Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: FELINEGUITARS on February 28, 2007, 08:32:02 PM
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Ok guys - open for debate
Suatainers - are they of any interest?
You know the things that work a bit like an Ebow and let you sustain a note or it's harmonic. Great for inducing feedback without having to find the exact spot to stand in onstage too.
I became fascinated in the late 80s by them when George Lynch was using them on Dokken's Back for the Attack album, and I had previously been intrigued by E-bows before that.
I have tried them out both on the Jackson Phil Collen, Kramer sustainer guitar and lots of Fernandes guitars too.
Steve Vai uses one live as do many bands (although some players only manage to make them sound like copulating elephants) and of course Muse's Matt Bellamy has used one to good effect too
Have you used one?
Is it something that interests you?
Would you consider having one on a guitar?
just wondering whether to start offering them as an option on thge guitars I make - or as a upgrade to existing guitars.
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they look pretty fun, but i wouldn't want to have to lose a pickup to get one
would they be able to fitted between the bridge and the bridge pickup??
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Not my cup of tea, but having it as an option is always good unless it costs you too much somehow?
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they're fun, but i havent found any practical uses that actually sound good. Also, as a pickup, they SUCK BALLS. Muddy as shite tone. And another downside (with the fernandes) is that the entire guitar dies without batteries, even though only the sustainer needs them.
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I'd love one just to muck about with :D
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Yeah, the problem with the sustainer is that you're stuck with that neck pickup, so if you use the neck a fair bit it may not be best (and if you like held notes and prog metal you're likely to use the neck).
Doesn't the PC1 have an old style sustainiac circuit rather than a sustainer?
Could Tim re-wind a sustainer?
I think it's probably worthwhile as an option for you, I'm just not sure if it would be for me (again, I like the idea but the practicalities put me off).
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imo
it's a nice gimmick.. something i'd use once in a while, but again, for me.. the amount of use wouldnt justify the price and sacrifice of neck pickup, so the e-bow would be better suited for me.
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I have a PC-1..only downside for me is battery life...if you dig a floyd rose, you can really do some other world-ly stuff-really gives a dive bomb an ethereal depth(oooh...)like anything..its subject to abuse....but, dial the delay in...smidgen of reverb..stereo setup....its a huge sound...it allows me to get vai like ..I need all the help i can get...
the neck pup itself isnt awesome, but i have found that ,if you are patient, you can dial it in...would be awesome if tim could make it work with a BK,though...that would make it a 10 for me
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Thanks for the input so far guys.
Any more input will be welcome........
I am looking to bring in some good quality products soon to add to the cool stuff we already deal with like BKPs
Stuff that doesn't seem to be too easily available over here
So far I will be bringing in from the USA:
1)Earvana compensated Tuning Nuts http://www.earvana.com
2)Original Floyd Rose tremolos - http://www.floydrose.com/bridges.html
3)Sustainiac Stealth sustainer systems - http://www.sustainiac.com/
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Awesome man :D
Nice to see there's a friendly place where we can get true quality parts :>
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i bought a fernandes sustainer kit a few months ago and plan to have it installed in a prs se eg. haven't got around to it due to various family issues. i have tried it out on a cheapish fernandes guitar and found it very interesting, but like anything i would like to spend a little time with it before giving a proper judgement. i'm getting it put on the prs to try as i hope to get a custom guitar built in the next 18 months or so and want to know if i really want a sustainer on it. i think that's quite relevant to what you asked Feline? :wink:
Davey, i have an e-bow but find it very awkward to use. it was actually after seeing Vai live using a sustainer that i decided to try one out. as to losing a good neck pickup, Vai has the sustainer unit mounted beside a single coil in the neck position, the single coil being used as the actual neck pickup.
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Not directly related, I suppose, but does anyone have an e-bow, or more specifically, hs anyone taken one apart?
I have notions of putting most of the gubbins on a wrist-strap, and then just having the sustaining doodad in a wee thimble yoke on the end of my middle finger, cos I think it would make it a bit handier to use in a sorta "Hybrid picking" style.
With apologies for all the technical terms there, anyone reckon it's possible?
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I guess if you stock sustainers, some people will buy them (really glad to hear you're stocking OFRs BTW...)
FWIW I wouldn't be interested:
a: I use my neck pickup too much to sacrifice it for the sustainer
b: Finding "the spot" to get natural feedback is half the fun :)
c: If you have a Holy Diver bridge, you hardly ever struggle with b :twisted:
d: In the 80s I had a device for inducing feedback attached to one of my Charvels. It wasn't a sustainer, but a rather cumbersome device with a little speaker that you glued/screwed to the back of the headstock. Anyway, I played with it for a few weeks, but just didn't find it particularly useful & it went the way of those gimmicky FX pedals that you buy, use once, then stick in the bottom of your gigbag & forget you have :)
JMO, YMMV etc...
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I guess if you stock sustainers, some people will buy them (really glad to hear you're stocking OFRs BTW...)
