Active Pickups Affect on Tone

[GibSinCity]

This is my first post at the pickups forum.

I'm sure at one time or another this thread question must have come up before, but..

 

I just added a guitar with active pickups to my lineup.

My question is, have you added a guitar with active pickups to your arsenal, and if you did, what affect did it generally have on the amps settings you normally use with your passive pick-up guitar/guitars.

I knew my sound would be affected, so that's no surprise, I'm just looking for other peoples opinions & experiences

Also, I understand that since Seymour Duncan released the Blackout actives to compete with EMG's, the question is which one?

Any thoughts or opinions on that?

Feel free to link me to previous threads if this subject has been covered too much.

Thanks.

[jameslucascalvert]

What type of pickups did you put in? The other guitarist in my band has a Hamer with EMG's, and I hate it. It just has this generic, thick distortion. There's no tone in there, it's just noise. We play quite a bit of metal, but the active pickups I've heard have made every guitar sound the same.

 

He also uses a couple solid state amps, (which I also hate) and has to roll the volume down a little bit when he puts on the Hamer. It's definitely louder than his other guitar. Hope that helps.

 

Have you heard the Seymour Duncan Blackouts yet? I'm curious what they sound like compared to an EMG. I've really started liking SD pickups in the last few years, even though I don't use them.

[FirebirdV]

To quote a famous industry leader ... "batteries are for flashlights"... IMHO too.

[GibSinCity]

What type of pickups did you put in? The other guitarist in my band has a Hamer with EMG's' date=' and I hate it. It just has this generic, thick distortion. There's no tone in there, it's just noise. We play quite a bit of metal, but the active pickups I've heard have made every guitar sound the same.

 

He also uses a couple solid state amps, (which I also hate) and has to roll the volume down a little bit when he puts on the Hamer. It's definitely louder than his other guitar. Hope that helps.

 

Have you heard the Seymour Duncan Blackouts yet? I'm curious what they sound like compared to an EMG. I've really started liking SD pickups in the last few years, even though I don't use them.[/quote']

 

 

This particular guitar has EMG's.

The tone thing, well that's what you get with actives for now if you want to add them to your selection of "Tones".

I guess you just have to decide what angle you want to approach the tone issue from.

You'd probably have to make slight adjustments whenever playing any different guitar with radically different pickups through an amp already set-up for other guitars.

Maybe an EQ pedal/rack that can compensate for any tone loss whenever that guitar is used might do the trick.

I've heard that Blackouts are a bit muddy.

I'd rather throw in some bass etc. to compensate on the back end, than try to get clear tone from muddy signals coming in from the guitar itself.

In the end, for now, still no substitute for regular pickups and a good tube amp.

[deelaz]

The active pickup doesn't capture your guitar wood sound, that's why every guitar with active pup has the same sound, but if you play a heavy gain sound you might like it, never tried the blackouts before, but non active pup has the original tone with vivid dynamics, I always count my guitar wood to create an original tone