"Passive Vs Active Basses" - In Conversation with Master Luthier Chris May of Overwater basses 

yet John Entwistle has a classic bass sound on many 70s albums and he used active..So much for your "Theory"

You are talking about the bass player that changed everything, though. I don't consider the 70's as classic as the 60's anyway.

John Entwistle often recorded with passive basses, his favorite being a modded 60s P bass. He used a Fenderbird on the Who Are You album. However, he did use his Alembic Spider on the It's Hard album which you can clearly hear on Eminence Front. For the most part, he used active basses live but passive basses in the studio.

calvin harden~ What in the world is wrong w/you?

I honestly prefer passive. I feel like I get a cleaner, less chunky sound. But I do like active for certain things. I just pick and choose depending on what song I'm playing.

***** Great to see you coming along and joining in the conversation Rob! More cool bass shizzle on the way :)

active all the way:) marcus miller uses it and so do i:)

I don't think there is a reason to play out the battery 8 hrs or more a day. Only when I play in a group would I use the battery

True, but they only stop working at gigs, so best to take a spare ;)

@@grahamlewis4884 exactly. If they only last months, batteries are required to have on hand to cover every emergency situation.

Who plays 8hrs a day?? Lmfao they last quite a while been playing active for years never had one issue in a live setting

PP3 batteries don't weigh much and take up little room.

Cheers for watching Stevie! :)

What basses are you guys using that the battery dies on you that often? I've used active basses since the late 90s and can't recall a battery ever dying in the middle of a performance. And I'm terrible at changing them on any sort of regular basis either. If it's that much of a problem then get a bass that has a passive bypass option so you can switch to a passive circuit. Most G&L basses do this.

Ahhhh great to hear you enjoyed them man! More on the way :)

One of the best things about the L2000 series basses is that while they have an active preamp, the tone controls are still passive. The reason why you can still get tones from vintage to modern out of them!

So awesome dude! Enjoy the journey 🙌🏻🧡🔥

Or active with a preamp pedal I'm getting myself the MXR M81 ,man that thing is studio quality.

@@savanaviolenta isn't it bad to stack Multiple preamps? Unless your have active/passive switch

Noise can be prevented thanks to a flat and reasonable active setup. It's because the signal is a bit amplified before the cables catch the noises, so a good part of the noise itself is not amplified while the useful signal is aplified. Noise reduction works best on signals that need it the least.

I have a lakland and the passive tone is as good as my jazz

I used to have a jazz with EMG's in.. sounded great! Thanks for watching man :)

Cheers Jonas! :)

esa davenport if it's gonna need a batteryh it might as well be some dam good effects, like an echo effect built in, or a wha wha pedal built in effect or an auto tuning system which i would despise, but still it has to have something, tone is completely in your hands the most you need is 1 tone, my fav bass is a P bass and i can change my playing position from back to front to get a rounded sound or a snappy sound with a little bit of growl, it's all there, active is just too much of a hassle you can have up to 6-7 knobs and not know what sound you want cuz you know there's just so many and dialing in sounds can take time, the hell with that, i say GET ON WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is why im very fun at the studio xD

Same for me, Esa. Vintage single coil basses are hotter than ever right now and showing up with your 8 string bass with an 18V 5-band active preamp with all the bells & whistles is just as likely to get you poo-pooed as a really noisy vintage bass that hasn't been shielded properly. If you unplug your bass after you play it like you're supposed to active circuits can last several months before needing a battery change.

On the flip side Brad, showing up with a jazz bass with active EMG's and a Volume/Volume/Tone control set can be a studio engineer's dream come true, clean simple signal.

Sounds like you've found your groove with the active bass! 🎸🔊 It's all about finding the right tool to shape your sound, and it seems like you've discovered your sonic match. Rock on! 🤘😊

Why would you own a thumb and play passive?? Lmao get a Jazz then

Lol... i've had a few batteries die on me too, lol! :)

I often wonder if it would be possible to power active pickups through the lead instead of using batteries, kinda' like phantom power for condenser microphones.

Edgar Allen Noe I don't think it would be possible, considering phantom is sent on the ground, which on a bass is also connected to your fingers

Mike Miller Not to mention that it's really hard to reject power supply ripple down into bass frequencies. It sure would be an interesting thing to look into though.

Robert Harding How do you know when the battery needs changing?

I've wired a bypass on all my active basses in the past. I don't really have active basses anymore since I just have Fenders. When I did use active basses, I generally kept my EQ at noon and adjusted on the amp before the set, and once I got my sound, I kept my sound about the same. On the few occasions that I did touch the bass EQ, I could have just as easy turned around and fiddled with amp knobs. I would do detailed comparisons before and after bypass, and here's what I always noticed about active EQ on the bass: it almost always just made the tone a little more solid compared to passive, as though it just had a bit more body, and the high end seemed a little more tamed and controlled. I think I'd like that strengthening in certain styles of music, but for that flatwound/picking kind of sound, it kind of takes a bit of the magic away because the last thing flatwounds need is more body and taming. I think maybe if I were slapping on a Jazz Bass, I'd enjoy that extra something.

