Passive vs. Active Pickup

[The Spartan]

Does anyone have any experience with these? I'm looking into replacing the pickups in my Ibanez with something that isn't stock and a buddy said I should switch to actives.

What kind of upsides/downsides do they have vs passive pickups? Less noisy? How easily do they feedback by comparison? How's the tone/sound difference? Etc.

Edit: Spelling

[YT300000]

The actives you'll find nowadays, particularly the ubiquitous EMG 85/81 combination, are great for modern metal. From death metal, down to less extreme stuff like Zakk Wylde, they'll give you more gain, more attack, and a sharper, crisper sound than passive pickups. Additionally, they're as noiseless as a pickup can be. In terms of feedback, actives have very small coils that are internally amplified, so very little feedback happens, either of the good sort (controllable overtone production), or the bad kind (microphonic screech). You can still get the good kind, you just need to really drive the suckers.

The downside, other than needing batteries (which tend to last in the neighbourhood of 30 hours, depending on the model, so it's not much of a drawback), is that they don't sound very good with mild overdrive, and they sound like crap when clean. All brands sound different, but I've never played an active pup with the dynamic range, tonal depth, and most importantly character of a good passive pickup. One of my friends and I both own a G&L Legacy, which has fantastic Alnico passives. With someone else playing both through the same amp, with the same string gauge and pickup height, I can immediately tell which one is his, and which is mine. Active pickups, on the other hand, I find to be too homogeneous, too sterile. They're sharp and crisp to the point that you lose nuance in your playing, almost like having a compressor pedal turned on.

I'm a staunch blues/60's-80's rock n' roll player, so if you like death metal and rarely play clean, you should definitely consider these. But if you want proper tone, get a good pair of passive pickups. For nearly any metal style, a DiMarzio Super Distortion or Gibson Dirty Fingers (which is pure heaven, by the way), will do. And since both are potted, they'll be about as quiet as active pickups. For me, the rule of thumb is that if it doesn't sound good with lower gain, it's not good enough.

[The Spartan]

I do like to play with distortion, but I also like clean sounds as well. And my distortion might range from a little overdrive like from the tube screamer I used to have, to more 80's thrash metal distortion. Every now and then I'll even throw on some fuzz from my fuzz wah.

So with that in mind I think I'll stick with the passives.

[aerius]

And get Alnico magnets in the pickups. Unlike ferrite, Alnico is conductive so it doesn't suffer from unwanted eddy currents feeding back & interacting with the pickup coil. In short, you get a cleaner sound with better tone, and when you crank it up or play hard it doesn't abruptly go into breakup. Rather, there's a smoother more gradual transistion from clean to crunchy.

[The Spartan]

So what I'm getting so far is that I want to go with Alnico magnets in pickups that are potted?

[YT300000]

So what I'm getting so far is that I want to go with Alnico magnets in pickups that are potted?

Generally, yes. Some iron+ceramic pickups are quite amazing (G&L Magnetic Field Design), but for the most part Alnico II or V will fetch you the best results. Wax potting can reduce the depth of your tone if it's not properly done, so if possible play another guitar with those same pups beforehand, to make sure you don't get a bum set. In general, you'll want to go with potted pickups unless you're an absolute tone freak, and can notice the slight frequency dip in the 4000-6000 kHz range. In that case, you'd get unsealed pups, and counteract the increased noise by manually shielding the electronics cavity (with paint and/or foil), routing all the ground wires to one point, and (if you're really insane) replacing all the wires with coax. But don't do that on your first swap.

Also, you'll be spending a surprising amount of money on new pickups, especially humbuckers, so you might as well invest a little more and install coil split wiring for greatly increased versatility. What this does is let you cut out one of the coils on your humbucker when you throw a switch, giving a single coil sound. To be able to wire this, make sure any replacement pups you buy have 4 leads, not just 2. And if you're feeling really adventurous, wire a 3-position toggle for each humbucker: normal humbucker mode (the two coils in series), "Strat position 2 and 4" mode (the two coils in parallel), and split mode (only one coil).

[The Spartan]

That's a bit more than my meager skills can handle. I'm thinking I might be better off purchasing the ones I want and getting a tech to do the work.

[YT300000]

That's a bit more than my meager skills can handle. I'm thinking I might be better off purchasing the ones I want and getting a tech to do the work.

By all means. But ask the tech how much extra that would cost - he's already charging you for work, so it shouldn't be that much more. If it's something like an additional $20, I'd definitely go for it. He should also know roughly how various pups respond to splitting, so it wouldn't be a bad idea by consulting him before you buy anything.

[The Spartan]

Well, after having done a little bit of research I'm leaning towards the Gibson Dirty Fingers at the bridge position, but I haven't decided on the neck position yet. The middle pickup, I think I'll have disconnected or at least disabled since I never, ever use it.

I'm not so sure I'd go through the process of getting them split wired since I'd likely never use the single coil option, but I think I may see about getting the cavity shielded. It's fairly noisy right now and it wouldn't hurt things to cut back on as many points of interference as I can.