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Hi, this may not be the apropriate place to ask this question, so I'm just asking for some directions.

my friend bought a used bass, and the previous owner said he would just have to buy an active pickup circuit to fix it. so he came ask me about that. well I play guitar for like 10 years or so, and never heard of that. I did a little research, and understood the concept and basics, but the circuits we seem to find on the internet, all come with some sort of circuit board (wich I assume is the pre-amp) but most of the wiring diagrams of active pickup circuits show no boards on them. any lights on this?

currently, the bass is wired but without that circuit board, and the wiring is very different from any guitars I've seen. it works, sort of, but volume is really low, and it tends to distort any speaker you plug it in.

active pickups are different from regular pickups? they really need that circuit to work?

thanks for any kind of help!
Rafael

Well, probably - but you didn't tell us what kind of pickups they were.
They usually run on batteries, too.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Active EMG bass pickups have a pre-amp built and cast into the pickup casings. There are no visible circuit boards, and batteries are connected directly to the pickups.

It is possible that other active pickup makers do the same thing.

Alembic active pickup systems actually put their pickup preamps per pickup outside the pickup housing, in case they need to be repaired. If they're telling you that you need a circuit board to make the pickups work, that could be the case. EMG and other put the pickup preamp inside the pickup housing.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

My advice is,
unless you know what kind of pick ups they are,
and know what pre is needed,
start over with a new system.
You might get it to work okay with a mismatched pre,
but they are all designed specifically as a matched set,
pick ups and pre that is.

I screwed up the wiring on my Cort Curbow bass and it's never been the same since. I hate em because realistically, most of the time they're not repairable, unless you know a lot about circuitry. I managed to get mine to put out sound but none of the EQ controls work.

I would replace your pickups with passive ones, which is what I've been planning to do with my bass for years and may actually do some day (maybe when they stop working completely).

Your best bet if you really want those pickups to work is if you can find out exactly what kind they are and what system goes with it. But see I tried this with my bass' pickups and nothing lined up right. Looked up the brand of the pickups, all wiring schematics for that bass, everything. The board was different. Another mystery is that all the records I have seen show the bass being produced originally in 2006, yet my father had the bass for several years before that.

...Just venting I guess. Active pickups are an emotional subject for some people.

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