Has anyone tried the Guitarfetish GFS Redactive Active Pickups?

[Cromcast]

I played it some more tonight, still no issues.

I have them on a Floyd guitar, so I just kind of loosened the strings, dropped the Floyd bar to the body, and pulled the pickups up just enough to flick the switches with a toothpick, lol.

Yeah, even with the bass switch off they have far more bass than an EMG or Fishman. Probably similar to a Duncan Distortion or Custom or something. They are not nearly as tight as typical actives. I like the treble switch on for extra aggressive pick attack. Without it on, it is much smoother. Gain boost on makes it hotter than an EMG 81.

Do you use the 24v mod with those 2 little weird a23 batteries? Glad to know there's no issues yet! I just hope prolonged use doesn't burn something out in them, apparently there's no reverse polarity or voltage protection circuits in them so they fry easily, or so I've read. I once hooked up my 24v mod in reverse to my EMG's and it didn't effect them at all haha. I bought a bunch of the battery casings and 9v tips to make my own mods but the tips came reversed for some reason so when I make the 24v mods I have to wire them red to black wire instead of red to red and black to black, cheap amazon stuff.

That's a good idea about flicking the switches with a toothpick haha, I'll have to try that if I wanna mess around with the different settings. It seemed like way too much of a pain to have to take the strings back off just to flip a switch and put them back on to test it in all the different settings, I wonder why they didn't put the switches on the side or even have the ability to wire a real switch to them like a Duncan blackout, which was my other choice of pickup over the GFS. Two blackouts would've been over double the price though and I've been wanting to try these forever anyway

I'm definitely gonna try it the way you said if there's that much bass on them already, with the treble switch and gain boost on. These bad bois are going in an ML for some rock/metal so I'd like em to be a bit on the hotter side. Does the gain boost being on allow for clean tones still? Or is it hot enough that it sounds more like an OD is on? Thanks again man I appreciate it!

 

[Shask]

Do you use the 24v mod with those 2 little weird a23 batteries? Glad to know there's no issues yet! I just hope prolonged use doesn't burn something out in them, apparently there's no reverse polarity or voltage protection circuits in them so they fry easily, or so I've read. I once hooked up my 24v mod in reverse to my EMG's and it didn't effect them at all haha. I bought a bunch of the battery casings and 9v tips to make my own mods but the tips came reversed for some reason so when I make the 24v mods I have to wire them red to black wire instead of red to red and black to black, cheap amazon stuff.

That's a good idea about flicking the switches with a toothpick haha, I'll have to try that if I wanna mess around with the different settings. It seemed like way too much of a pain to have to take the strings back off just to flip a switch and put them back on to test it in all the different settings, I wonder why they didn't put the switches on the side or even have the ability to wire a real switch to them like a Duncan blackout, which was my other choice of pickup over the GFS. Two blackouts would've been over double the price though and I've been wanting to try these forever anyway

I'm definitely gonna try it the way you said if there's that much bass on them already, with the treble switch and gain boost on. These bad bois are going in an ML for some rock/metal so I'd like em to be a bit on the hotter side. Does the gain boost being on allow for clean tones still? Or is it hot enough that it sounds more like an OD is on? Thanks again man I appreciate it!

Yeah, I made my own little 24v packs also with the A23 batteries. I made 5 of them, so I have them in 5 different guitars.

I assume since the original Redactives didn't have the switch, that these upgraded models probably just take the original design with a small mod to include the switch. They probably aren't dramatically different, and too much trouble to redesign to allow external switching.

I am not sure about the cleans since it depends heavily on the headroom of what you are playing them through, and honestly, I dont use this guitar for cleans, lol. This guitar is tuned in C# with 10-52 strings. I normally play clean on my standard tuned guitars.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

So I bought a 2nd hand set with the quick connect solderless system and uh
it's dogshit lol. Couldn't get any sound no matter what I did

soooo im gonna have to spend time tomorrow soldering things and trying to get sound

 

[Cromcast]

Yeah, I made my own little 24v packs also with the A23 batteries. I made 5 of them, so I have them in 5 different guitars.

I assume since the original Redactives didn't have the switch, that these upgraded models probably just take the original design with a small mod to include the switch. They probably aren't dramatically different, and too much trouble to redesign to allow external switching.

I am not sure about the cleans since it depends heavily on the headroom of what you are playing them through, and honestly, I dont use this guitar for cleans, lol. This guitar is tuned in C# with 10-52 strings. I normally play clean on my standard tuned guitars.

Nice! I haven't even A/B'd a 9v vs the 24v in any of my guitars, I just kinda went with the "more is better" thing haha. I do love the way all my EMG's sound with the mod though, aside from my GTV Glenn Tipton set, they're muddy compared to any of my other EMG's. Tried them because they said they were "different than any other EMG's". They sure are haha.