I second your comment David, I have a 79' stingray I bought in 1980 and the sound is amazing, the batteries last for ages and I'm not talking months here. I gig every week and the only thing I change are the strings ! nuff said lol

David Desmond and with my G&L 2000 if the battery goes down, the bass still works....

I just got a stingray after really only using passive jazz and p bass... And oh man oh man does that stingray sound good. It just sounds so phenomenal. I'm considering retro fitting a my two favorite books ones with active electronics if they fit

Subtitles would be great. Im non-native english speaker too and its hard to me to understand it at all :)

Very good idea, subs will solve it! :-)

Cheers for coming along and joining in on the discussion man!! :)

QBN37 how much have you had to spend on changing the batteries

Ernesto Chang Ha ha not much i got a couple of basses for back up................

QBN37 if that was the only bass you were playing my guess is you would have payed just over $40 in the last 20 years to play your beloved bass LOL not to mention cost of electricity for the amp or who knows maybe im wrong how much is it for a pack of 2 9v's in your country over hear is pretty expensive lke $6 for 2 9v's

Yo Sander... thanks for the tip man! :)

It’s not a mic on the bass. It’s a pickup. Both are transducers, meaning, they each use the movement of metal across a magnetic field, with the rate of that movement being the frequency, and the amount, or amplitude of that movement becoming the volume. With a microphone, air movement impacting the diaphragm, forces the diaphragm to move its voice coil, which is copper wire windings around a former, or formed shape, across a fixed magnet, or magnetic field. This movement creates an electrical impulse, or waveform, of varying voltages, or amplitude, volume, etc and various rate of oscillation, which is responsible for the tone, or frequency. So air movement, AKA, sounds, affect a microphone and thusly create an electrical signal which is then PRE-amplified, by, you guessed it, a preamp, which MUST be acted upon by an outside energy source to be ACTIVE, which increases the initial voltage created by the initial moment, which was generally in the millivolts range, to become a few volts, then to OP amps, AKA output amps, where it is increased to around maybe, 1-3 volts, before finally sending that signal to an amplifier, which increases the electrical signal many times over, reaching upwards of 30 volts or more. Think of it this way, microphones “hear” sounds, because they use air movement to activate a diaphragm, much like our own ears, which is comprised of copper wire wound into lots of coils on a formed shape, which in turn moves across an field, making an electrical signal. Pickups are NOT microphones. They use the movement, usually of a metal object, across a magnetic field, to create an electrical signal. They “hear”, nothing. There are exceptions to this, but they relate to very nuanced situations we don’t need to get into here. I’ve seen guys scream into a Les Paul pickup and you could hear their voice through the rig. Pretty incredible. But it’s all about oscillation of a conductive metal wound into coils as a group, called the coil, across a permanent magnet. It is the movement of the coil across the magnet which creates current, which creates the electrical signal.

Hey man thanks for coming along and checking the video out! Welcome to the SBL Posse :)

Some fuzzes react very differently to an active or a passive bass. However, that's only if you plug in directly or only have true bypass in front of it. If you have even a Boss tuner in front of your fuzz pedal, you've already buffered the signal, i.e. it's now a low impedance signal, as though you're using an active bass. And if you use, say, a wireless unit, your signal is always active. So it's stupid when people say active basses don't work well with effects because how many professional pedalboards start out with a Boss tuner? Now, where people might have a point is that some active basses, especially older ones, have extremely high output because their preamps would add too much gain. Or they might have really hot pickups, whereas Fender basses stay within a pretty narrow range. In those cases, the active bass might clip all your pedals (and amp, too, which is why there's a -15 dB switch on most amps), but that's pretty uncommon these days, since most new active basses have about the same output level as a passive bass. I think the only exception is maybe the SUB4/5 basses.

Hey Darrien, great to see you coming along to hang out man! :)

Scott's Bass Lessons sure thing! thank you for having this channel and providing us all with entertaining, educational, videos. kudos!

Darrien Day My pleasure man! :)

I think it's fair to say most people care about how they sound no matter where they are! Isn't that the whole point? You spend your lifetime honing your sound. Sure, most engineers will get their source from a DI or a pre-EQ out from the head but that's not always the case. Why do we mic cabs then? It's not just for 'air'. As an engineer and bassist myself I try to get cues from someone's (hopefully) painstakingly-crafted stage sound to inform me as to how they'd like to sound out front, of course all while making the necessary adjustments to make them sit in the mix nicely. Some people like a burpy Jaco vibe with the highs rolled off. Some like some grit on the top end. It's your job to preserve some of that. I expect the same from good engineers when I'm on stage.

Well Stated!

Edwin Vásconez Fender precision bass Lyte Deluxe edition baby check it :3

I have a Yamaha rbx 800A. Great bass. But when I use pedals I tend to turn down the volume. It is true that it is sometimes better than a passive if you connect it directly for recording purposes or live. I also add a little bit of low end with the controls. The thing is, batteries are expensive in my country. And I dislike the fact that I have to carry an extra battery just in case. I like the pickups the bass came with. But I think that you can get the same sound with passive pickups if the design is what you are looking for tonewise.and some designs have high output as well. The shielding is indeed the best way to get rid of noise. Apart from having humbucking pickups.

