What is the Difference Between Active Pickup and Passive Pickup?

Difference Between Active Pickup and Passive Pickup – Buying a gear/music device may be an easy-to-easy experience for some guitarist friends or those who are just serious about getting into this field. Even now, sometimes I still like to ‘worry’ if I have to buy a music device. Because it is easy for us to access information, then our options will automatically increase, which in the end makes it even more confusing :)).

For guitarists, one thing that is quite confusing is when the guitarist wants to buy/upgrade a pickup on his guitar. The question that often arises is: what brand to buy? buy active or passive pickup? Will, it is good or not, etc. Maybe we will try to answer these questions by starting from the type: Active vs Passive.

Passive Pickup

Passive pickups are pickups that were made earlier and are still popular today. If you often listen to ‘traditional’ music: jazz, blues, the early era of rock & roll music, to the early era of metal music, this is the pickup used in the guitars of the guitarists of those eras.

Active Pickup

Besides requiring batteries, the easiest way to describe active pickups is that they tend to have more power than typical passive pickups, making it easier for users to get distortion when ‘beating up’ the gain channel of the amp they are using. This pickup that became popular in the mid-’80s is still widely used by guitarists today, especially metal guitarists. One of the popular brands is EMG or Seymour Duncan.

Difference Between Active Pickup and Passive Pickup

The easiest thing to tell the difference between the two types of pickups is to see if they need batteries or not. Active pickups require a battery (usually a box-shaped 9v battery) to operate whereas passive pickups do not. But apart from that, there are also some differences between the two types of pickups, such as:

Output

Most of these active pickups have more power than conventional passive pickups, which is an interesting point for some guitarists.

Dynamic

In terms of response, passive pickups are more responsive to our picking dynamics. In other words, the sound that comes out will better reflect the power of our picking; slow or hard. With an active pickup, the overall sound will sound more even in terms of power.

Noise

Due to the number of turns used and the type of magnet that is simple, passive pickups are more sensitive to feedback and other noise than active pickups. not infrequently there are also cases of ‘classic rock’ guitarists who switch to active pickups because of this.

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Conclusion

So, why aren’t all pickups active? Despite having some disadvantages in terms of power and noise, passive pickups still have a wider dynamic response than active pickups. Although there are several pickup manufacturers such as DiMarzio who have made passive pickups that can compete with the power of active pickups, namely the D-Activator series, for guitarists who need wide dynamics such as blues, jazz, funk, or rock music.

On the other hand, active pickups are capable of producing a more detailed and powerful sound. Often perceived as stiff or sterile, due to its narrower dynamic response than active pickups. But when it comes to power and articulation, this pickup is still often the first choice for metal guitarists.

For me, one of the unanswered difficulties in buying a pickup here is that there is no system that makes how buyers can try / trial pickups that will be purchased on our own guitars. Maybe in the near future, there will be a solution to this.