guitar output voltage?

[lorddracula_me]

does anyone know how much current/voltage an average guitar outputs, passive and active?

thanks

[R.G.]

Where do you find an average guitar? 

Single coils: 100mV peaks at picking, in series with 4K resistance, 2H inductance, smallish cap to ground.

Humbuckers: 500mV peak to 2V peak, series with 8K-12K, 4H inductance, 1-2nF to ground.

[lorddracula_me]

thanks, what about stuff like EMGs?

also, one quick question, do you think about these things when you design pedals, or not at first

[petemoore]

  Welcome to the Forum !
  thanks, what about stuff like EMGs?
  By EMG do you mean active pickups ?
  also, one quick question, do you think about these things when you design pedals, or not at first
  No, at first, I only had a set for a few hours, traded for passive HB's before closing time, amp said "GAkk to the actives' and barked in a sick way when hit with such a high amplitude signal.
  No secondly for me also, I like a cool passive pickup tone [actually 'warm' fits for the description of passive PU's IMO]...cool in the sense of output level, that way, when I hit the boost it sounds like I hit the 'boost' instead of sounding like I'm overloading the active component in my booster by feeding it a boosted signal.
  Fuzz or distortion or a booster with 18v supply and other exceptions to the rule, distorter has diodes to clip the signal and may sound great with a pre-boosted input signal.
  And the actives certainly have uses which I don't understand, starting with a 'regular' signal then adding the 'octane' amount once...may make it easier to get just the right mix amount of 'octane' for the desired heat [distortion].

[km-r]

EMG provides specsheets for thier active pickups...

IIRC, ive read the max output of the EMG81 is 4V... it can clip diodes hard by itself... 

yes, i like passive pickups... part tone, part mojo.

[lorddracula_me]

hmmm, thats a pretty big difference in voltage,
so if you wanted a more or less universal pedal, to work for most guitars and pickups, what would you try and do? how would you make the gain portion more wide range, if i can say it like that?

thanks a lot for the info

[km-r]

there is quite no such thing as a "universal" pedal... what makes a pedal sound good is its uniqueness and its response to different pick-ups etc...

i dont necessarily put into much consideration the output voltage of pickups...
sometimes you want to tailor your pedal to your guitar setup.
e.g. you want to sound heavy more like a humbucker and you have a single coil setup...
so you increase the front gain of your circuit at lower the resonant frequency of the signal... etc etc...

you could always roll back the volume control of active pickups...

so far, its been a listening-and-error approach towards building pedals...

[lorddracula_me]

thanks,
i guess my problem was that, when i tried to design a distortion pedal, it sounded ok on an EMG, but i got a passive guitar afterwards, and sounded kinda bad, making a squeeling sound when you turn down the tone knob...

ill try again, but i thought it had to do with how much signal you're inputing in the pedal or something like that

[Minion]

My actives put out close to 4v.....

[Boogdish]

I've only designed one distortion with the intent of selling it, and when I did I kept an old teisco with single coils and a new hagstrom with humbuckers at the bench to test with.  Whenever it was a toss up/compromise time I always went with the part that sounded better with the teisco.  Maybe this is a generalization, but I think players with humbuckers are less likely to use distortions than players with single coils.

If you're not trying to sell the pedal you're working on though, who cares?  It's your tone, your pedal, just make it sound awesome for you.  If a single coil player wants one they can go design their own pedal.

[lorddracula_me]

lol i guess thats true

[alanlan]

...how much current...

Now there's an interesting question (although not so interesting for active pick-ups)...

[petemoore]

   reduce signal amplitude as it enters the first box ?