[sdiy] Guitar levels (slightly OT)

[sleepy_dog at gmx.de]

Donald Tillman wrote:

> Instrument amps use what is called "Instrument Level", which is for 
> electric guitars, or basses, passive or active, electromagnetic or 
> piezo pickups, electric pianos, organs, contact pickups, high 
> impedance microphones, and so forth.  Instrument Level is lower than 
> line level, about 0.5V p-p, and very high impedance, about 1Mohm.
>
> Here, I'll 'scope my 'Strat: 200mVp-p for a single note, 400mV for a 
> chord, 800mV if I slam it.

Ah, good idea:
https://postimg.org/image/ya99yardz/

I wasn't remembering incorrectly it seems: 13 Vpp.
That's a humbucker, passive. Bill Lawrence L50XL (original Bill + Becky, 
don't know if the thing sold today is remotely the same).
Was used by the guitarist of Pantera, perhaps the output level isn't 
that surprizing in that light ;-)
Yes, I did strum rather strongly, but not even with a hard pick, it was 
a thumb with a plaster on it, dragging the strings along.

So perhaps one would not be well advised to rely on guitar output levels 
definitely being as low as given by several people earlier in this thread.
Maybe those low levels are more typical, but not guaranteed, it seems.


> Very, very few electric guitars have active electronics.  Acoustic 
> guitars with piezo pickups often have active electronics because the 
> piezo is so high impedance and capacitive.  Some basses have active 
> electronics.  Those all put out instrument level, to be compatible 
> with guitar amps.

It used to be the case that pretty much all metal players (of certain 
genres anyway) used EMG active pickups. Basically anyone who wanted to 
remotely sound like Slayer.
Maybe that's changed, I don't know.

There are people, like Uli Jon Roth*, who use active electronics to 
eliminate the influence of the guitar cable, to always have a consistent 
sound no matter what cable you happen to have at hand. The (capacity of 
the) cable can tremendously shift the resonance frequency of the whole 
setup, drastically altering the sound (how about from 8k to 2k?), also 
depending on the pickup, of course - they can be very different.
So some people keep the peak frequency high using a buffer, and then 
deliberately shift it to a defined point with their gear *after* the cable.

* got that  from the guy who used to do those electronics for UJR, and I 
know he did it b/c I saw UJR hand his stuff to him ;-)
That was post-2000's, no idea what he used in his (g)olden days.
I don't know how many people do that, maybe it's really just a few.

- Steve