Cool, I think that the 800a is even older than my model. Yeah I also hate having to carry around batteries and things like that, and rechargeable batteries suck. The sound is more compressed on actives too. And my bass empties out a battery real quick. But other than that it has amazing sound in any situation, even on crappy amps it can compensate.

I think it's mainly a problem with older J basses. They can pick up a lot of hum. More modern ones or anything with a humbucker are usually pretty quiet. My passive P bass is totally quiet and has been used for recording (just not by me) in professional studios throughout Nashville.

Why do you think onboard preamp is not Hifi?? That is so false, just an example; Your phone! In your phone you have ADCs DACs and headphone amp and some are very high end.

+Doug Matthews There might be something wrong with your bass if you're having to do that. I generally play for a couple hours per day and get a month to six weeks on a single 9v battery. At one point something went wrong with it and my batteries were dying within a week or so of each other. I couldn't find the issue myself, nor was my local guitar shop able to, so we sent it to an amp repair guy in town and he was actually able to fix it. Not sure what the issue was but I'm back to a month or more between battery swaps again.

Unplug when you aren't playing and batteries last a long time.

Constantly, once a year, omg

Honestly, I can live with replacing the battery once every 6 months. The advantages outweigh the single con of active basses. Most people who play active basses often use passive pickups but I prefer 100% active basses. A 100% active system has some distinct advantages: 1. Ultra Low Noise, even with little to no cavity shielding. 2. No need for bridge ground. Also eliminates a possible shock hazard. 3. The tone is clear and well defined and will not get muddied up by a long signal chain. 4. Active pickups tend to have very little magnetic pull which improves sustain considerably. 5. EMG pickup systems are really easy to install and require almost no soldering to be done. Also, the price of their pickup systems is a bargain when you consider how much passive Delano and Nordstrand pickups cost. That's also not counting the trouble of installing the pickups the old-fashioned way.

RECHARGABLe battery, have you ever hear about that?

They do tend to actually last a very long time. I don't think mine has been changed in months on my Fender Jazz V, and it's only a few bucks a battery so I think it's honestly worth it, at least for my tastes. But that said, that's just me, to each there own, eh?

The problem is, I always forget to unplug them. I'm very ADHD...I walk away to do something for 2 minutes and don't come back until the next day. Do that a couple times, and it's dead. I have thought about putting an on off switch in mine, tho...that I would tend to not forget as easily.

Depends on the circuit I guess. Mine lasts about a year and I never unplug it.

I have two active/passive basses I have no problem at all,if the battery dies there's an LED indicator that warns me for that so I just flip the switch to passive and continue my playing.Be smart and get an active/passive all in one.

Maybe something is wrong with mine...It's a Squire Deluxe Jazz... If I don't unplug it, it wont last more than a couple weeks and even if I notice before it's completely dead, I know I've significantly shortened it's life. Oh well. It's not the end of the world. Just a thing that exists and I fail at remembering.

+Ian Vaughan I don't know, I think Stingrays, NS-2s, Wals and Warwicks have plenty of character. Having said that, when I took the preamp out of my Ray34 I noticed that my plucking position made a much bigger difference. It seems like your right hand position doesn't matter as much with a preamp.

I've got both, hee hee... but great question man!

I think it's all about what you want in the mix, jazz is like a "sword" and percision is like a "punch". But yeah its a great question!

I love jazz style but precision pickups come in lots of variations, and a thick pickup with split coils like musicman's are SEXY AS HELL. Bartolini jazz style pickups are the best thing on the market though. Their sound is, indescribable. Nice video anyway, Scott! Would love to see more "encounters" with Overwater people. They do a great job and is a pleasure to hear them talk.

gadzintu Yeah man... i've tried some bartolini's before - they sounded awesome! :)

Do what I did, get the Blacktop Jazz Bass. It's a Mexi-made Fender, but it's just a stone's throw from the American models. It features the split-coil P-Bass pickups instead of the single-coil J-Bass pickups. It has TONS of variation in sound due to two pickups, but can be adjusted to sound similar to a P-Bass by turning down the bridge-end pickup, and actually has an enhanced bridge over that of a normal J-Bass (The only drawback to this is Fender-made bridge covers don't fit over it). And, it of course comes with the amazing playability that J-Basses are well-known for. Best of both worlds, in my eyes. And that white-chrome pearl finish option is candy to the eyes.

Yes. That's why they're called active... They need active circuitry to function properly.

Seems like it was a ,,plura thing" trolling. But hey, my basses have 2x 9V battery.

Actually... You can make your humbucker go single coil... Its called coil splitting, you wire it so the lead on one coil on the humbucker can be disengaged. And what is a humbucker with only a SINGLE COIL running called?

That's necessarily not the case. My Sandberg for example has an active /passive mode at the volume knob. If there is no battery or if the battery runs out I just push the knob down and go on playing. And the battery lasts a long time anyway

Joseph Seraile my G&L L2000 works when the battery goes flat...