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Is it possible to use the same volume/tone pots with a toggle switch, on a guitar with a Baggs or Fishman active saddle pickup and a pssive humbucker? I am aware of the different pot value requirements for the 2. I have a customer who ask me if can. He does not want more than 2 pots on the guitar. Thanks, Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

I presume your client wants it function like a two-pickup, one vol pot electric guitar where both pickups are (roughly) the same volume and the overall signal is attenuated by the pot and output via a single jack. I’ve never tried that and am far from an electronics guy but I suspect that pots aside there may be an impedance issue in blending the active and passive signals and having it sound “good” without further onboard processing …

Perhaps you could consider using “concentric” pots, thereby having two stacked pots in the footprint of a single pot (eg separate vol and tone for mag and transducer), and stereo output to keep the signals totally separate and manage them outside the guitar?

Very interested to hear someone with a real handle on this answer your question.

This week on the bench I had an Ernie Ball with both magnetic pickups and an active piezo circuit. Here’s a shot of the control cavity that made it all work:



There’s three pots accessible to the player, plus four trim pots accessible from the cavity to dial in the eq of the piezo, the relative mix of piezo+mag and also the amount of selectable active boost available etc.

It will surprise no one to hear that this rig has been a constant headache for the owner who has taken it to every guy in town to troubleshoot various electronic issues. It comes to me having just been completely rewired under warranty, new PCB etc but yet still experiencing some weird issues with interference and transient phase problems.

I’ll stick to cloth covered wire and two, three or four CTS pots, thanks

No blend needed between the passive and active pickups. They will be switchable and used 1 at a time. The pot values are considerably different for the 2 types of systems, and that's why I'm questioning the possibility of using the same pots for both somehow. Thanks, Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

Ahh ok, I see now that I totally misread your question, sorry. You can physically wire up a switch and one pot. I’ve never tried it with an active and passive though. You’ve already identified a potential issue with the value of the pot.