little opinion on active bass pickups.

[Leonardo Silva]

Hi people, I had this bass guitar proyect from a long time (gonna post the proyect in another place of the forum somewhere this year) and its time to buy me some pickups.

for the budget that I have, I decided some wilkinson pickups, it's a MM pickups on the bridge plus a P-bass pickup on the neck, active 3band EQ but some problem arises for it.

the first, is that I can choose passive or active pickups (I have an active preamp either way to boost/shape the signal), the passive MM say it can be used with a preamp with no problem, the P-bass say its rather "vintage" sounding and I'm a bit afraid it won't have the modern sound that I want (it's kind for a heavy metal bass, would have used EMG if I had the budget for it).

and then I have the "active" P-bass, the one that has hidden pole magnets, here are pictures of the options.





so in a way, I would had bought the "active" version of the MM and the P-bass, but I just couldn't find the MM active product (been looking for months, no luck), any opinions? I wanted to go with the passive "set" but maybe combine the "passive" MM with the active P-bass might be a good idea.

if I get no answer I will just buy the passive set and the client will have to deal with it xd, he can change pickups afterwards if he get any problem with its output (I need a really high output).

[David King]

The no-holes covers probably use steel blades with ceramic magnets.
"Designed for the traditional P-style of bass guitar, the WPBE500 is an active, ceramic magnet unit offering a good combination of warm tones, responsive performance and no-noise output."

Ceramic-steel pickups tend to filter out midrange and accentuate the bass and treble.

Blending a passive and an active pickups would pose problems as you surmise. I'd stick with all passive but then try sticking a steel plate to the bottoms of the AlNiCo magnets to give them a different tone. If that doesn't do it you can stick a ceramic magnet to the bottoms. To accentuate that effect you can demagnetize the AlNiCo rods first.

[Leonardo Silva]

great ideas, messing with the pickup itself might be a bit too much on this stage (for demagnetizing the rods for example) but the steel plate I might give it a try (you are suggesting the steel plate for for the P-bass pickup, right?)

anyway, I will wait until tomorrow to order all the elctronics and hope I will post more of the bass proyect rather soon.

[David King]

Yes Leonardo, and you can put the steel plate on top of the magnets for a more audible effect. I would keep the steel narrow, maybe 5-6mm wide and 1mm thick. You can use short lengths between every two magnets or one longer one to cover 4 magnets and hang off the ends a little bit (but not longer than the cover).