Isn't it terrible ...

[chromium]

Off topic, but that 8 string bridge/tailpiece sure looks like Hamer hardware.

Good eye!  The previous owner had talked Hamer into selling him a bridge and tailpiece while the bass was in for restoration with Neal Moser, and so he ended up converting it.  I assume there was a 4-saddle Badass or Starz bridge on there originally.

[uwe]

I like BC Rich basses too. And IMHO Geezer Butler had his best bass sound live in the early Dio years when he played one.

[nofi]

my son tony saw that tour. sabbath and boc, an odd pairing to me but what do i know about the innards of planning this tour. someone must have thought it was a good idea then someone on the other side had to agree.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Multiple gain stages yet just one gain control? I never knew. So there are cascaded gains operated by just that one gain knob?

That's where amps differ. There are all kinds of designs with many different gain stages. There is no set number. The goal is to have the voltage from an instrument's pickup be of sufficient power to drive a speaker or ultimately, produce its own volume, sans speaker.  As batteries become ever more powerful, it is easy to one day envision an entire amplifier being onboard a bass.  Having an active preamp is just adding another stage in front of all the others, and it's very easy to electronically compensate for pickup deficiencies with EQ, but the result is that lots of very differently-constructed instruments end up sounding identical. Passive pickups tend to have more "character" as a result of their own shortcomings, which over time have endeared themselves to our ears.

 I just like things that sound good to me and understand how most of them do their thing. I've also played several "Holy Grail" instruments that left me cold: a '73 checkerboard-bound Fireglo Ric 4001, a few poorly set-up EB-2's, any bass with an SG body shape including vintage EB-0's, every aluminum-necked Kramer I ever encountered, Ampeg Dan Armstrong basses and more crappy vintage Fenders than I could ever list.

[uwe]

Having an active preamp is just adding another stage in front of all the others, and it's very easy to electronically compensate for pickup deficiencies with EQ, but the result is that lots of very differently-constructed instruments end up sounding identical. Passive pickups tend to have more "character" as a result of their own shortcomings, which over time have endeared themselves to our ears.

No one ever summed it up more beautifully. 

[gearHed289]

Agreed!

[uwe]

my son tony saw that tour. sabbath and boc, an odd pairing to me but what do i know about the innards of planning this tour. someone must have thought it was a good idea then someone on the other side had to agree.

BÖC had a dark image, more playful than Sabbath's dumb (in a good way) Hammer Films devilishness, but also more unsettling (largely down to Eric Bloom's appearance and image) though much of their music was just (very) well-crafted pop (Lanier wrote pure pop, the Bouchard brothers mostly too, Roeser oscillated between a handfull of riffy tracks and those rather West Coastish strumming songs , Bloom's compositions were regularly too off the wall to be real hard rock or heavy metal, though BÖC were among the first ones to claim they played "heavy metal" in the 70ies, of course they didn't!). Plus their song and album titles and covers always had something sinister. I guess that is what made them seem like a good pair with the Sabs.

Or possibly it was Martin Birch who produced both around that time.

[Dave W]

No one ever summed it up more beautifully. 

If you're talking about what PBG said about liking things that sound good to him, I certainly agree.

If you're talking about what he said about passive pickups, keep in mind that most active basses actually have passive pickups. It's the preamp that's active. The original EMGs are true active pickups, and IMHO they don't have much character, although they do have plenty of fans. But aside from EMG, few if any others are internally active. A preamp with passive pickups doesn't change whatever character the pickups have.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Passive pickups have their character altered by an onboard preamp. The preamp decouples the pickup from the first gain stage on the bass amplifier and feeds it a signal that has neither the frequency response nor impedance of the pickup's actual output, which is why basses end up "sounding" like preamps moreso than their construction and pickups.

[Dave W]

Of course the signal is altered by the preamp, that's what's supposed to happen. It doesn't change the fact that the origin of the signal is passive.

To me, this sounds just like a J in both passive mode and in active mode with bass and treble boosted about halfway. But having the preamp allows you more tonal flexibility if you want it, rather than just a passive tone knob cut.

[slinkp]

Doesn't it kinda depend on the pickup too?
Watt's T-bird II sure never sounded to me like some generic thing with a Bartolini preamp.  I hear a whole lot of bird in this... nothing about it makes me go "must be an active bass", much less "sounds like a bartolini preamp".

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Both examples are cases are well-designed preamps that still allow the character of the original passive pickups to shine through. But also consider the host of low to mid budget import basses with all kinds of variation in construction and pickups that sound virtually identical. Any number of "cheapie" active basses are virtually indistinguishable despite huge variations in build and materials. Truly "active" pickups function like condenser microphones and rely on a power source to charge their magnetic field used to "view" the strings and because of this, they are very different in tonality and output than passive-magnet pickups (99.99999% of everything).

[nofi]

all that is wrong here is found in the comments.



typical over slapping throughout, battery is under pickguard, this guy took a terrible tone and made it worse blah blah blah.

[uwe]

Of course the signal is altered by the preamp, that's what's supposed to happen. It doesn't change the fact that the origin of the signal is passive.

To me, this sounds just like a J in both passive mode and in active mode with bass and treble boosted about halfway. But having the preamp allows you more tonal flexibility if you want it, rather than just a passive tone knob cut.

I'm sorry to say, but that particular active sound already sounds anodyne to me. Heard a trillion times on every jazzrock-funk album on earth. We all know what a passive J sounds like over a regular rig, plugged in without further ado. It doesn't sound like that active mode in the vid unless you use a Glockenklang or something and adjust tone control on the amp hi-fi'ish.

[uwe]

all that is wrong here is found in the comments.



typical over slapping throughout, battery is under pickguard, this guy took a terrible tone and made it worse blah blah blah.

Lol, he ruined the near decent sound of that little innocent Squier with a lot of work. Amazing, how dangerous and debilitating a 9 volt battery can be. Should not be put in the hands of children and sold at responsible gun shops only.