Members V-Type Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Ive loved em. Especially the 85 in the bridge and the 81 in the neck. My only complaint was the 18v battery(x2) mod I did seemed too suck the life from the batteries even more than the stock 9v job did. They deliver what you put into them thats for sure. But these days I like the "airiness and coloring" of Certain Passives a bit more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rparchen Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Every guitar I own has either 81/60 or 81/85 setup in them and I love them. I recently converted each guitar over to 18V and I really like it. I wasn't so sure at first so I just put one guitar at 18V and I found myself playing that one over the 9V ones, so I put the extra battery into all of them. I just love the distortion from them. Chairborne, I sent you a PM since I'm looking for at least one more 81 for another guitar that is one the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members book_of_lies777 Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 they get a bad rap... I've got an EMG 81 in my Dean V and it kicks ass. That being said, I was expecting some fire-breathing beast and it wasn't, but that doesn't mean it's not good, just not as 'evil' as some had hyped it up to be. I am satisfied with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Web Surf Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 I recently got EMG 81/85 and 89s to play around with. I feel that the differences between Actives and passives are -- 1. Actives have more output. Around 1-4 volts as compared to 30-100mV This is great for distortion as you can overdrive the stompbox. But is it really necessary ? More output is the same as turning up the gain control of the stomp. Or adding a driver in the chain. How does it help clean/blues ? Not Much !!! 2. Actives have lower impedance outputs. Roughly 10K versus 500K This means that they do not pick up line noise. And they can drive 100 mts of cable without high freq fall off. But they will act different with older stomp boxes that were specifically designed to load the passive pups. Metal is too new and the new metal stomp boxes do not load the pups. C) Actives have less magnetic pull. Thats good But many other pups have sufficiently low magnetic pull. D) Actives have fewer coil turns. Hence they have lower inductance and that translates to higher frequency response. This also leads to a flatter freq response I am sure that many guitarists would feel this is unreal as they grew up with the traditional sounds of passive pups. But it is something that you can equalise away !! For Metal music which has heavy distortion, the pup high freq response is not so important. The distortion removes high freq components from the input and generates its own harmonics. E) Actives have higher attacks. I feel that passive pickups somehow compress the input signal as their magnet gets saturated. If you have set up a passive pup and set it up to a particular volume you like with clean settings, then change the guitar to one with active pickups and play with the volume control so that you have the same average volume on a string pluck. You will then find that the initial microseconds with the Active pickups are more distorted than the Passives. For Metal, this does not matter as the disortion box will compress like hell. But for cleans, you will need a compressor ( Medium threshold, fast action, 10:1) to tame the greater attack from the Actives. from above, it is obvious that Actives are great for Metal. But it is possible to get great cleans/blues/rock from Actives. The Key is Equalisation and compression. And yes, if you play with your volume control at 9 with passives on clean, maybe you can try 4-5 with the actives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GodBlessTexas Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Had a chance to play a EMG equipped Musicman Luke, and yet again I found that I love the EMG sound. Sure, they are different that the usual passive sound, but to my ears it's a lovely, musical sound. Yet actives remain unpopular, so I'd like to hear the reason why you dislike emIncorrect. It's not that they remain unpopular, it's that people who hate them, and musicians as a whole, tend to be very vocal about disliking them. For the record, I love my guitars equipped with EMG's, and I love my guitars equipped with passives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DracoAran Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 :blah:I strongly believe that there are huge misconceptions about actives that are perpetuated by those who only tried the ceramic 81 into the wrong guitar or rig.Me, I only dislike the output, since a lot of them (not all) are too hot to be as versatile as the passive counterparts. Case in point, the EMG 60, which has a very nice tone in the neck position, but will still overdrive a clean channel very easily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members csm Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Not all actives are alike ... ... but I remember my first experience with an EMG-loaded Strat going into a clean(ish) choob amp and finding the sound rather bland and characterless. The owner told me that what these pickups were intended to do was to provide a strong, interference-free, uncoloured signal to drive an effects rack, where all the 'colour', 'character' and 'tone' would be added via processing. Which is cool if that's what you need them to do. Further experimentation with a pair of EMG-loaded Les Pauls belonging to a