Alembic Pickups: Active Or Passive?

[BIX]

I know the tone shaping circuitry in Alembics is active, but are the pickups themselves active? I was looking at some EMGs and they require power no matter what the tone circuit is like, and then I looked at some Aguilars and they were passive and did not require power before the tone circuit.

So I guess my question is - Are the Alembic pickups themselves active or passive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

[JimmyJ]

Alembic pickups are "passive.  They're made of a single wire coil wrapped around a large magnet.  The hum canceller in Series instruments is the same coil with no magnet.  There are no "active" components in the pickup that would require power. 

Does that mean EMGs have a opamp built into the mold itself?  I guess that's one way to do it.  Not exactly serviceable should it fail so I'd probably carry spare just in case.

Jimmy J

[BIX]

Alembic pickups are "passive.  They're made of a single wire coil wrapped around a large magnet.  The hum canceller in Series instruments is the same coil with no magnet.  There are no "active" components in the pickup that would require power. 

Does that mean EMGs have a opamp built into the mold itself?  I guess that's one way to do it.  Not exactly serviceable should it fail so I'd probably carry spare just in case.

Jimmy J

Thanks for the info! MUCH appreciated.

[lbpesq]

While Alembic pickups are, indeed, passive, they also have fewer windings than typical pickups.  As a result they are low impedance, low output pickups.  They require a preamp to boost their signal to typical guitar levels.  So while the pickups themselves are passive, the Alembic “system” is active.   And I believe there are some EMGs that have built-in preamps, but I could be wrong.

Bill, tgo

[gearhed289]

The "traditional" (for lack of a better term) EMGs have built in preamps. In more recent years, they've branched out into passive pickups. Some even have visible pole pieces. I was a huge proponent of the trad EMG pickups for a good 15 years before I went back to mostly passive, and now a combination of both (on different basses!).

[bigredbass]

Putting the preamp in the shell allowed everything to be shielded and internally grounded.

I had a Fernandes Gravity 4 bass with their house-issue P/J pickups and active tone network.  Great little bass, but the tone was less than average to be polite.

So I installed an EMG PJ Set with their BTC (volume, balancer, treble +/-, bass treble +/-) tone network.  Bass already wired for 9v with battery box and lead in place.

Cavity was entirely unshielded (which I'd already heard . . . ).  Installed the EMG bits, which included no lead to the bridge as per instructions, and I added no shielding whatsoever.

Silent as a tomb. Sounded great.

For me, they're the next best thing if you can't get Alembic.

[eddieg]

Stupid question maybe but: are europa Electronics compatible with EMG pick ups ?

[Songdog]

I would expect there could be issues trying to use EMG active pickups (or any more conventional non-Alembic pickups) with Alembic electronics. Because an Alembic pickup's output is much lower than typical instrument pickups, the preamp has to have a lot of gain. Connecting a pickup with a more typical, higher output could push the Alembic preamp into distortion. I don't know whether setting the gain trimpot lower could overcome this, there could be too much gain before that trimpot. Perhaps a fixed resistor pad or trimpot could be added between the EMG pickup and the Alembic preamp?

This question stirred a memory of something I saw here a while ago. A post in the thread PRS Dead Spec guitar featuring a genuine Alembic Blaster! references an article Why Active? by Ron Wickersham, published in American Basses: An Illustrated History & Player's Guide by James H. Roberts. See that post for a link to view the article.

Briefly, Ron Wickersham and Owsley Stanley invented the active pickup (with a unity-gain buffer preamp) in Alembic's early days. The technique showed promise, but was quickly superseded by low impedance, low output passive pickups and a more sophisticated separate preamp.

[mica]

I know people have combined our pickups with other electronics and our electronics with other pickups, but we don't offer any support for this arrangement at this time, sorry.

[sonicus]

I have a pending project that will utilize both Alembic and BiSonic /Dark Star Curis Novak pickups
with an Alembic Strato-Blaster buffer preamp . That bass is intended to be active or passive .

[pauldo]

I have a pending project that will utilize both Alembic and BiSonic /Dark Star Curis Novak pickups
with an Alembic Strato-Blaster buffer preamp . That bass is intended to be active or passive .

Wolf, that sounds very interesting.

[edwardofhuncote]

I have a pending project that will utilize both Alembic and BiSonic /Dark Star Curis Novak pickups
with an Alembic Strato-Blaster buffer preamp . That bass is intended to be active or passive .

Wolf, that sounds very interesting.

Sure does. I had been wondering for a while if a 'Blaster could be installed in a bass. I'm thinking about it for my Hyak... I have the whole set of NOS electronics for it from Nick, but I want to wait on installing that for the full restoration. The biggest, really the only setback that bass has is weak output... it sounds amazing if you preamp the snot out of it and just run everything full on. (I use a little cheapie ART tube mic preamp with different voicings...) If It had an onboard preamp though... just a little something to heat that signal up... well, that might do just what I need, at least temporarily.