I just made an interesting discovery and wanted to see if any of you have any idea what’s going on. I just bought a Yamaha Revstar with P90s (great guitar, by the way). I’ve been playing it through my QC and pedalboard for a few days. I really like the sound of the pickups but was surprised that they were not brighter. Last night, I plugged the Revstar in using my wireless and, WOW, there is the top end. I’d estimate a 3db-4db increase above 2khz. I realize that cords add to the load impedance but this seems beyond what I’ve experienced before. BTW, the cord is a 12-footer assembled from some nice Mogami 2524 cable. My main two gigging guitars are both active Kiesels (active due to their piezo bridges). I’ve done a side-by-side comparison between the chord and wireless, using the Kiesels, and the difference is negligible. I tried a different cord and pulled out another passive guitar but had the same results…much brighter using the wireless. I tried bypassing the rest of the pedalboard and double-checked that the QC input impedance is set for 10meg. Does anybody have a guess as to why I’m hearing such a drastic difference?
If the Kiesels sound the same with both the cable and the wireless, then it’s simply due to the capacitance of the cable. If you have a really short patch cable, you can try plugging in with that and see if it sounds different.
In the active Kiesels the signal is probably buffered which makes the capacitance of the cable pretty much irrelevant.
That 2524 cable is pretty low-capacitance stuff so it’s hard to believe that 12 feet could make that big of a difference but, I like your patch cord suggestion, I’ll try it. Yes, the blending electronics in the Kiesels does provide a buffer. I’ve run 30’ cords on them with no audible difference.
I’m using a NUX wireless so I can step out and check our mix (great little system for short range). It alters the tone very little with the active (buffered) guitars but, you’re right, the response may be accenting the upper-mid, low-treble peak of the P90s. The cable emulation does help match the response of a real cable but then I’d have to remember to switch it off and on when switching to and from the active guitars. Not optimum during a fast moving set. For now, rolling the tone control back a bit on the Revstar will help. Thanks for your insight.
Ahhh, knowing it’s a Nux definitely adds to the theory it’s the wireless systems own eq/sound accentuating the voicing of the P-90. Unfortunately the cheaper wireless systems like that can color the tone of pickups (especially passive).
IIRC this video of Pete Thorn shows a couple examples of cables vs wireless tone during his review, and you def can hear some difference in the high end. He also mentions how active pickups don’t experience the same tonal difference as passive. https://youtu.be/HSv4GGcrSjg
Cool vid, and always a pleasure to hear Pete play. I guess I’ve been using (mostly) active for so long, I’ve forgotten how much of a difference a cable can make with passive pickups.
It’s not the wireless adding anything, It’s the cable attenuating high frequencies. Active pickups are buffered, so they are pretty much not affected by capacitance.
Thanks, Aleksi. I understand all of that, it’s just a much bigger difference than I was expecting from 12’ of low-capacitance cable. Guess I need to update my expectations. 