What is EQ?

Is active eq better than active pick ups? And what are the differences?

• Answer:

  There are two types of pickups - passive and active. Passive pickups don't need a battery, active pickups do. It's the same basic idea (both are still made with long strands of thin wire wrapped around one or more magnets), but active pickups have circuitry inside the guitar (sometimes inside the pickup itself, sometimes not) that requires power. This is usually in the form of one or more 9v batteries. Active EQ is slightly different... its onboard circuitry (circuitry inside your guitar) that takes a signal and gives you the ability to boost or cut different frequencies. The difference is that it doesn't care if the signal comes from active or passive pickups - its like having a little stompbox (guitar pedal) built right into your guitar. Having owned and used both active and passive pickups, it's been my experience that passive pickups have better "detail" and are capable of more dynamic expression than active pickups, and since I play a variety of different tones, this is something I like. Many, many musicians are perfectly happy using actives, and I don't have a problem with that. To me, they tend to feel a little flat and compressed... by that I mean that with passive pickups, if you pick harder you can get a louder tone, whereas with active pickups I feel that when I pick harder I don't get a much louder tone. Its a subtle difference, but one that I apparently care about if I'm playing anything other than heavily distorted rock or metal. I prefer passive pickups with an onboard buffer preamp. This is a specific kind of a preamp - it doesn't have any tone controls itself, and it doesn't amplify really, what it does is change something called the "output impedance". The end result is that I can run 50' of crappy cable and not lose any tone, if I wanted. I keep a little more treble, and feel like I get a better defined sound. And oh yeah, I don't spend as much money on expensive cables. That's nice! I honestly don't understand why active circuitry isn't more common in guitars for that reason alone.... Active EQ or any onboard preamp (buffer or booster or whatever) doesn't give you a better tone necessarily - your tone will still depend on how good your pickups are. Active pickups are a type of pickup that are decent for many different music styles, but tend to work especially well for playing live and playing heavy rock/punk/metal etc distorted music. Anyways, hopefully that helped a little. Even a relatively simple circuit like an onboard preamp is still pretty rare... you can build one yourself if you were so inclined, they're actually pretty easy, as far as electronics go... Anyhoo, there's my two cents. Saul