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Maybe the Alex Skolnick types can answer this best. I know everyone loves the warmth of PAF's, but if active pickups are (theoretically) cleaner, with higher output (headroom?), more high and low end, more articulate, why wouldn't it be a good idea for a jazz guitar?
{Note: I'm cringing as I wait for responses.}
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06-08-2011 07:53 AM
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Just my opinion - I've only owned one guitar with active pups and that was only for a month before I ripped them out and replaced them with a set of Duncan 59's. I have played a bunch of guitars with actives as well. I suppose that active pups are fine for metal and thrash, where high output is valued more than tone.
To my ear, the sound is very sterile and... uninviting? The more I play jazz on acoustics and with floating pickups, the more I value that warm, "woody" tone. Very hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it. Based upon my experience, I don't see any way to come close to that with active pickups.
On the other hand, there is nothing saying that you need to pursue a traditional, jazz tone. Totally a matter of taste. I think actives taste horrible!
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I'm curious as well. Actives aren't all high output monsters.
Bass players and acoustic players have taken to them.
The limitations of blending pickups and, especially, the 19th century tone controls on passives are quite limiting.
EG
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Well, higher output would not equal more headroom with a tube amp.
I think it's because jazz guitarists don't like to have to fiddle around with batteries.
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They work great for Tuck Andress but his tone is not a traditional one
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You got it right. I have a bass with active PUs and while battery replacement is infrequent, it is still a pain particularly when they crap out and you discover that the spare that has been sitting in the goodie bag is also half dead.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Contrary to what I promised myself a long time ago, I did just buy a guitar with an active Fishman piezo to go along with a set of passive magnetic Seymour Duncans. Because the pickups are wired to interact in stereo when desired, the battery has to have a decent charge in order for the SDs to work, even if the switches are set to bypass the piezo. It's very cool to run a split stereo cable from the piezo to an acoustic amp and from the SDs to the Princeton. Almost unlimited tone colors available.
But I will still snivel as soon as the battery goes flat and I have to scrounge around to find a fresh one.
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I've had one guitar - a guild nightbird which is a fabulous chambered spruce-top - which I bought despite the 80s EMGs. I decided to give them a try anyway, but the practical issue was that the output was about 3 times a standard PAF and so they overdrove even the high input to my evans, and several other amps including a SF fender. You have to wonder about the thinking behind the decision to make 80s EMGs so high output, inevitably resulting in amp input distortion, if part of their proposition was ''clean''. Or maybe it was just the new battery?? I would have thought the thing to do would make them the same output as standard pickups, but they were obviously thinking differently.
Anyway, like the poster above, they didn't last long. They are electrically very clean, and sounded impressively clinical & chimey with the volume turned right down on the guitar, but they lack that elusive ''warmth''( which an engineer would probably call phase distortion and harmonic intermodulation) of standard pickups. Probably that was the whole idea...
The other factor is the battery - there have been so many attempts to market active pickups/ eqs etc on guitars, but I can't think of many that have survived commercially apart of course from on acoustic guitars. Scanning an 80s issue of ''Guitar Player'' is educational in that respect- ''active'' guitar ads everywhere.
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I think active pickups go against tradition and that is the biggest problem jazz players have with them...
guys like Les Paul who liked, for example, Lo-Z pickups didnt have that problem.
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Hi Woyvel,
I own a steinberger from the mid eighties with eng active pickups. It has two single coils and a humbucker. I actually love the sound and feel of that guitar. I used to use it all of the time from gb gigs to big band and jazz combos. I would mostly use a vibrolux. The tone of the guitar is very versatile. The volume I keep around 4 O'clock, the tone, I would tend to fiddle with from song to song (something I rarely do on other guitars). Although I use it for clean tunes I feel it is "sterile" sounding for some rock. I have used on quite a few jazz recording sessions. As I recall, I remember seeing Mick Goodrick use one for some duo gigs around here years ago. I go through phases when I don't use it much because it looks funny.
