Hi guys, new here. Recently I got a bargain on an LTD Viper-50, which I am now upgrading with a single EMG 81 pup in the bridge. My question is, is it possible?

Also, I'm getting the pickup second hand and the dude selling it to me doesn't have the pots or the audio jack. Would that be a problem? I'm in Malaysia, so I'm not sure how available those things are around here. From what I gather, though, pulling out the battery everytime i'm done playing, while tedious, will have the same effect as the stereo jack. And leaving the tone and volume knobs at 10 will also keep the pickup steady.

Any help would be much appreciated.

wow. hopefully that would work but it will be a pain in the butt to keep it working. i'm not sure if you can have 2 pickups passive and active in the same guitar...hmm

weird weird things happen when using passive an active pickups in the same guitar....
Passive...needs a bridge ground..
active..... does not...
check this out...I had this guitar with livewires in the neck and bridge and some kind of passive single coil in the middle..
the single was not connected in any way... but when you tapped on the pole pieces you heard it loud and clear through the amp...??????????????
what the hell.... so I took the pickup out ....when I moved the pickup closer to the other pickups magnetic field and tapped you could hear it ...move away and you can't..
which means some how you are still hearing that middle pickup actually come through the other pickups... not cool in my book .. so I stay away from things like that..








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None of these "opinions" are representative of Great Southern Music.
They are my personal opinions.

plus the sounds of the pickups would be vastly different so i think it would be hard to match those up

Txguitarbuilder wrote:

weird weird things happen when using passive an active pickups in the same guitar....
Passive...needs a bridge ground..
active..... does not...
check this out...I had this guitar with livewires in the neck and bridge and some kind of passive single coil in the middle..
the single was not connected in any way... but when you tapped on the pole pieces you heard it loud and clear through the amp...??????????????
what the hell.... so I took the pickup out ....when I moved the pickup closer to the other pickups magnetic field and tapped you could hear it ...move away and you can't..
which means some how you are still hearing that middle pickup actually come through the other pickups... not cool in my book .. so I stay away from things like that..

thats odd.....at one time i had a livewire classic humbucker in the bridge position of one of my gibson SG's and the stock gibson pu in the neck......i never NOTICED any of these issues.
i wonder if they were there?
now i want to try livewires and passives in one guitar again...just to see.

geez....like i dont have enough projects lined up already ! lol








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.... Yet with strange aeons even death may die"


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It's definitely possible. I'm kinda short on time at the sec, but here's a quick rundown of my current guitar:

Epi LP 100 with EMG-85 (neck) and Seymour Duncan SH-55 (bridge). I've been using and active/passive combo for the last 6 years. I don't do anything special as far as tweeking the volume or anything, I have it set up as a "normal" rig which plays like any other combo. I'll give you the schematics later when I get more time.

TG








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put an electronic buffer on the passive pickup, and use 25K pots for both volume and tone, use a .1 mfd cap for tone, make sure it's on the OUTPUT side of the buffer. Do an internet search for 2N5485 preamp, you can build yourself in an hour or so.

I wasn Bill Conklin's electronics engineer in a different life. We 'married' passive pickups with piezo-to-active bridge pickups all the time. Only way to do it is to have LIKE signals present when combining them.

Good Luck, email me if you need more info








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coxster@yahoo.com

Good luck with that project. Emg says you can and has a PA-2 switch

coxster wrote:

put an electronic buffer on the passive pickup, and use 25K pots for both volume and tone, use a .1 mfd cap for tone, make sure it's on the OUTPUT side of the buffer. Do an internet search for 2N5485 preamp, you can build yourself in an hour or so.

I wasn Bill Conklin's electronics engineer in a different life. We 'married' passive pickups with piezo-to-active bridge pickups all the time. Only way to do it is to have LIKE signals present when combining them.

Good Luck, email me if you need more info

wont the 25k pots kill the passive pickup ?
i dont have much experience with EMG's , but my Duncan LiveWire actives sound better with 500k pots instead of the 100k that duncan includes with the pickups.
the higher the value on a pot, the less output and tone get sent to ground.
i guess EMG's are a different bird ?








_________________
"That is not dead which can eternal lie
.... Yet with strange aeons even death may die"


proud member of G.A.U.P , and C.G.A.A