Simuanalog

[DaveSmom]

...and the "Worst Thread to Jump Into" Award goes to....

hahah... Yeah, this one's got everything!

Bring it

[bduffy]

...and the "Worst Thread to Jump Into" Award goes to....

I have long been known for having a bad joke for every occasion...it's gotten me this far

Oh, I liked the joke! I have no idea what this thread was about though.

[Rev. Jem]

As this thread's going all over the place (not A Bad Thing), I'd just like to say...

... like I say, I don't need a guitar that's smarter than me

... that's why I bought a Squier. It was close but I won... just.

[susiwong]

Can't you turn your back on this forum for an hour to do some practising ?
Folks, please don't make fun of my good name, many generations of farting, flying hippos have been proud of it !

But back to one of the many topics of this chaotic thread.
Lunch Money, you're right about the EMG coil design, but then there are so many fundamentally different coil and magnet designs with passive PUs too (look at Lace Sensors, Duncan Stacks, DiMarzio virtual and many many more).
I believe the confusion comes from way back in the 80s when the EMG 81/85s were about the only actives around. Like any other PU they were built with a certain sound in mind, some people loved them, some hated them, never realizing they loved or hated the sound of those PUs, not necessarily the "active" concept itself.
I personally don't really care too much, I got good sounding passive guitars and two fabulous guitars with active electronics. The complete chain has to be right, starting with the player, strings, pick, wood, PUs, cables, FX, amp, speakers, cabinet, microphone ...
Most of us are not born with good tone, it's a matter of life long learning.
What works for me might not work for another person and vice versa.
Cheers, susipong

[Sascha Franck]

I would bet its completely shielded,, with SHIELDING paint.. IM not familiar with Anderson, but if it is even a middle of the road guitar it HAS shielding, maybe not copper tape or the metal plates like gibson, but it is sprayed with a shielding paint for sure, [...]

You can believe me that I've got enough experience with shielding guitars myself, all the bla bla - and this Anderson is completely unshielded apart from a very tiny amount of some self-adhesive foil under the tone/volume controls.
There's defenitely no shielding laquer at all.
What they are doing though is using super high quality shielded teflon cables and such, so, in humbucker mode (both series and parallel) noise is not much of an issue.
Pretty dissapointing though - I mean, you'd just expect such things from a 3500+ bucks guitar.

All kinds of players with GREAT tone have used active pickups. They're not sterile like they're made out to be.

Yeah sure. Hendix, Vaughn, Santana, Gilmour, Johnson, Vai, Clapton - they're all pretty much wellknown for their useage of actives.
Personally, I don't give a freaking damn about what anybody is using, but 99% of all "big guitar tone role models" are using passives.

I owned all sorts of pickups in all sorts of guitars over the years and I'm not going to use actives again (unless I could get that Steinberger back, that I sold in a moment of whatever mindstate...). They don't add to the character of my guitars, whereas the passives seem to do.
And regarding noise, there's more than enough noisefree passive solutions around these days.

In the same vein, we should start replacing violin woods with carbon composites, and optimise of the cluncky and outdated design decisions.

Yeah, I'm sure Hink would make some good use of a Stradivari. They make great feed for a campfire...

cuz like, that did so much good to the sound back in the eighties, didn't it?

Hehe.

Exactly the point.
One should really wonder about why almost *everybody* went back to passive pickups, a bunch of floor pedals and plain amps after all those "great" setups with active PUs, running into all sorts of rack nonsense.

Don't get me wrong, I can still see some use for the latter setup, and actives are indeed driving large rackbased setups a bit better, they're cutting through highly effected patches better as well, but there's nobody who would use actives to get anything close to a more or less "great traditional guitar tone" (whatever that description may mean for anybody and regardless whether you like these tones or not).

Thing is, passive PUs (and susiwong is spot on here: which companies are making them anyways?) haven't been improved since the 80s.
There's a whole bunch of PU makers though who improved passive ones, to get you the great tone of some vintage PUs without the disadvantages (such as noise and too low output levels).

3 Brands of active: Well, the obvious-- EMG, DiMarzio, and I believe now Duncan have entered the fray. [...]

Active circuitry... well, anything that adds an afterburner or suchlike. [...]

Ok, all true.
Still, when I went to the "guitar mile" in Paris (there's like 50 shops next to each other, all guitar based), there's been ONE single guitar with actives: A Musicman Luke.
The same applies to each and every other music shop. A few years back, Blades have been rather popular. But even the later Blades are back to full passive circuits.
In addition, you can get a shitload of passive replacements in those shops whereas most of them don't even have a stock EMG set.
Surely proves that actives are the tool of choice to get a great guitar sound...