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Anyone ever used an EMG Tele set? I've been off-and-on curious about those. On the other hand, Bill Lawrence (pickup designer) says, "Batteries are for flashlights!"
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wider freq response does not equal better. I like active pickups. I have them in my acoustic guitar. The characteristic jazz tone does not make use of them and the PAF style pickup seems to sound great for jazz and fusion. The EMGs I've used have sounded sterile and void of personality to my ears but it's just what they're designed for. There's no money in designing an active jazz guitar pickup.
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I've used those as well as the strat set. Nice and quiet but no fender vibe IMO. Carlton used a set of the EMG strat pickups in his Last Night recording.... Originally Posted by Tom Karol
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I was just looking at my website and noticed there is a cut of "What a difference a day made" that I had recorded using the steinberger with the ENG pickups. I generally do prefer my Eastman or 335 but this works. The web address is middlestreetmusic.com the song is in the calender section.
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Sorry my DROID keeps changing EMG to eng.
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Part of me thinks that, "if its good enough for Larry..." Originally Posted by jzucker
The other part of me is quite certain that Larry could play a cigar box guitar and it would sound absolutely amazing.
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I've had EMG's on some of my guitars, including a jazz guitar for many years. I'm sick of them now, and will never have them again! ;-)
Something about them is just to linear or something, sounds too polished, lacks bite.
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I like active PUPS on bass. Though I've got a panic switch on one and to be honest going passive on it makes me wonder how useful active is sometimes. (you can boost and cut EQ with active). For reasons I've never analysed I have completely hated every active system I've ever played in a guitar.
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not trying to bring the cringe, but i dont think of that guy as a tone wizard. maybe he was talking about his shredder guitar where all highs and lows and no mids are the norm. Originally Posted by woyvel
and as noted earlier, higher output and cleaner are pretty much contradictory.
tuck A's tone is not my fave, and a pretty good example of what active PUs sound like. great player, but not for tone IMO.
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Thanks for the responses all. Your answers and the tech I talked to saying he didn't want to do it have convinced me that I should find something else to do with the active pickups i just acquired. Craig's List, here we come.
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Imagine having one with active tele PÙs, "thus I dub thee the tele bastard". Originally Posted by Tom Karol
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Oddly enough, a passive low impedance scheme, as in Les Paul Personal and Studio guitars from the '70s etc, sound very similar tonally to EMGs.
http://www.rlinwood.com/family_webpa...LPR_Master.htm
Check out Les Pauls' guitar sound (a great Jazz player for sure) it is very similar to the sort of sounds you pull from an active set up.
Part of the sound of EMG humbuckers is not just the preamp circuit but also the parallel wiring of the coils which imparts more presence in the final sound.Last edited by wildschwein; 08-10-2015 at 07:14 AM.
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Well, it simply isn't done. It is frowned upon and considered unsavory (Sniff).
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Originally Posted by mattymel
I was never a metalhead, but hasn't Alex Skolnick re-oriented his career towards playing jazz?! I don't know a lot of his stuff, to be honest, but I think he's probably a pretty decent jazz player by now.
And as for Tuck A., I remember reading an interview where he was asked about his tone/setup, and he basically said don't even try to replicate it....the vintage L5 he plays is almost irrelevant...his tone relies on extensive, and very elaborate EQ-ing equipment. He is a VERY smart guy and seems to think through whatever issue he tackles (picking technique; live sound reproduction; fingerstyle guitar accompaniement) in a very thorough and disciplined manner.
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I had a Strat with David Gilmore EMG pickguard. Did not like it at all. They came off after a short while and were replaced by a pickguard with the same pickups as in Gilmore's black Strat (forgot what these are). Now everything is great. I can't really tell why I did not like the sound of the EMGs. They were bright and clear and strong and hum-free and whatnot, yet "something" was missing.
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I've used/own some EMG's, they sound very balanced across the strings.
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