Active vs. Passive on Bass Guitar

There's something wrong. I will have the same batteries in my 9vt Stingray or 18vt Carvin for years at the time. Obviously not leaving them plugged in for long stretches....but....

There's no doubt passive guitars are less trouble because they're simpler. I WILL point out that you could just have a passive switch added to yours....BUT....important bit about passive switches--you need to ALSO have a passive tone control for that mode, else it's really an "emergency only" switch. The new Fender Elite Precision does have that....and the best feeling Fender neck I've ever played. It feels like Stingray.

If you like the way your current Jazz plays, the bang for the buck is just to replace the electronics. Aftermarket, whether it's active or passive, it won't be (likely) all intertwined. You could even just get some nice Fralin (or something similar) passive PUs....nice tone cap--you WILL have to replace ALL the pots and maybe even the jack--Fender's things are all mounted onto PCBs under the pots....and then if you decide you want a preamp back, you can add an aftermarket one, which will connect ot the pots via wires, thus not moving the PCB around every time you grab a knob and move it....probably a couple hundred (a little more if you're paying for bench time) and you could have a nice set of passive PUs with new, non proprietary PCB mounted pots.

If routinely changing batteries is going to cause you grief, I wouldn't look for a active bass with a switch for passive mode. Just buy a passive bass (or passive electronics for yours). There's really not a huge difference for recording. I mean, if you love the sound of a Musicman, you need active because it part of that sound....those big pole MM pickups were always designed to have an active EQ/preamp. On the flip side, an active P bass is absurd, IMO--for the same reason--no longer sounds like a P. The Jazz is the only one of the big 3 that swings both ways. I don't really like them passive OR active, so....YMMV.

This is the new bang for the buck guy....apparently....never played one, but it's cheap enough I was tempted even though I don't love Jazz basses....

Thanks, probably just go with a Standard P-Bass and look to replace the Fender stock pickups and wiring in my Jazz 5.

What specific model bass is this? If it's draining your batteries in 2 weeks, maybe bring it to a tech and see if they see something wonky causing it. Maybe your jack is a wonky and it "thinks" something is plugged in?

Mid 2000's American Deluxe Jazz I'm guessing?

An alt solution is the Fender Noiseless J pickups and their active electronic kit. Noiseless and the choice of active or passive tones. Active EQ can get it into Stingray territory!

I suspect a short someplace, perhaps in the jack that switches the batteries on? You can determine that if you use a DVM on current mode and place the meter between the red or black battery wire and where it goes. If you see leakage current, you have a short. It could also be a leaking psu bypass cap, check that.

I'm all active here since 1972. Back in those days I designed and built active on-board circuits for Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, Byron Miller, Alphonso Johnson, Nate Watts (Wonderlove) and Frank Zappa.

Play any Zappa album past 1976 and you will hear my stuff used in all those recordings. Ike Willis and Ray White also had those active guitars. I also installed similar circuits into Stevie Wonder's clavinets and Rhodes pianos. Hear those on "Hotter Than July" and later.

All of my electric instruments are active, the basses and guitars. Some have simple booster/line amps, some with EQ and active panning. I have circuits with 3 band EQ and 2 band sweep frequency EQ. All of them use Dale resistors and LT or BB opamps. I also have a hum cancelling design I use in my Telecasters with a dummy coil to "tune" the hum out to -80 db via phase cancellation. That allows vintage pickups to be used, sans noise. All of them have a 5 meg input impedance to preserve all the tiny upper harmonics, bandwidth of these is 200k hz to avoid any phase shift. Yes, there is added clarity heard that is never found with a passive design due to the high impedance and stray capacitance of passive designs.

I can and have also rebuilt many Music Man preamps with a low noise fast opamp and good caps, a world of difference. Send a PM or email if interested in any of these designs as I don't activly (except maybe here) promote nor advertize them. I just sent some boosters to Henry Kaiser to be used with some special pickups he uses.

I am still in the process of checking to see if it is still draining one battery quicker than the other. Strange, but I think this is the case of a bad battery right out of the duracell package.

I've used Bill's pickups since his first, the "Hi-A" with six coils/outputs. Back in the mid 1970's me and Rex Bogue (John McLaughlin double neck guitar builder) built a guitar with those feeding pan pots. That wheel has been re-invented several times since, but we did that first.

I managed to get Bill Bartolini to custom wind my bridge jazz bass pickup back in 1979 to have a resonant peak at 15k hz, double his standard bandwidth. I found his off the shelf stuff to be a bit hard in the mids (ceramic magnet sound) and limited in the tops (dark).

He also made preamps starting with the "chip" in the mid 1970's. Most of those failed eventually as they were potted designs incapable of being repaired. When the el or tant caps fail, you threw it out.

I see the Noll designs are also fully potted (Everyone's got something to hide except me and my monkey?) and will also probably eventually fail, they cannot be repaired either. I prefer exposed designs that can be repaired, if needed. That also allows future upgrades when better semiconductors are developed, as they will.

Bad Battery right out of the Duracell package. It is testing out fine so far.

I just post about them on Facebook without naming names

Good mention on the Bartolini.s. I have a brace of them in an 1990 Ibanez SDGR 6 string and then sound incredible in it.