Dealing with active electronics/hot pickups

[GrooveChampion]

Certain circuits can distort if used with a bass with active pickups/guitar with hot pickups. What is a way to deal with this issue? A gain pot at the input? Or are there other options?

[Travis]

http://www.muzique.com/lab/pickups.htm

[GrooveChampion]

Call me stupid but that didnt really help me

[nocentelli]

Very much depends on the circuit: You could alter the headroom of some circuits by using a voltage doubler to run them at 18v, reduce the gain of the input stage, or have an input level trimmer: This last suggestion is pretty much the same as "turn the (guitar/bass) volume pot down a hair".

[GrooveChampion]

I know the last one, already used it but as a gain control on the acapulco gold. Tried it on a misbehaving chorus and nothing but thats a fault on my side. However I do see some compressors that use that method.

[nocentelli]

Which chorus? Something like the little angel uses an opamp input stage to give a x2 gain boost: Hot pick-ups could clip this, so your options would be to replace the series input resistor with a resistor + pot so you can adjust the input gain (e.g. 470k + 1M pot to allow gain to be variable from x2 boost to x 0.666 attenuation).

[GrooveChampion]

Yeah it was a little angel, my guitar is equiped with GHS p90s and it really distorted. You think the issue was the pickup gain?

[Travis]

Lol I thought you were talking more about the impedance mismatch issues. Like if you wanted to connect an active pickup to a Fuzz Face, you'd want one of those pickup simulators in between

Looks like nocentelli is already on the scene so all is well

[GrooveChampion]

Thanks anyway Travis!