Mixing Passive + Active Pickups

[Vultite]

I want to mix passive and active pickups. The EMG website recommends installing their PA2 preamp to match the actives.

Has anyone done this? Does this produce poor results or is this generally ok to do?

[Kyle Cavanaugh]

It'll work. If you want to save some money and you have a decent understanding of how to read schematics, building one of these will get you there pretty easy, as well. http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/ The impedances will match with each other then. If you're using a 250K-1M pot for volume, put it before the preamp. If it's 25K like EMG provides you, put it after.

Adding a preamp will change the tone in a pickup in that it will have more clarity as it doesn't have the capacitance in the cable affecting it as much due to a lower output impedance. If you don't like the added clarity, you can try experimenting with different cap values in parallel with the pickup before the preamp to cut off the higher frequencies. Somewhere between 47 and 220 pf should do it.

Edited April 4, 2005 by Kyle Cavanaugh

[Vultite]

It'll work.  If you want to save some money and you have a decent understanding of how to read schematics, building one of these will get you there pretty easy, as well. http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/  The impedances will match with each other then.  If you're using a 250K-1M pot for volume, put it before the preamp.  If it's 25K like EMG provides you, put it after.

Adding a preamp will change the tone in a pickup in that it will have more clarity as it doesn't have the capacitance in the cable affecting it as much due to a lower output impedance.  If you don't like the added clarity, you can try experimenting with different cap values in parallel with the pickup before the preamp to cut off the higher frequencies.  Somewhere between  47 and 220 pf should do it.

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Ok thanks ill look into that. Its a little over my head but I usualy figure stuff out after I put the effort into doing unhealthy amounts of research at 3am. (why do I do this?!?!)

My plan right now is to have a kill switch, 1 volume knob and a 3 way pickup selector.

Sounds like you think its not going to degrade the sound quality of the pickup doing this.