Active & Passive Pickups Together

Duppy03

Is it possible to have both an active and passive pickup running on the same circuit?

I.e. an active humbucker in the bridge position and a passive single coil in the neck, switching between the two with a standard three way toggle selector

ICBM

Yes, but you either need to add an active buffer to the passive pickup, or a resistor to the active one to give it a much higher output impedance - which is somewhat counterproductive as it takes away the best characteristics of an active pickup.

In fact, if you only want to switch between them and never combine the two, it will work anyway - it's just the middle position which won't work properly with one of each.

Funkfingers

The most common instance of combining active passive is probably an electric guitar with a piezo transducer system in its bridge saddles for faux acoustic guitar sounds.

The signal paths are entirely discrete from each other. The nearest that they might come to each other is at the tip and ring contacts of an output jack socket.

Danny1969

If you share a volume control then there's the issue with the pot value .... basically an active pickup uses a far lower value pot because it's output impedance is so low and a low value pot maintains that. 
Driving the passive pickup into that pot designed for the active pickup  will take an awful lot of top end off the passive pickup so you would need 2 pots really 

Duppy03

How about if I was to set up the wiring like a Jazzmaster? So the passive neck pickup is on its own circuit with it’s own pots,

The only thing it would share with active bridge pickup is the input jack.

Could that work?

Funkfingers

Shared output jack socket still requires buffering.

Fully discrete circuitry would not but, instead, you need two cables and some line selecting or mixing device before the signals reach your amplification.

Danny1969

If you use 2 pots and have a switch so it's passive or active pickup with no option of both then yes it will work as switching from one pickup to the other will leave the off one open circuit ... same ground but no connection anywhere else ... you would need a stereo jack with the neg of the battery connected to the ring connection to preserve the battery when no lead is inserted. 

Something like this maybe 

Duppy03

Thanks all, sounds perhaps a little more complex than worth doing unfortunately

Truth is I’ve never had a guitar with active pickups in the 30 odd years I’ve been playing but bought one recently with the intention of swapping them out, but it turns out I actually quite like the sound of it in the bridge.

Ive got a Humbucker and single coil ready to drop in so might give that a go and see how it sounds as I could always switch it back again.

Or is there such a thing as an active pickup that can mimic the sound of a regular Tele neck pickup for that lovely chimney yet slightly angry tone?