friend (who has now, incidentally, switched back to the original passive Gibson humbuckers) elicited the result that they're very good for an ultrakleen hi-fi sound, and -- once chained up with a buncha pedals through a very hi-gain monster amp -- for serious megafilth. Which, once again, is cool if that's what you need. As a bluze guy, I don't find them appropriate for my needs, but they certainly have their place. Just not in any of MY guitars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members eclipseall Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 All my guitars have the EMG 81/60 or EMG 81/85 combos. I use them for metal, hard rock and classic rock. Love their sound for all of those styles. The EMG 60 provides a very nice clean tone also. I only have one guitar with a Duncan JB/59 combo, and I must say that i dont really like it. Maybe Im so used to the active sound that Im biased. Contrary to waht many people think. EMGs dont sound the same in all guitars. Those who say that dont have any experience with active pups. I have two identical guitars both with EMG 81/60 combo and they both sound different. How is that possible? Well, for one one is a liitle heavier than the other, more wood. So there you go, EMGs so ract to the guitar they are put in to. Since I started playing active pups, I have never looked back. they make effects come alive. Chorus, Flanger, Phaser sound three dimensional with my EMGs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Sterile sounding Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bungholio281 Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 That Luke is a great axe. I can't explain though, what it is that turns me away from active pickups... I can't say that something sounds better or worse, but different is the word, and I don't like the difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WakeTheDead Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Someone should set up a pole so we can take a vote... I think the majority of rock/metal guitarists love Active EMG's. I will say this though, they really start to shine when you play them through a good tube amp... especially at stage volumes. Through a S.S. amp (such as my Flextone III XL) they don't kick ass nearly as hard as say through an all tube Marshall or Boogie!! Rock on (with your EMG's) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members csm Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Someone should set up a pole so we can take a vote... Or do a dance with it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tom_s252 Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 Or do a dance with it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WakeTheDead Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 I could dig a good pole dance! Let's say..... to Whitesnake's "Still of The Night" maybe!!!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JoJo68 Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 I have em in my viper and they aren't as bad as I remember them. I like them for a change and for something that requires more attack/metal sound. I think the tone isn't as good as my passives imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SweetOblivion Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 The only experience I ever had with them was in an old powerhouse strat I have. They were ok but I ripped em out for some fralins and haven't really missed them at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sk8centilli Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 "Crap, I left the cord in the guitar again. Anybody have a spare 9v?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rparchen Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 It takes about 3000 hours to kill the battery. It is your own fault if you leave the cord in for 125 days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deoreo Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 I just picked up a guitar that has EMG's in it (81 & two singles)After a long time of only playing passive set-ups, when I first plugged in the active set-up I wasn't too sure about it - they seemed like "too much"Now some background, on a passive set-up I tend to "dime" the controls, and almost never use the tone control.So after playing around with the EMG's some more, I've found that's not necessarily the best thing to do - by turning down the volume and tone pots, I can get tones that are almost identical to the passives, and the tone & volume controls have a huge range to work with, that is, a little tweak of the knobs, gives a huge change in tone.Maxing the volume and tone controls is almost like hitting the lead channel of an amp For the record I like both active and passive set-ups, but I think the active stuff is more versatile than people think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members peavey_impact Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 It takes about 3000 hours to kill the battery. It is your own fault if you leave the cord in for 125 days.For EMG's, yes, but my bassist has a Peavey Millennium with an 18 volt circuit and I swear he has to change the batteries every 2 weeks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members willhaven Posted February 11, 2008 Members Share Posted February 11, 2008 1) Batteries 2) They can sound too processed in some applications That said, I use Parker Fly guitars with active electronics and ESP guitars with passive electronics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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