FWIW I wouldn't be interested:
a: I use my neck pickup too much to sacrifice it for the sustainer
b: Finding "the spot" to get natural feedback is half the fun :)
c: If you have a Holy Diver bridge, you hardly ever struggle with b :twisted:
d: In the 80s I had a device for inducing feedback attached to one of my Charvels. It wasn't a sustainer, but a rather cumbersome device with a little speaker that you glued/screwed to the back of the headstock. Anyway, I played with it for a few weeks, but just didn't find it particularly useful & it went the way of those gimmicky FX pedals that you buy, use once, then stick in the bottom of your gigbag & forget you have :)
JMO, YMMV etc...
That device does sound like the earliest sustainer systems
Did it look like this?
(http://www.sustainiac.com/xd1-1.jpg)
Yeah - I know it's a niche market
Just think that it would be fun to have on one guitar
And that there is a lot of interest in certain quarters for it
I agree with you that I just love my guitars the way they are and giving up a certain neck pickup sound is tricky
Neal Schon seems to get away with it though!
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Yes! The Maniac Sustainiac - that's exactly what I had. I'd forgotten the name, it was so long ago :)
You plugged the guitar into a floor box that had two outputs: 1 to your amp, the other with that speaker on it. It was cumbersome because you basically had two cables running between your guitar & the sustainiac floor box - one from the jack to the floor box, the other from the floor box to the headstock.
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BEHOLD - The worlds longest topic on how to make a sustainer...
http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7512
About 160 pages at the minute, so there's a lot to get through.
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It wasn't a sustainer, but a rather cumbersome device with a little speaker that you glued/screwed to the back of the headstock.
Hmmm...
I remember taping the speaker from a portable cassette recorder onto the back of my headstock for some long forgotten reason (it was the 80s), but this may well be why. I can only remember that it didn't do anything.
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I recently saw def leppard and journey in concert, phil c. from def leppard as well as neil from journey both used the sustainers. they sounded just fine to me, mind you they have hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear to work with as well, but they sounded good in concert
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i guess its like using a Whammy pedal
Used sparingly and tastefullly it is wonderful, but used constantly - maybe a bit of overkill
There are some ace effects to use with it - especially echo and using a volume pedal to swell stuff in as well
Could be mistaken for stuff a keyboard player does
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i'm looking forward to trying it combined with an electro harmonix P.O.G. and a digitech whammy pedal! then gradually coming to my senses and just using it for the occasional cool bit.
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Could you not put one of these sustainers in the middle of a H/S/S guitar?
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actually looking at that model c... i'd rather have that.
easier to put it on and off between songs than to carry another guitar.
so, feline, what about kahler trems? i've never liked floyd's... are the new kahlers not up to scratch?
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Could you not put one of these sustainers in the middle of a H/S/S guitar?
if you follow Feline's link to the Maniac website, it explains why the driver unit needs to be in the neck position, as far as possible from the bridge pickup.
that clip on unit would be great for the studio where you could use it on any guitar, but i think it would be a bit cumbersome for live use. although you could make taking it out and putting it on the guitar part of the show, if you were that way inclined!
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While i am sure Tim could wind a sustainer driver - dont forget there are differences between a pickup and a driver unit.
Sometimes people get confused with pickups and drivers because theyare built the same way, i.e. a coil of wire around metal/magnet.
The inevitable question people ask is 'can i use a pickup as a driver unit?'. The answer is no because a driver unit is built with around 1-200 turns of relatively thick wire compared to the 5-10,000 turns of very thin wire on a guitar pickup. The driver has very little resistance and can have a signal sent through it. A guitar pickup has much higher resistance and will overheat and melt the insulation on the windings if you put a signal through it.
when you see sustainer guitars with humbuckers in the neck, they are actually a seperate single coil and driver unit - it might be worth getting tim to rewind the single coil side of things! to improve the neck pickup sound. Rewinding the driver wont affect the pickups sound
I am looking into putting one into a guitar soon for an experiment. I made one myself but it isnt working properly yet so i may end up buying one.
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Neal Schon seems to get away with it though!
I read an interview with schon a while back in whih he said that, although he has sustainers fitted in his sig les pauls, he never uses them anymore!
I wouldnt mind having a crack at a guitar fitted with one but I doubt I'd bother buying one.
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Been away for a while (family stuff).
As I remember Fernades do 2 sustainer kits. One with the 'humbucker' driver and one with a 'single coil' driver.
I'd be tempted to go for the single coil one and mount a proper pickup close to it (with appropiate shielding).
The reason for using the neck positon is not to separate it from the bridge pickup but simply because it has to induce a large enough movement in the strings to get a reasonable volume.
Personally I'd love a sustainer of some form in a guitar (but then I love the drones sounds in eastern music and would be excellent for a freaked version of 'Venus in furs').
As for the Ebow theryre little buggers to take apart (lets say like some security equipment I work with it's fragile, so when it's taken apart it breaks / self destructs). I do have a diagram for one somewhere (uses the usual LM386 opamp to drive it).
Godley & Cream (spelling ?) ex of 10cc (euuugh) and video directing, produced the gizmo, which was a rotating wheel system down at the brigge that sounded really good (forgotten what tracks used it though).
As an alternate method, I was thinking it would be possible to use piezo transducers @ the bridge to induce string movement.
Yeah pog combined with a sustainer would be excellent fun :)
Rob...