Ahh yeah that makes sense, I wonder what they did inside to make the boosts happen, I kinda wish they did it with the golds too as I'd rather have tried those out with the more output and heavier sound they're supposed to have. The golds didn't come in white either though.

Ahh yeah that makes sense, I just like the option of switching from clean to heavy on the same pickups, a lot of the music I play has both in it. I think I'm gonna put some 11-58's on this guitar in drop C, I was gonna go with drop B but the strings would just be too floppy on the 24.75 scale and I can just use my drop pedal to drop down a step. The EMG "Het" set I have on the 24v mod are the loudest pickups I've ever heard and are only clean when you turn down the volume or pick very, very lightly. They sound like you have a boost pedal on at all times cranked way up compared to all my other pickups, I was wondering if it'll be like that. Only one way to find out, the pickups should be here sometime this week or early next thanks again!

 

[Cromcast]

So I bought a 2nd hand set with the quick connect solderless system and uh
it's dogshit lol. Couldn't get any sound no matter what I did

soooo im gonna have to spend time tomorrow soldering things and trying to get sound

What set did ya try? I hope you're able to get em working!

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

What set did ya try? I hope you're able to get em working!

The red active golds. Not sure why it's not working, I found some diagrams online and still no juice. So yeah just gonna try to modify one of my existing EMG harnesses when I get home

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

okay so idk if I'm doing anything wrong but I think both pickups are dead lmao
I did literally everything under the sun to make these pickups work, but no dice. Swapped the white and black wires like you're supposed to do when using an EMG harness and I get nada. Went as far as wiring direct to the fucking jack and both pickups get nothing.

Even went as far as reversing the wires back and using an EMG 81 and it's fine.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

So I'm checking my Redactives and my meter is saying it's shorting on the 1st and 3rd pin on both pickups. Would it be difficult for you to find out if yours does that @Shask ?

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Alright I caved, I think the pickups are dead. I'm not sure if they don't have some kind of circuit protection and short out if voltage is sent to the wrong pin if you mistakenly plug them in wrong, or I got shafted on Reverb (too late to refund) but yeah I'm a little weary of trying to hunt these down lol

Really glad I got a set of 81/60xs laying around so my Iceman modding didn't go to waste lol

 

[Shask]

Alright I caved, I think the pickups are dead. I'm not sure if they don't have some kind of circuit protection and short out if voltage is sent to the wrong pin if you mistakenly plug them in wrong, or I got shafted on Reverb (too late to refund) but yeah I'm a little weary of trying to hunt these down lol

Really glad I got a set of 81/60xs laying around so my Iceman modding didn't go to waste lol

Measuring a short definitely dont seem right. I am not sure about the circuit protection. When I first installed my Reds I had the black and white reversed before I realized they didn't use EMG wiring. Mine just sounded weak, distorted, and hummed since I was running the signal into ground.

I assume the rest of your wiring is good so that they are getting power?

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Measuring a short definitely dont seem right. I am not sure about the circuit protection. When I first installed my Reds I had the black and white reversed before I realized they didn't use EMG wiring. Mine just sounded weak, distorted, and hummed since I was running the signal into ground.

I assume the rest of your wiring is good so that they are getting power?

Yep, like I said I went direct to the jack since I made a harness specifically for testing EMGs, but I flipped the hot and negative on it since GFS is weird and still got no juice at all. Not even weak sounds from an unpowered pickup like other actives will do.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

So uh, it looks like reversing the quick connect on the pickup does indeed kill them

Installation of active pickups has failed | GuitarNutz 2

Hi guys I have been trying to install active pickups in my sons guitar. Its a BC Rich and he wanted 'modern metal output' so he wanted active pickups, even though I advised him against it. i ha

guitarnuts2.proboards.com

Found this thread where someone made the same mistake and it seems like GFS confirmed that the pickup did indeed die form being reversed.

Man, even other actives can handle the voltage from accidentally connecting the quick-connect wrong. Not GFS, their shit apparently dies lmao.

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

Yeah I did a bit more fucking with it today. So it seems like normally on EMGs, the pin order is like..

-Hot
-Ground
-9V

But for GFS it's

-9v
-Hot
-Ground

And I guess when you flip the prongs and run voltage to ground, it can fuck up the preamp that way?

I noticed on the 2 pickups, one does have a VERY slight signal, but I have to turn off my noise gate and run a high gain setting. That one's reading 400 ohms when you check the ground and 9v pin. The one that has no signal at all (and a shit ton of noise) is 39 ohms, which is enough for my multimeter to scream at me lol.

EDIT: Also to confirm, EMGs either read nothing or very high ohms when checking the pins

So yeah, you CANNOT fuck up and flip the quick connect on these pickups. You gotta get it right initially, or RIP pickups.