Active questions....

[charic]

Can someone clear summat up with me for active circuitry?

Does one have active pickups and active pre-amp as two seperate components? Would they need 9v battery EACH? Or would they share it? Or am i totally off the rails atm?

[BigRedX]

Depends on the pickups and the pre-amp. What do you have or what are you considering? If they don't come from the same manufacturer you'll probably need to ask the makers of both units. In theory you should be able to run both of the same battery, although you'll run it down quicker. Also remember that miss-matched active active pickups to pre-amp will be potentially very noisy.

[BOD2]

The most common combinations are -

1. Passive pickups, passive tone controls (e.g. P-Bass, J-Bass etc.)

2. Passive pickups, active preamp (preamp supplies tone controls)

3. Active pickups, active preamp (preamp supplies tone controls)

The active pickups are separate from the active preamp, and an active preamp can also be used with passive pickups.

Both active pickups and active preamp will require power from one battery (9 Volt system) or often two batteries (18 Volt system). The same battery or batteries can be used to power both the preamp and active pickups.

For more information the the best idea is to identify some real pickups/preamps and check the manufacturers websire for technical information. That will usually show you how it all works together and what options you have for power etc.

[charic]

Not sure whats in it atm as i cant see manufacturers name anywhere on it. Its my samick 6er I acquired recently. Thinking of buying aguilar pre-amp on friday. Just wondered about the whole battery issue mainly

[Kev]

i run an aguilar preamp and emg's off one battery, and its lasting fine at the moment

[BOD2]

It should be okay.

To check what you already have, open up the control cavity and have a look inside. If there's a small circuit board in there then you already have an active preamp.

Trace the wires that go to the pickups. If they're active then there will be a power wire going from the battery to the pickups somewhere. Trace the power wire from the battery to see where it goes to.

You can also tell by the values on the control pots. Passive setups tend to use 250k or 500k pots, whereas active setups (pickups and preamps) use 25k or 50k pots.

Aguilar have wiring diagrams on their website [url="http://www.aguilaramp.com/support_wiring_diagrams.htm"]Aguilar wiring diagrams[/url] if you want to see what's involved. Note that the OBP-1 and OBP-2 have two tone controls (treble/bass) whereas the OBP-3 had three tone controls (treble, middle, bass) so you need to bear that in mind depending on how many holes you have in your bass. You can also get "stacked" controls to combine two pots onto one shaft if you don't have enough holes.