Active pickups questions

[Hysteria]

When talking about signal transfer (as opposed to power transfer) it is ideal to drive a high impedance input from a low impedance source.

With audio we are principally concerned with voltages. Put simplistically we want the voltage at our source to arrive at our destination as close to unchanged as possible.

High impedance sources cannot deliver as much current as low impedance sources. If a high impedance source is 'loaded' by a low impedance at the other end there may be a voltage drop if the source cannot supply the current required by the load. And, we don't want that...there's our signal loss.

Active pickups are as happy driving a guitar amp as a mixer input which may be a lower impedance...(or it may not). Passive pickups experience signal degradation if feed into a low impedance source.

I guess you might notice the better frequency response of EMGs if you connect your guitar directly to your mixer/PC etc. Whether that's a good thing of course is subjective. I should say that I am an EMG user and a fan but tend not to DI even though I can

I hope this helps...it's not the clearest explaination (sorry), perhaps someone can do better.

[mattyd]

Thanks a lot Hysteria! That makes a lot of sense