Oh, susiwong: You're right about a lot of folks not being seen without boosters, but, having tried out quite some guitar-internal ones over the years, there's been nothing coming close to a good old treble booster foot pedal (or the rather new-ish Duncan booster pedal, which, btw, is freaking excellent).
I'm not sure why there's nothing comparable for onboard circuits, maybe they're just getting too large.

Anyways, finally, whatever one may say (and as said before, I don't have anything against active PUs myself, just that I don't like them much), 99% of "great guitar tones" you're hearing on whatever productions or on whatever stages are made with passive PUs, there's no way around it.
Yeah, there's some players like Lukather (but he's mainly using passive axes in the studio as well) and the experimental branch (David Torn, Reeves Gabrels) - but they're defenitely not known for their great traditional tone.
And while quite some things are changing in favour of amp sims, I can't seem to find the same being true for pickups.
I mean, there's *quite* some objective advances to active PUs (apart from the battery wasting fact, I always forgot to unplug the Steinberger back then...), so why aren't there many people using them?
One *may* argue that guitar players are a conservative bunch of idiots - but spoken personally, I'm not. I'm using all the latest technical gizmos, I also love some absolutely non-traditional tones as well... yet, when thinking about replacing PUs in any of my "one size fits all" guitars (and you'd think that actives would suit those pretty well), I'd never even remotely think about getting EMGs or whatsoever.
I quite liked them in the Steinberger (why oh why... I sold it for 1000 german marks...), but that one wasn't giving me any sort of traditional tone anyways.

Ah, senseless discussion. But, one fact remains absolutely clear: In "professional guitar land" active PUs are tough to find.

[Hink]

Ah, senseless discussion. But, one fact remains absolutely clear: In "professional guitar land" active PUs are tough to find.

yeah but I'll never be as good as a professional

[Sascha Franck]

yeah but I'll never be as good as a professional

As if that'd matter.
I mean, you're using some other professional items as well - why not go for PUs used in most professional environments as well?

[stayne]

Wow I don't know what to make of all this. I had no idea this thread would turn into such a debate (not to mention very off-topic).

Soooo, I suppose I'll get by with the green gate for now. There's not that much of a loss in attack (that I can hear anyway). If I can run my hand down the strings and hear it, and NOT hear the noise that started this thread in the first place, then I'm elated.

The Simuanalog JCM900 + Tube Screamer is by far the best hard rock/metal tone I've heard to date.

And it's free!

[IIRs]

Wow I don't know what to make of all this.

I'll sum it up for you: unless you happen to have active electronics in your guitar YOU ARE PLUGGING IT INTO THE WRONG HOLE!!

[zeoy]

Based on my limited personal experience (played for more than 20 years but never had a gear lust) the most live, interactive, interresting guitars are those with the higher noise level. I was (and still am) very happy with my Blade: great variety of good tones and almost noiseless (basically passive design plus an active-bypassable EQ). Then I got a Tokai AST56 and I was blown away by its tone. Maybe one dimensional compared to Blade but this guitar really sings. On the other hand much more noise than the silent Blade
I also have an EMG equipped neck-through-body one: sounds like a piano, sustains for days and has no noise at all even with my CRT monitor on. Very useful for high gain stuff and insane feedbacks and harmonics but not exactly what we call a great 'traditional' tone

BTW Simulanalog rocks. No more noise than the average tube amp.

[stayne]

"I don't know what to make of all this" is my nice way of saying this thread has turned into 75% "I know more than you know" and 25% helpful information. That's to be expected though, guitar tone is a very debatable topic (and great fuel for ego-induced banter).

[Sascha Franck]

I need to say that IIRs is just right. Your signal chain doesn't seem to be what it should be when using software amp sims.

[stayne]

I'll have to look after work for "instrument" or "hi Z" inputs. I missed that reply, sorry.

About DI boxes. Does that go before or after the mixer? I have to use my mixer for everything (vocals, guitar, bass) because my EMU 0404 only has one set of inputs.

[Sascha Franck]

You're using DI boxes straight after the guitar, to have their passive PU impedance (hi impedance or hi-z) match with the mixers ins (which usually are suited for low impedance signals).
The best idea would be getting a dedicated hi-z line driver though. Many mixers are coloring the sound. Also, cheaper ones may add some noise. Often not that noticeable on vocals, basses and whatever, but as you're highly compressing the signal (which is what that amount of gain will be doing) you'll defenitely notice it on electric guitars.

[stayne]

thanks! do bass guitars need that too?