Active/Passive Bass Recomendations

[Seth Ellis]

Greetings MIMFians,

I'm making a 5-string fretless and considering wiring with a passive/active switch or push-pull pot. Do you recommend this? What products would be a good match? From reading this forum and basschat I gather that this requires passive pickups and onboard separate pre-amp that could be bypassed for passive application. Wiring is the hardest part of bass building for me--I usually focus my energies on acoustic guitars.

Beyond that active/passive idea, I want to keep it relatively simple and clean. Ideally, volume, tone, and switch. (Even simpler if tone or volume can work as push pull for active/passive). Besides having ideas, I'm inexperienced with wiring and realize an EMG plug and play setup would be easiest. But I can solder with some success, so ready to try. May experiment with $30 Amazon pickups on cardboard first. I'm unsure of how to match components for this venture.

Cheers, Seth

[Ian.Day]

Hi Seth,

I tend to use the pre-wired wiring harnesses from Bartolini (HR 5.4/AP is my favorite but there are many other models that might fit your needs better). some of them come with push/pull active passive volume pot.

Ian