Active Pickups Are Ok After All

[Rudi]

I bought a new guitar this year. Almost exactly the same as my old one, except the new one has to have a 9v battery installed.

Now this put me off at first, and its true that I am still struggling to get the sort of sounds that I am accustomed to.

However, a strange benefit has arisen.

I reported a troublesome noise (in studio area forum) while recording a acoustic guitar instrumental. In the past I tried to use my solid electric with an 'acoustic' patch from the Boss signal processor. This did solve the noise problem, but introduced a new one, every time I took my hands off the guitar, the dreaded 'hum' made an unwelcome appearance.

I tried this again with the new guitar, and no hum!

The recording is pretty good and best of all, completely clean. Active pickups are actually good for something after all.

[Jim622]

If the electric has single coil pickups - its called 60 cycle hum. Without changing pups you live with it.

Jim

[TapperMike]

It doesn't matter in some homes. Many buildings built before 1960 had extremely bad wiring

[Rudi]

The original guitar has double & treble wound Jackson humbuckers (noisey).

The new active humbuckers are Seymour Duncan (noiseless).

[Xenicus]

I put a Seymour Duncan Hot Rail on my strat it's got a thicker sound and it's quiet.

Brian

[Jim622]

I have a tele with DiMarzio noiseless and its quiet. My amp I notice every now and then gets a buzz that goes away when I turn off the room lights,

[Rudi]

The bass I bought this year has both active & passive settings. So you can switch between the two

 

Useful if you run out of batteries.

[Just1L]

That's great Rudi. I have an electric/acoustic that I use to record. Only thing I'd suggest is trying different strings to see if any of them give you the sound you're going for. I've used quite a few and currently have these huge acoustic strings on there which gives a much better sound than others I have tried. Sadly, I've tried so many, I can't remember which ones I currently have on there. So on that note, make sure you write down the strings that give you the best sound.

[Rudi]

I need to for the bass and the spanish guitar. The others have had the same strings for many years.