EMG 85

[tictoc]

Ok, the Gold PAF's, see my other post, looked nice but along came a new EMG 85 complete and below the 80.00 I had.

Now it's off to wire school and that where I need some help. Until next month when I can get the 81, unless it falls from the sky, I seen where you can use a Active and a Passive together. One setup was a LP like mine.

How can I wire or get a diagram to wire a Active neck and Passive bridge on a Les Paul copy?

thanks

[mattdowney]

hey tictok

it can be done. my friend has a jackson king v with emg 81 in the bridge and a duncan designed passive pickup in the neck. hope this helps

matt

[lovekraft]

Since the LP has separate volume and tone pots for each pickup, it's no problem at all - just wire in the EMG with the pots that come with it, and hook up the output to the selector switch. The only problem you may encounter is volume loss on the bridge pickup when both pickups are selected, but the EMG is going to be so much hotter than the bridge pickup that you're probably not going to be able to balance them anyway. A simple JFET preamp on the bridge pickup will take care of the level difference if you want to go that far, and eliminate the problem. Any particular reason why you want a hot neck pickup?

[ansil]

hey lk cool tahts the long lost article i was wanting to read.. a friend emailed me the pic.. lol thanks man.

[bowser]

does that preamp do the same thing that an EMG PA-2 would do? I'm asking because i put an EMG 85 in the neck of my ibanez, and when both pickups are selected i cant hear the bridge SD Custom Custom at all, its as if i was still on the neck pickup. I haven't put in the emg pots because i didn't want the bridge pickup to be way quieter all the time. I think I will buy the PA-2 and the install the pots at the same time. But, with that preamp LK posted, can you change the level coming out of it like with the EMG PA-2? If you can, would it be less money? (the EMG lists for $35)

[lovekraft]

Sorry, I didn't make it really clear - simply replace the 51k resistor (R4) with a 50K audio taper pot and take the output signal from the wiper. Hook up an EMG-style tone pot to that output and you should be able to balance the pickups with a little juggling. You get about 3dB of boost, and along with the lower output impedance, that should help the pickups "play nice" together. You could also replace R3 with a 10K trimmer to adjust the operating point of the FET for maximum headroom (adjust the DC voltage at the drain of the FET to 1/2 the supply voltage - thanks to the Runoff Groove guys for that little trick!) and use 1% metal film resistors and poly film caps for lowest noise, but it's fairly quiet as-is, and it breaks up gently when overdriven, almost like a tube, so it sounds good even if your input is a little "hot". I think you can probably build one on perfboard for under 35 bucks - I haven't priced the components, but nothing there is really expensive, so the 50k pot will probably be the major cost factor. You should be able to get all the parts from either Small Bear or Mouser at fairly reasonable prices. I strongly recommend not using a tantalum cap for C2 unless you're building from your "junk box", and it's all you can find.