[sdiy] Guitar levels (slightly OT)

[sleepy_dog at gmx.de]

Let me add to my previous post (below) that

that guitar of mine has, besides an "extra hot" pickup (in the bridge 
position, btw, I guess it'd be louder @ neck),
also strings with more mass than typically used for standard tuning, as 
it's tuned-down a huge amount, but I roughly kept the overall string 
tension it had before.

- Steve


Am 03.04.2018 um 20:08 schrieb 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
>
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