass with a active/passive switch maybe.
active bass isnt just a pre-amp and active tone controls. the pre-amp has a high input impedance thousands time higher than the input impedance of a standard bass amp. This makes more voltage sensitive than current sensitive this mitigates the resonance caused by the inductance of the pickup. Pickups colis are big inductors and inductors are low-pass filters. The way an inductor works as a low-pass filter has to do with the phase relationship it creates between voltage and current. By reducing current you reduce the low-pass effect of the pickup coil . Having an amp with a high input impedance makes it more sensitive to noise , so you want to put that amp as close to the signal source as possible . hence active onboard electronics. Also, if there are less windings there is further less inductance and therefore less low-pass filtering but less windings means low volume. Having an onboard amp allows you to have less windings without low volume since the amp amplifies.
So, basically, long list of why not to every buy a active bass ever again. I can get all these tones with a fender bassman amp. Also the Squier bronco is a hell of a guitar. My first bass and honestly haven’t found a reason to upgrade.
Why is it that in all these demo videos they play the damn things so low there’s hardly any difference in tone. The only difference I could hear in this vid is the active bass has a bit more treble. Just once I’d like to hear these comparo’s played at real volume levels. And how about a little less yap and more instrument.
As has been mentioned....NONE of the pickups in this video are active pickups. One bass is passive (no preamp) and the other has an onboard preamp which includes an active/passive switch. If you you put the active bass in passive mode you can remove the battery and it will still work. If you REALLY had active pickups...it would not work with no battery. And no...you don't ALWAYS need batteries with you for that bass...just put it in passive mode...no batteries required.
I think it was a good decision to emphasise that the real difference between passive and active basses is not the pickups themselves, but how much boost and EQ control you want on the instrument itself. You can do everything that the onboard preamp and EQ do with pedals or other outboard gear, all of which is powered ('active') in one way or another. Having that stuff on the bass itself is a major convenience in some situations: but since the pickups themselves are passive, regardless of the active circuitry, there will always be another way to get those sounds.
And Jay Bentley, who uses a very simple P-bass and SVT configuration. Listen to Bad Religion live; you'll sometimes hear the bass stepping on the guitars a little.
It does beg the question... If you have a good bass, with good woods and good pickups, doesn't 'active' sorta remove the benefits? I think it could maybe stifle the 'personality' of the bass? Unless we're talking Stingrays, it seems a shame that YOUR sound should be reliant on a 9v battery.
The funny thing is, contrary to what he says there aren't any "active pickup" basses in this video at all, they all have passive pickups. Active bass and active pickup are actually two totally different things.
Soo wrong, I think this video segment should be reshot. (Preferably with some1 who knows what he is talking about!) Jake is a good player but knows jack shissenhausen about active and passive BASSES! (Not passive and active bass pick ups!)
I wish they would put up tutorials and demos from people that knew what they were taking about. This discussion about passive vs. active pickups doesn’t apply to the demo here. Both basses have passive pickups. One just has a active preamp. There is a major difference between passive pickups with active preamps vs. active pickups with built in or with the addition of a preamp. Active pickups require a preamp regardless if they have an EQ or not.
There is also the Light-Wave or Opti-Pick guitar pickups that allow you to nylon or steel strings on your guitar, What about Telecaster Bass Guitar that can accommodate 2x PJ996 9 volt batteries.
Excellent video! Very informative, but you're talking about basses with onboard preamps compared to passive basses, right? Thanks so much for doing this vid.
Nice vid. The only thing is that one of the basses has a bridge jb pickup, so for me is hard to get a clear idea of a sound difference between. Further more, it didn't say if the bridge pu was on or off (would've helped).
I think both active and passive are great. Sure it may not be truly active pick ups but still there’s a difference in set up. But either way no matter what you’re playing it can all be shaped with your hands and other materials at your disposal. Most people at a gig wouldn’t know the friggin difference if it was active or passive bass. You would just listen to the tone and like it or not.
Idk why reverb makes a video like this. I don't think someone who doesn't know shit about bass would buy an overpriced vintage bass from the reverb sharks lol
Why do bass demos always sound too low in volume? Because the people don't understand lower frequencies are harder for humans too hear. Get it right..... yep, way to much misinformation... jeezy louisie...
Old generation players : i'll use what's available and make the best out of it. Newer generation players : oh i don't want my 10' cable to becaume "tone suck". Message to the kids : Just shut-up and play something.
Please, on another video, distinguish between basses with active pick-ups VS. basses with passive pick-ups but active pre-amp. Or is there a difference?
I'm not a bass player but this video is so wrong in so many ways. Not only does he not know what an actual active pickup is, he's also just talking jibberish. Passive pickups don't cut through the mix? Oh yeah, tell that to Billy Sheehan, Ryan Martinie, Victor Wooten and many more. I hate it when pretentious musicians act like they know a lot of stuff about gear but in reality, they don't even know what they're talking about. How about you learn the basics first? Like learn to know what an actual pickup is? You're using a preamp! A preamp is not a pickup while an active pickup has a built-in preamp!
All I know is I can sound great on a P or a Rick but on a active stingray I sound sloppy as hell. So unforgiving! Annoying, I love it but it doesn’t love me 😥
The best things about passive bass is that bassist with weird or eccentric taste that disturb or fight with the responsibilities they accept 'as' bass players, can't screw it up too badly. If you want to sound 'other' than a bass, you should switch to percussion, guitar or keyboards. And speaking as a producer, no one wants bass players to cut through the mix, that's a live performance device. If you aspire to be more than the foundation upon which the music is built (albeit connected to the rhythm and harmony) you should take up another instrument, because you will fail if it is your goal to 'work' as a bass playing musician.
