Audio signal standards

[riekes]

I was wondering what the standard guitar/bass signal looks like.  I only looked at the signal of my bass so i have nothing to compare. Are there any standards or is this just the choice of the company who makes them?

[niftydog]

I was wondering what the standard guitar/bass signal looks like.

no such animal. It depends on so many factors like strings, pickups, guitar setup, playing style, impedances etc etc etc.

For instance, played as hard as I can my passive Warwick bass might just muster up a 1V peak to peak for a microsecond.
Conversely, my active Stingray with the EQ's dimed will put out 6V peak to peak by just breathing on the strings!

Not only amplitude, but frequency content and waveshape vary wildly making them all "look" different on the scope as well.

hope that helps!

[brett]

Humbuckers and solid strings give about 100mV p-p for a short while (but rarely a nice sinewave).
Single coils and the cheap skinny strings that seem so popular with the kids barely push 50mV for a few milliseconds before fading away....

[riekes]

I was wondering what the standard guitar/bass signal looks like.

no such animal. It depends on so many factors like strings, pickups, guitar setup, playing style, impedances etc etc etc.

For instance, played as hard as I can my passive Warwick bass might just muster up a 1V peak to peak for a microsecond.
Conversely, my active Stingray with the EQ's dimed will put out 6V peak to peak by just breathing on the strings!

Not only amplitude, but frequency content and waveshape vary wildly making them all "look" different on the scope as well.

hope that helps!

But if you plug it on to any stompbox, doesn't the large input make it automaticly go in overdrive.  Or is this the "different guitars sound different on different stompboxes" effect