Thethorny issue of active versus passive pickups tends to generate the same heated arguments as picks versus fingers. You know we love a good disagreement here at BP, so I consider it my duty to tell you why I think active pickups deserve a place in your gear arsenal.
Let’s get this straight. This is the last page of the last ever print issue of Bass Player, and you’re using it to give us yet another history lesson? Shut your piehole! This stuff is important, so listen. The first guitar pickup was invented in the 1920s. The first humbucker for guitar arrived three decades later, but was still a far cry from the sophisticated electronics that we have today. In 1976, the electronics whiz Rob Turner, frustrated with noisy guitar electronics and the inherent problems with running single-coil pickups at high gain, sought to fix the problem. By introducing a specially designed preamp circuit enclosed in a pickup shell, Rob used shielding and noise cancellation in order to produce a clean, dynamic sound, even on the most problematic of touring stages. He also limited the chances of electric shock, now that an earth wire from the output lead to the instrument’s hardware was not required. The company that we now know as EMG was born and revolutionised on-board electronics.